In Fluvanna, one popular tradition for many is hunting, and one such advocate of the hobby is Sophomore Lydia Napier, who has been hunting with the Hell’s Bend Hunting Group, since she was seven. “It’s a cool bonding experience, especially if one of us shoots something,” said Napier. Napier hunts with the Hell’s Bend Hunting group every Saturday in hunting season. “She’s a good hunter,” said Freshman and fellow group member Christopher Powell.

Napier’s favorite hunting partner is her dad. “I’ve been hunting since I was five or six and sharing this with her is just great,” said Stuart Napier. “I like spending time with her and teaching her stuff about hunting. She’s a good shot,” he added. Lydia Napier’s favorite thing about hunting with her dad is having time to bond. “I get to escape chores and spend a lot of time with my dad,” she said, “and it’s also a quiet and calming experience.” In all of her years of hunting, she’s caught four deer, her biggest being a butting buck, a six-month-old male buck. “It was also my first kill,” she said.

After Napier kills a deer, she and her dad take it home and get it ready to store. “We skin it and take the guts out. After that, you gut it up, take the fat off of it, then store it. You make all types of stuff out of it,” she said, including deer jerky, deer barbeque, and deer hamburger. Usually, they eat it right after they kill it, but sometimes they store it. “We eat it at Thanksgiving and in the winter because it’s fresh,” said Napier, “but we don’t make a huge deal out of it. Deer is just something you would eat regularly like on a Saturday or something.”                                                                                              

So while many people may think of hunting as a hobby, for Napier and her family, hunting is a tradition the will continue for the rest of their lives. “I’ll probably be hunting until I can’t hold up a gun anymore,” Napier said.