I turn over and slap my phone I look at the time it's 4:30 in the morning. I built up the energy to move from my soft and warm cozy bed to the cold but soft carpet. I looked out my window and my jaw just dropped when I noticed it was still pitch black out and then I peered down the hall and I saw the light coming from my dad's room, he's already getting ready to go to the airport. That reminds me this is going to be the first time I'm ever going on an airplane. A chill rolls down my spine and all the movies and videos of planes crashing race through my brain. But I shake them out and focus on the fact that I'm going to Texas for the first time too and that makes me smile from ear to ear and I jump quietly into the air. Then leap over to my clothes that I set out the night before and put those on faster than it took me to turn off my alarm. I grab everything I need and walk down the hall and as I do I peer over the stair ledge and hear the truck already started ready to go. I brush my teeth and practically jump down the stairs. I walk over to the laundry room and put on my shoes then grab my suitcase and throw it in the truck. After I jump in the back seat soon after my dad walks out and gets in the passenger's seat with a big smile. I could tell he has been waiting for a guy's vacation for a long time and what better way to spend it than hunting with your son.

My mom gets in the driver's seat looking like she just pulled a forty-eight-hour shift but excited for me and my dad. We start driving to the airport as we get closer my heart starts to beat faster and faster. As we arrive I can see planes screaming right over us. My mom drives us to the drop-off and she turns to me and hugs me like she was never going to see me again but it's only a week trip. My dad and I grab our suitcases and head inside. Right through the door, I expected it to be super packed full of people but it was almost like a ghost town. We walk up to an electronic stand to get our baggage tags and weigh our bags. We looked at the time of our flight and we were an hour and a half early. Walking to our terminal B12 I see my dad sniffing the air like a dog for a bone. His eyes light up when he sees that big orange Dunkin donuts sign, he grabs my hand and instantly makes a beeline for it. My dad orders a massive extra large hazelnut coffee and being his boy I want to be just like him so I get one too. After what seemed like a treacherous journey through long halls we finally make it to terminal B12 where we wait until our Southwest airline arrives.

Our plane arrives after what felt like a century, the airlocked door opens with the flight attendant grabbing the intercom going to call the first group of passengers up to board the plane. She calls the second group and my dad nudges me to go. My hands start to sweat and my mind starts to race once more. I mumble to myself “well this is it, no going back”.

My dad and I both sit next to each other and he lets me sit at the window seat. Jumping into my seat I buckle in and slide open the window. All I can see is the runway and the yellow painted lines. We start driving onto the runway and I hear the engines getting louder and louder. We begin to pick up speed, the plane shakes more and more. I feel the nose pick up then finally liftoff. Everyone in the cab starts clapping and cheering. I look down out the window once again, this time I see the world getting smaller and smaller then everything goes white. My dad turns to me and says “we are in a cloud right now”.

I turn my head so fast with my jaw so far extended “that's so freaking cool”!

After three hours we have made it to San Antonio, Texas. It's time to land. We circle the airport waiting to find the right time to land and suddenly the plane dips down perfectly on the runway. The engines open to create more drag rumbling the plane bringing it almost to a halting stop. We all cheer as the pilot welcomes us over the intercom wishing us all a great trip. As we step out onto the terminal ground the air so dry and hot catches me off guard coming from the blizzards of Illinois. We walk in and right away the culture is completely different. Lots of people wear blue jeans, cowboy hats and boots, also many are wearing sweatshirts because it's winter, even though it’s the high sixties. Once we exit the airport we get picked up by my dad's friend, who lives close by and he takes us to the property we are going to hunt on. As we drive the further we get from the town the more and more the land starts to dry out and begins to look like true deserts.

After a short ride into the desert, we arrived at the hunting property. The owner was a young man with a thick black beard, messy long hair that looks like he's been living in the wild for a couple of days. He greets us with an intense Southern “Howdy fellas, my name is Gary, y'all ready to do some hog hunting. They've been breeding like crazy so if you see one shoot 'em haha”!

He shakes all of our hands then shows us where we will be staying. The cabins were small but stunning maple wood with a green sheet metal roof and cozy bunk beds for all of us to sleep. The bathroom has a little area like a one-minute walk from the main site that's also where the bag of water hung for when you took a shower. As it starts to become dusk we tuck into our cabins. I got the top bunk, my dad slept on the bottom and my uncle slept in the other bunk bed. All the thoughts of hunting my first hog made my adrenaline rush making it hard to fall asleep, but not too long after my eyes started to feel heavy and I fell asleep. We wake to the sound of Gary knocking on our cabin door, I rub my eyes and squint out the window and see pitch black. Gary leans in the door and with a deep breath whispers loudly “Wake up it's time to hunt”.

I hop down the bunk bed and struggle in the darkness to put on my camo cargo pants and an olive green t-shirt, I put on my boots and stumble outside. My dad walks over to me and puts a headlamp on me. We walked over to our guns and My weapon of choice was an AR-15 that was chambered in 5.56-39 and was modified to be a sniper. It had a big scope and bi-pod with a custom stock. I was using armor-piercing rounds also known as the “green tips.” And my dad was using his new AR-10 that he just gotten chambered in 7.62-54 caliber it had a pretty big scope as well and a great big red light on top because hogs cannot see the color red so when we would shine it on them they can't see us but we see them. While my uncle was using his all-time favorite gun, his 30-06 bolt action sniper, it held 6 rounds of 30-06 caliber, which was by far the biggest out of all three of us. His gun had a carbon fiber bolt with a 12x scope and a bullet loop on the stock to carry ten extra rounds. After that, we jump in Gary’s camoed-out jeep and drop my dad and me off to a ground blind set up facing a gravel trail about sixty-five yards from a feeder. Then takes my uncle to a tall tree blind facing a game trail more towards a valley. As we wait the sun starts to shine just enough light to see back silhouettes of any animal, and almost instantly after I hear two hogs snorting and grunting. They come trotting out the dry scrubs on the sides of the trail and stop right in the middle. My adrenalin spiking higher than ever before, I look to my dad and he hands me my rifle. We both take aim, I begin to think of all the fundamentals I've learned over my life. My dad whispers “you have the right one, I have the left on three, 1...2...” Right as he whispers three I inhale making me aim too far right. We both shoot both hogs drop. My head springs from my scope, my dad walks out the blind and I follow like a shadow. Right as he opens the door I begin to hear the hog crying and walking over. I had never felt such sorrow in my life it was the longest and hardest thing to hear at the time. By the time we got there it had died, I shot it too far to the right and in its intestines causing it to bleed out and die. I kneeled over it and put my hand on its side and felt the warm lifeless ruff skin. From that moment forward I realized that everything is living and can truly be killed. From that, it made me respect and love all of nature so much more. A couple of hours pass and Gary comes to pick us up for breakfast, we load up the hogs on a bloody, wooden trailer. We get back to the cabin and Gary starts to field dress the hog. He shows us how to do it and gives us a small anatomy lesson on the hog.  After we fry up some eggs, bacon and seasoned hog then throw some axes until it's time to hunt once again. After the trip was over and we had flown home my love for hunting has never stopped growing along with my love and respect for all of mother nature.