The Buffalo hunt begins . . .

Kyler has been riding, begging, pleading, bribing, crying for his Uncle Mike to take him on a buffalo hunt.  Mike has tried to explain to him that you can't just go out and shoot a buffalo.  He tried to educate him as to the fact that you either have to have lots of money and buy a tag or you have to "draw a tag."  Kyler first tried to buy the tag.  He asked Grandpa Sperry for some money.  He was given a 5 dollar bill and took it to Mike.  Mike said he needed quite a bit more money.  Kyler then tried to give Mike and "IOU" for the rest of the money.  Kyler signed the note but Mike wanted an adult co-signer.  To try and appease Kyler for a little while, Mike took him to feed an apple to his friend, Shane Day's buffalo.  I think this only made him happy for about 30 minutes then he went right back to asking to shoot a buffalo.  Everyone kept explaining to him that he had to draw a tag and the opportunity to do so only happened once a year.  Finally one night, Kyler asked his dad to please draw him a tag.  Andy consented to do so and it wasn't too many seconds later that Kyler brought Andy a piece of paper and a pencil.  In a matter of minutes, Andy had drawn the buffalo tag Kyler was in need of.  Looking back, it must have been extremely frustrating to Kyler.  I'm sure he just couldn't understand why no one would draw the tag in the first place.  

A few weeks later, Uncle Mike found out about a "canned" buffalo hunt.  It was in an area that Kyler could go and watch.  In order to do so, Kyler had to go with his dad in the wee hours of the morning.  I'm told that he kept asking to come home and go back to bed so he could snuggle his mom. 
This is the buffalo - a rancher raises them and then lets them out of a horse trailer.  The buffalo runs for a little ways and then the person who has "paid" for the buffalo gets to shoot it.
Kyler was not too impressed when the buffalo was actually shot.  He was really mad that someone else shot the buffalo.  He didn't seem to be too impressed with death.  I'm hoping that he learned a little from the experience, that death is permanet.
After a few minutes he decided he could actually get close to it.  He was still scared but he actually sat on it for a second or two.
This seems to have fulfilled his need to hunt buffalo.  He doesn't talk about hunting them anymore . . . now he wants his dad to get a "sharp tooth" instead.  After he asked to hunt "sharp teeth" a few times I decided I needed to explain to him that all of the "sharp teeth" are already dead.  He wanted to know what happened to them and where they are now.  I tried to tell him the earth got really cold and so they died (he makes me question my science/history knowledge quite frequently.  I decided that the sharp teeth must live with Jesus.  After he thought about this for a few minutes he told me, "Jesus is going to be SO mad at my dad."  I asked him why this was, and his reply "Because he is going to shoot all of the sharp teeth."  He sure has a pretty innocent mind.  His prayers for the next few weeks were focused on making sure the dinosaurs are taken care of.  He is a great example and if I'm not careful I might become a dinosaur expert.