August 9, 2005

  • #32 Go snipe hunting

    Wilsons%20Snipe

    I think snipe hunting is pretty much a right of passage at girl's camp. I've been coming here for years and we always take the first years out snipe hunting. The first year I went Jamie and Crystal took me. I was the only first year so everyone was spoiling me :P We all got our pillow cases and sticks and snuck out into the woods. The adults say that no one is allowed to leave the cabin at night but the YCL's (youth camp leaders i.e. older girls) do it anyway. I think the leaders know that we are going out snipe hunting and it's kind of a tradition so they just pretend they are sleeping when we sneak out. Jamie said you had to be really quiet and sneak up on them. Then you would bang your stick on the tree and it would scare them so they would jump out and then you catch them in your pillow case. So we went around banging trees with sticks and holding our pillow cases out. We had no luck so Jamie decided to throw rocks at the snipes but the first rock she threw hit some branches and came back down on Crystal's head. She got a huge bump lol

    When I got older and it was finally my turn to lead the snipe hunts I was pretty stoked. Me and some of the other YCL's decided we were going to take the first years right after we told ghost stories around the campfire. One of the YCL's told a scary story about this ghost that haunts the woods and carries a green lantern. We really wanted to scare them so made this plan to scare them worse than they had ever been scared before (we were mean like that). Well obviously we had gotten one of the adults in on this plan. He went out into the woods with this lantern he had put a green filter over and hid out. When story time was over the little first years were kind of jumpy and giggly. We had them get their pillows and sticks and we led them out into the woods. While we were out there the green lantern man started walking toward us with the light. 3 of the girls freaked out and took off into the woods and the rest were screaming. A few laughed and a few more cried. When they saw it wasn't a ghost they calmed down but we still had to find the other 3. They were lost in the woods and crying and it took us hours to find them. When all of us finally made it back to camp we got the lecture of a lifetime. Lesson learned. No combining ghost stories with snipe hunting!