Every hunter needs huntress — even if she stays home

As I grow old (I’m not sure about the wise part), I do more reflection on the important things in life, particularly my family and friends.

I hit the big 65 milestone on Sept. 3 and another epic one on Sept. 19: 26 years of marriage. To the same person. Call me crazy, but I still haven’t upgraded like Tom Cruise (How could he leave Nicole Kidman?) or half of the pretentious Hollywood geezers “dating” women a third their age.

When you find the right one, you stick it out and share the good and rough times. When I see some of my married friends on Facebook sharing constant smiles and their seemingly perfect lives together, I know that they are not sharing the angry squabbles over who left the milk out overnight or why there’s a scuff mark on the new Escalade bumper. Living with someone for decades isn’t perfect, but it’s always better than living alone.

“In sickness and in health.” When I signed on to this marriage thing, little did I know what that meant.

I was pretty healthy, other than high blood pressure, obese and with a benign pituitary tumor. My gorgeous wife Michelle Nitschke Bielema (Why did I marry her in Iowa and then make her change her maiden name when we were moving to Wisconsin? D’oh.) was a tad heavy, too, but in all the right places. Her 6-foot height made her perfect for my 6-1 stature.

On Easter Sunday 2004, an aortic dissection struck me – the same condition that killed actor John Ritter. Unlike him, my emergency room staff at ThedaCare in Neenah triaged me properly, and I was soon in surgery.

Follow-up surgery in December 2013 by Dr. Charles Acher of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital, the nation’s foremost aortic dissection authority, installed a Dacron stent in my damaged aorta during a nine-hour procedure that one nurse described as “more complicated than organ transplant surgery.” During my 18-day hospital stay, Michelle was there almost every day. I can’t imagine such a stay if I had been single.

Although she has been mostly healthy, other than a touch of arthritis, (Did I mention she is nine years younger than me?) she underwent back surgery on Sept. 11 to shave a vertebra that relieved pressure on her nerve. The surgery so far has been a complete success, with her constant pain totally gone. She went home the next day.

I’ve handled most of the household chores since then, because she can’t bend over for a few weeks. I’m probably more of a whiner when it comes to chores, but then I remember how she stood by me during those two life-threatening situations.

Some people are born to hunt. I grew up hunting with my dad, brothers, uncle and grandpa. One of my brothers got me into bowhunting in the 1970s. I will hunt until I can no longer draw a breath.

My wife has no interest in hunting. She loves venison, but hates the cold, bugs, sitting still and doing what I tell her, so taking her hunting is out. I ask her almost every year to come along, and then she gives me that vacant, lips-pursed glare (patent pending) that she uses when I tell her about the time I had a flaming gas can in my hand.

She always offers moral support from the warmth of the living room when I leave: “Shoot a small one.” She loves tender, young deer, the kind I am more likely to bring home anyway.

She also helps by trying to organize my mountains of hunting clothes, gloves and gear. She once neatly inserted the wrong caliber of cartridges into a couple magazines that were lying around to tidy up. She shakes her head and laughs at the crazy things deer hunters will buy to up their game (breath-covering gum, ozone machines, charcoal-lined clothing, laundry soap that reportedly kills the ultraviolet glow of ordinary soap), and when I’m not buying them, so do I.

My mother used to sit quietly at the dinner table, listening to our family stories about recent rabbit hunts.

“I don’t know what’s more fun: hunting or telling hunting stories.” Mom was a sharp cookie, and I still can’t answer her question. She never hunted, either, but always made the best fried rabbit (cloves and allspice) and pheasant.

Michelle will cook my game, sew my torn hunting clothes and use scent-free laundry soap to wash them, but she will never, ever go hunting with me. I probably love her even more because of it. Time apart is probably the secret to our long, mostly happy marriage.

Here’s to all the spouses, moms and grandmas who support their civilian hunting armies by keeping us well-fed and well-supplied as we “storm the castle,” in Michelle’s words.

One thing’s for sure: Hunting would not be as much fun without an understanding spouse waiting at home for her deer-hunting soldier to return from the front lines before another skirmish with the enemy — right after lunch.

Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.