The season for elk hunting has started again. Red vests, caps, rubber boots and barking dogs.

The ones- a- year- talk about illegal hunting (elk is, after all, worth thousands of euros!) and unskilled youngsters. And nowadays the ones- a- year- talk about the school shootings and available riffles for all the nutters who want to shoot innocent people.

Yes, everyman’s right does not include hunting and in a country of “forest only- as the nature” the hunting season is major. Every man talks about it and every woman waits for the snow to fall. That’s the time when the meat is neatly vacuum packed in the freezer and they don’t need to think about where did it come from!

Last time I visited my mother, in the corner of Rovaniemi city. We took our little hunting dog Madonna out and head for the woods. We had a great plan for the sunny Sunday: walking in the woods for some hours to see if we can find a fireplace we had seen in the map of the area. The map is old, but there is a yearly done skiing track headed the same way so the track should be walk- able also during summers. Skiing tracks are, after all, wide and heavy. So we took off with some sausages in our backpack, red “please- do- not- shoot- me- if- you- see- me- moving- as- I- am- no-t an- elk” jackets and a book for identifying mushrooms, my mom’s biggest passion.

As you might already know, me and my mom travelling together is not the cleverest idea, but we did have a plan B – to walk back the same way as where we came from!

However in half way, we got into a trouble. There was a herd of hunting dogs barking behind us. I asked my mom, what shall we do if they try and eat our little dachshund? As soon as I had said it the dogs were all around us. I lifted little Madonna up in my arms away from those killer beasts who ran around us in a circle barking and flashing their teeth. Mom was kicking, flailing like crazy and screaming her lungs out. Then the dogs took off again. Madonna was shaking and whining and we were breathless.
Then we heard the gun shots.
 My blood froze and mom jumped next to me. What the hell do we do now! We took Madonna and jumped into the nearest ditch and pulled our heads down.

I must admit, that we must have looked ridiculous. At that time though, we were terrified.

The hunters came walking behind us looking for their dogs. They never explained the gun shot and we did not ask. They were old men with their cut rifles on their shoulders. We all sat down to wait for the dogs and the men told us how nice and friendly the hunting dogs are for real but once they are on a mission they tend to get a bit excited.
After a short break the dogs came back, the men tied them up in a leash and told us we took a wrong path if we are looking for the fireplace. The fireplace was some two kilometers to the opposite direction.