Vincent Franco poses with his 8-point buck that weighed nearly 200 pounds. Courtesy photo

No one will ever accuse me of being an avid outdoorsman. Or even just a plain outdoorsman.

In fact, some in my family would never use the word outdoors and Scott Franco in the same sentence.

What I am comically trying to say is that I am not someone who hunts or fishes. Not at all. And again, I’ve said in this column before, I know God has a sense of humor because he gave me four children, three of whom love the outdoors — Julianna (hiking and climbing mountains in Colorado, Utah, Montana, etc.); Dominic, who enjoys golfing and fishing; and Vincent, who loves to golf, fish and HUNT!

No, my keyboard wasn’t stuck on ALL CAPS. He is now a big-time hunter and it is something that I just don’t, or never have, had the desire to do.

He didn’t get it from anyone on the Franco side of the family. The only things I ever hunted for were bargains at Value City, grocery steals at Sav-A-Lot, and the future Mrs. Scott Franco at Blair County hot spots in the early 1990s. I am proud to say I met Ann Marie Kuhn back on Saturday, July 11, 1992. (That’s right, I remember the exact day I met her. That makes me sensitive.)

But I digress.

The fishing thing is not too much of a bother. He catches it, his mother cleans it and we eat it. The hunting thing … It’s very involved.

He started last year and kept telling me that if he got something, he would share it with us if we paid to have it processed. My thoughts were, he just started hunting, so how good could he possibly be right off the bat?

In 2024, nothing. Crisis avoided.

In 2025, really good. Potential fiscal nightmare.

In October, while hunting one weekend with a friend from college and the friend’s dad, Vinny got a doe and a buck in upstate New York using a bow and arrow. He called home absolutely thrilled, his voice still shaking from excitement as he talked to Ann Marie and me.

Typical me, I thought about how much this was going to cost, but it cost nothing. The friend’s dad knew how to process both kills and we wound up with something like 41 one-pound bags of ground venison and more than a dozen steaks and what looked like sirloin tips.

We were good because that saved my grocery bill tremendously.

But Vinny wasn’t done.

He came home early before Thanksgiving and went hunting — this time with his rifle — down near his uncle’s farm in Canoe Creek, and again, he asked that if he got a deer, would we pay to process it?

I thought to myself, “he is not going to get another one, right?”

He got an 8-point buck that weighed nearly 200 pounds. Oy vey!

My wife was excited for him again. I took the role of the worried parent again. But let me fill you in on this exchange between her and Vinny.

Ann Marie: “Did you gut it right out there in the field?”

Vinny: “Yes. Of course I did.”

Ann Marie: “I could never kill a deer. I would have no problem gutting one, but I couldn’t kill it.”

Now picture me with my jaw dropped firmly in my lap after that comment.

It reminded me of the time when she and I were dating, and she talked of how she and her father would take pigs and castrate them in their barn — after a certain amount of time for allowing them to KEEP their testicles — so when you sent them off to market, they were heavier and you got more money for them.

So my wife can gut a deer, and do that pig thing, too, and I still married her. You know why? Fear — yes, of course — but she really looks great in just about anything she wears … dresses, skirts, sweats, even a butcher’s apron.

But for Vinny, Christmas presents now will include more outdoors store gift cards so that he can choose what to buy, because I would be useless shopping in one of those stores. My wife told me about a tool you can buy that helps you gut a deer, but it is inserted from the back end of the deer. You read that right. The back end!

You don’t even want to know what that thing is called, and I thought she was playing a trick on me, seeing if I would go into such a place and ask for help finding this gizmo. Yes, it exists. No, I didn’t go.

I have a name for what it should be called, but my bosses here at the Mirror will not let me put it in print.

If you see me out in public, hunt me down (bad pun, I know) and ask me what I wasn’t allowed to put in this column, and I’ll tell you, free of charge.

Maybe some day I’ll get a column out of that.