When did you start?

bsparker said:

How old were you or how old were your kids on a first hunt? What’d you hunt and how’d it go?

I have been going out in the woods since I can remember. but the age I was when I carried my own rifle and actually sat For deer by myself is a little fuzzy. Probably around 13 after clearing hunter safety. I also can’t remember when I started going with my dad and just sitting with him to learn the ropes. (I’m talking about more than just walking for squirrels)

I’ve got a five year old who always wants to go with me. While I don’t anticipate getting much with him wiggling beside me. It got me thinking, when do you start taking kids out into the cold to get a taste for deer hunting?

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As soon as they comprehend the safety aspects, they start carrying their own weapons at full muzzle control, but they can carry binoculars in the meantime.

I was 7 when my father first took me.
I was about 12 or 13 when I started going with him regularly.
My father wasn't a really dedicated hunter though. We never built stands or cleared shooting lanes, never went and put out corn before season started etc.
He would find a spot he liked the look of and hunt it, sometimes from the ground and sometimes he would buy some 2x4s and build a makeshift ladder stand.
He killed a deer most years, sometimes 2. He was a meat hunter. Didn't give a rat's derriere about antlers.
So, I was 20 when I killed my first deer.

My daughter started way earlier than I did.
I do all of the things my dad didn't as far as preparation for season.
She killed her first when she was 10.

bsparker said:

How old were you or how old were your kids on a first hunt? What’d you hunt and how’d it go?

I have been going out in the woods since I can remember. but the age I was when I carried my own rifle and actually sat For deer by myself is a little fuzzy. Probably around 13 after clearing hunter safety. I also can’t remember when I started going with my dad and just sitting with him to learn the ropes. (I’m talking about more than just walking for squirrels)

I’ve got a five year old who always wants to go with me. While I don’t anticipate getting much with him wiggling beside me. It got me thinking, when do you start taking kids out into the cold to get a taste for deer hunting?

Click to expand...

I've been wandering around pastures for my whole life "adventuring." I first got a BB gun when I was 6 or 7 and started shooting sparrows by the grain bins.

First deer hunt was when I was 14 or 15 I think. I was using a Savage .243 that I borrowed from my uncle. I still remember that hyper-focused, superhuman feeling when I saw my buck. He was looking at me 50 yards away at the bottom of a canyon. I shouldered the rifle and got him with a spine shot at the base of the neck so he dropped immediately. It hardly felt real as I walked up to him and I was probably shaking while coming down from the adrenaline rush.

Didn't feel like a full grown man but tried to act like one lol. Wanted to shout with joy when I radioed my uncle to bring the pickup but calmly told him to come down. Probably couldn't hold back a giddy smile when he showed up though.

I started squirrel.hunting around 3rd grade w a .22 rifle. Got a .222 rem 660 in 5th grade and started blasting chucks.

Started deer hunting w bow in 84. On my 5th time out which was in '85......shot a 4 pt on rhe trot.

Had only seen two tails on 4 prev attempts ground hunting public land

Started rabbit hunting when I was 9. Only did two half days that year. The next year I was big enough to keep up with dad all day and went with him every chance I got. Was allowed to go on my own with a firearm when I turned 13.

bsparker said:

How old were you or how old were your kids on a first hunt? What’d you hunt and how’d it go?

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1976
I was 13
I started shooting when I was 5.., BB-guns. Then .22 LR and 20 Gauge shotgun when I was 11.
We went for upland game. Didn't harvest anything myself, but the neighbor got a couple quail.

My son had no interest in hunting until he turned 18. Last year we went for deer. It was buck-only at the time, and of course we saw several doe. Didn't harvest a buck. He had his heart set on taking a deer with one of his rifles, but my normal hunting area is in a shotgun/muzzle loader - only zone in my state. So we had to go to the western part of my state. He has no desire to shoot muzzle loaders, which is what the landowner where I hunt wants us to use. The state has relaxed restrictions on the use of firearms in those zones, and this year we can use a straight walled cartridge rifle. So we may be going for deer with a .44 Magnum rifle.

LD

When I was 12 or 13 I started pheasant/rabbit hunting with dad using on old bolt action JC Higgins 12 gauge (the one with the recall). Never could hit anything with that gun. Was given an H&R single shot 12 ga. (28" full choke) as a Xmas gift when I was 14 (1983), still have that one.
First bird I shot at, nearly stepped on it and it flew up in my face (startled me). I turned around and took a quick shot, got nothing but a few feathers lol.

I was about 9 when my father first started to take me out hunting small game and deer with him! He use to have me flush out rabbits or pheasant from the bush. We would stand hunt deer so I would sit there with him waiting.

I was about 13yo and was allowed to tag along on an out of state turkey hunt. I had alot of fun and have been doing it ever since.

I didn’t have a hunting family but my Grandfather did have a large garden and he would call me to bring my .22 (pellet gun), to dispatch rabbits even before I got my first .22 at age 11.

I will also never remember how mad he was at the blue jay above his wash pot grill. I get down there and he said, “That’s the one you need to kill right there.” Pointing into the tree. He had two bleeding spots on his head where the bird had got him.

My daughter went at around 5 to watch because she wanted to. Made so much noise in the blind I started gathering stuff up to leave. She asked why and I told her she was making so much noise there probably not a deer within miles. She then said, “well what about that one?”, pointing at a doe about 20 yards away looking at us, must have been curious about the commotion going on.

My friend and I would go to a nearby forest preserve with our stick bows and try to hunt squirrels and rabbits. We were 10 or 11 at the time. We went fairly often and shot at a few but never connected. I didn't start gun hunting until I was in my 20s. The first deer didn't fall until I was 26.

I was raised in the city and had no male relatives that hunted so I had to wing it on my own. My son killed his first buck at age 12 but never took to hunting.

Dad bought my first license in 1972 I was 13, stared hunting the year before on our land.

started my boys on rabbits at 14, took them out for deer (gun) when oldest was 15 and his brother was 13.

Grade school so IIRC 10. Had to pass a safety course taught by the NRA in order to get the license at that age. The course was taught over the course of many nights at a local School they rented for the classes. Just imagine them trying that now?
After the end of the course the graduates were taken to a local rifle range and allowed to live fire with some single shot .22 rifles. First hunt was Upland Birds with an Uncle, Quail and Dove, with my first shotgun he bought me. Man what memories!!

I wish I could remember. I wandered all over my county with my 16 ga SxS, harvesting squirrels and rabbit. When I ran out of daylight I laid down and slept, unless I was close to a friend's house and sheltered there.

Hunted deer with my dad quite a bit as a young teenager. Got away from firearms and hunting until the last couple decades.

Eight for rabbits and and pests around the ranch with a Steven's Favorite .22. Fourteen for big game with a Remington 300 H&H Magnum. Shot a 5 point bull elk opening day. Down hill from there..

I have read you all's comments here with envy. A serious illness for the last 16 years has left me unable to raise children, and this is my only regret, as I didn't have parents myself and was hoping to restart the procession of the generations in my line.

You fellows who are teaching your sons to hunt are doing, I believe, the single most fundamental and significant thing that a man can still do in life. For four-hundred thousand years, men have shown their sons the chase. For 390,000 of those years, hunting was the economy. We know this from the strontium in fossil human teeth (BTW, for those on this forum who reject the scientific narrative and go instead with the "~6,000 year old world" teaching, that teaching is true after its own fashion, and the narrative aspect of what is advertised as science is constructed on falsehood and deception... so no argument from me there).

THR compatriots, please, for the sake of someone who didn't get to have children, when you are tired and it's cold and wet outside, take them hunting anyway!

Also, so that none of you or your children go through what I have gone through, PM me if you or someone you know finds your knees swelling up painfully for no apparent reason. Most physicians are clueless.

I started elk hunting at 14, Colorado's then minimum age for big game. I got my first elk at 21.

bsparker said:

I’ve got a five year old who always wants to go with me. While I don’t anticipate getting much with him wiggling beside me. It got me thinking, when do you start taking kids out into the cold to get a taste for deer hunting?

Click to expand...

Both Mom and Dad were hunters, and I tagged along as far back as I can remember. I was either 14 or 15 when Mom and Dad bought me my first deer rifle (a Model 100 Winchester 308), and I killed my first deer with it the very next day.
My wife and I started our 2 daughters out when they were very young too. They were hunting with us (tagging along) since they were 5 or 6 years old, and the oldest killed her first deer when she was about 14. The youngest however, never has taken up hunting herself. She always liked going, and she still enjoys wild meat whenever someone gives her some, but she's just too tender hearted to kill an animal herself. Which seeing as how she's a wheel with one of the nation's largest hunting and conservation organizations is kind of an enigma.
BTW, our oldest daughter took her then fiancé (now husband), Jon, deer hunting for the first time in his life last year, and he's in his late 40s. Jon had always been into guns and shooting though, he just didn't hunt until he met our daughter.

My first hunt was 1957 (6 yrs old).......carried my Red Ryder alongside my Dad while Pheasant hunting. Remember to this day picking up the spent 12 gauge paper hulls and putting them on my fingers. Those paper hulls had a wonderful smell that left a lasting impression.

Started around 9-10 squirrel hunting with a bb gun. Graduated to a single shot 410 around 13. Shot my first deer around 22. My kids haven't been yet. Cant find a decent place to hunt. And ive seen how folks drive. So im not a big fan of walking armed fools that I dont know. One day ill find somewhere.

My first real, honest-to-goodness hunt was in 1972, and I was 13. Pheasant, somewhere not too far from Amarillo. It was great!

Meeks36 said:

Started around 9-10 squirrel hunting with a bb gun. Graduated to a single shot 410 around 13. Shot my first deer around 22. My kids haven't been yet. Cant find a decent place to hunt. And ive seen how folks drive. So im not a big fan of walking armed fools that I dont know. One day ill find somewhere.

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Where are you at?

All my first hunting experiences occurred around my Grandparents farm in rural MN. I think my first hunt was at about 3 or 4 years old when Grandma would give us kids flyswatters to rid the house of the pests. Learned stealth, patience and a steady hand at an early age. There was a penny bounty per carcass, and a gumball machine at the feed store where we rode with Grandpa every Saturday, stocked with the good kind (not the weird spice flavored ones) so it was quite a motivation for the cousins and I. My cousin killed the golden goose when he went out in the cow barn and tried to pass a hundred or so ill gotten flies from the flypaper.

At 5, I got into the real money. Striped gophers were a plague on Grandpa's nicely mown grass, and they paid a quarter and were fair game with an old Red Ryder BB gun. You really had to get close and get a clean head shot for a kill, and be patient as a stone if they saw you and ducked down a hole. Ditto with barn pigeons, they were tough to bring down, and required some serious stealth, stalking, and a well aimed head shot.

At about this age, I got to accompany my Dad and uncles on the occasional fair weather pheasant hunt. Too young for a shotgun, but I got to be a bird dog. My pointing needed some work, but I was a passable flusher and retriever. Deer season was off limits until I was 8. Probably mostly due to the language and vulgar behavior that occurred at camp. I did help with the butchering and gear prep including a weekend of stand building at a younger age, and went with to sight in the guns a few times. Shot my first 30-06 at 6 years old, much to the amusement of uncle LeRoy. It was a Remington pump carbine stoked with heavy bullets, I'm assuming the Remington 180 RN, as Remington was all we shot. My 8th fall I got to accompany my Father to one weekend of Deer Camp. I carried my air rifle to practice safe gun handling, and tagged along for most hunting activities, especially deer drives when some especially nasty cover was to be pushed. I only occasionally got lost, which was better than my cousin Evan. He only went hunting once. Being lost in the woods until midnight probably soured him of the experience.