Your first hunting memory

Krauty09

Krauty09

New member
I was just reading Merdit's post about taking his son out coyote hunting:

http://www.predatormastersforums.com/for...625#Post1698625

and it is a truly great story. It got me thinking about my first hunting memory. I thought it would be fun for everyone to be able to share their first hunting memories and/or their memories of taking their kids or grandkids out. So here's mine:

I must have been about 8 or 9 years old when my dad took me out deer hunting with him. I was just excited to get out of school and go out hunting with dad and grandpa. I had never been so excited in my life. We had been sitting for what felt like hours, and i was starting to get cold...even though it was probably 15 degrees out. Finally a doe walked in, and i remember the flush of warmth as the adrenaline coursed through my body. It was just something magical to watch that doe walk around just a few yards from us. He didn't shoot it, cause we were hunting in a bucks only zone but i was hooked on hunting from then on.

Lets hear those stories!
 
My stepdad was a Quail and Rabbit hunter and raised various breeds of bird dogs for field trials....He taught me to work the dogs after school and when I was about 10, he took me on my first Quail hunt... I thought he was going to walk my legs off and he had me carrying a Browning A5 12ga....

The dogs hit a point on a covey and all of a sudden that Browning didn't feel quite so heavy and when he flushed the birds, told me to shoot,,, I didn't hit any, but the excitement really set in...I didn't even feel the kick when the gun went off...until later...He finally got his limit of ten and I had a few more misses, but I was hooked and working the dogs wasn't such a chore after that...

A couple of years later, I was holding my own with him..
 
The first time I went pheasant hunting my dad just told me to go on my own....he didn't want to have me nervous because he was watching or get shot because I was feeling pressure from his presence and did something careless. So I took the old bolt action .410 of my mothers out and came home with 2 roosters !!!!!! I was flying high... One was just a small one from that years hatch but the other was huge. When I cleaned them I found no marks on the big one and finally peeled the skin on his head far enough to find one pellet had brained him. That is when I found that you can come home with meat by being good or lucky. My dad couldn't believe it when he saw the birds. I can still hear the weak cackle from the immature rooster as he took off and I shot him and the big , old bird just froze in flight and came spinning down to the ground with wings locked wide open. I can still see that scene in my mind. Jim
 
my Dad took me out dove hunting when i was still in diapers . but the best one i remember is the first time i finally killed a dove ( in my mind i did ) i was 8 years old shootin a daisy red rider bb gun a dove came in i shot the same time my Dad and i laid claim to that bird and my Dad didnt argue with one bit i took that dove home and showed my mom and well my mom congradulated me and then told me to get it out of the house so i went and cleaned it an gave to my Dad to put with the rest . now its my turn as a Dad to watch my sons take their first ever animal and i will be the proud DAD like mine was of me .
 
Mines not so much nostalgaic as it is funny. Opening day of rifle season Tennessee 1988. I'm sitting in my uncle's "Honey hole" box stand behind the hay barn on the ranch long before sunrise. My uncle had driven me out to the hay barn, told me how to get to the stand with out killing myself in the dark and dropped me off alone. I made my way down to the box stand and climbed up the rickety ladder much to my amazement with out plummeting back to earth. Sat down on the frozen 2x12 that lay across the interior of the box stand used as a seat. This may be hard to describe, but I went to check the chamber mainly to make sure that I had not walked down the steep embankment in the dark with a live round in the chamber, but also to make sure I wasn't about to try and put a round in battery on top of another round. When I opened the bolt ever so quietly, I stuck my finger into the chamber to "Feel", not realizing that if a round had been in there it would now being laying at my feet and echoing very loudly throughout the holler I was in. When my finger felt nothing it instinctively went to the mag well and this is when I had a starteling realization. My rifle was DRY! About 20 minutes after sunrise I saw the biggest buck of my life standing broadside about 125 yds away not knowing how lucky he was that my iron had no heat. I climbed out of the box stand and walked back to the hay barn to lay down and take a nap in the hay until my uncle returned to pick me up for lunch. I quickly fell asleep even though I was freezing and still fuming over leaving the implements of destruction back at the house. When my uncle came driving up the road the sound of the old pickup woke me up. What's the first thing you do when you wake up? You yawn. I sat up wondering how much ribbing my uncle was going to give me about carrying an empty rifle out into the woods and yawned great big and wide and..........SNAP! I dislocated my jaw. So my uncle drives up and sees me jumping up and down screaming holding my face and kicking at loose hay as if it had bit me. Before he got there my jaw magically popped back in socket. He pulled up,I opened the door and climbed in. He said "what was all that about?" I said my jaw popped out of socket! He said "Looks ok to me", I said "It popped back in", he said "See anything?", I said "NOPE"
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Chupa
 
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my first was antelope hunting with my dad and bobby vignaroli.
hunters had a large group of antelope running in a circle.
bobby walked out into the middle and dumped the buck with a pistol.
dad shot a big buck it ran around a big circle and dropped right where he was shot.
its some of my earliest memories that i can still see in my mind like it happened yesterday.
i remember them going chukar hunting also dad had a Chesapeake named prince and bobby had a Brittney
 
Great stories guys! Chupa...that really sucks! I can't even imagine how disappointing that must have been. I guess the story i told was of my first time going along hunting not actually of hunting.

The first time i went hunting was also for deer. That year i borrowed a 20 ga. shotgun from one of my dad's friends. On the second day of sitting in the stand just before the end of shooting hours a doe walked in. (this year in our unit you could shoot does) I was so excited i didn't try to shoulder the shotgun i just fired from the hip fearing that the doe would bolt before i got a shot....i missed a couple inches in front of her. I tried to pump a round into the chamber but i couldn't find the button by the trigger guard to release the pump and allow me to cycle in the next round. By the time i realized that after you fire you don't have to press the button to cycle in the next round.....she was gone. Not all was lost though...i did manage to take down 'menacing' pine tree. Haha
 
The 1st hunt I recall was with my dad & grandpa & oldest brother out in ILL on his farm back in the mid 60s. I had an old 410 gramps handed me and we were in the corn stalks shooting pheasant that day. Gramps lined me up on a rooster on the ground and pops helped me shoot it. I was maybe 8 at the time.
 
Very cool stories guys!
The furthest back I can remember doing any hunting was with my grandpa.
He had a farm in central Nebraska and I lived in Northern Minnesota.
Every Christmas our family would go to the grand-parents house for school vacation break.
My dad wasn't much into hunting so I kept bugging my grandpa to take me hunting.
I was probably 7 or 8 YOA. Maybe younger, I don't really know.
So, being the kind man he was, he grabbed his Winchester 1897 and a couple of shells and we took a walk to a shelter belt on his land.
He's sees a cottontail so we stop walking, he positions me, gets me to hold the shotgun the right way, cocks the hammer and says shoot!
Problem is, I can't see the rabbit!! I have no clue where it is!!
He starts trying to explain, just past the ____ to the left of the ____.
I still don't see it!! I'm gunna blow my first opportunity to shoot a rabbit with a "real" gun!!
He helps me point the 12 gauge in the right direction and then says, go ahead, shoot.
I do.
A split second later I see the slight motions of a dieing rabbit!!
He had me carry the rabbit back to the house.
I insisted on carrying the shotgun!! I became a real hunter that day.
That (near as I can tell) was the first of decades more of hunting I'd be doing.
I'm still not done yet.
 
The first hunting memories I can recall had to been when I was 5-7 yrs old, getting up in the dark and heading out with Dad and Mom. Cant recall if we got one or not, just remeber the excitment of being out hunting. The hunt memory that really sticks out in my mind is my first elk hunt when me and my dad and granddad took the horses and packed in for a week long elk hunt. Only time I ever got to hunt with my granddad.
 
I posted this a few years ago.

I think hunters are born with the passion, disease, condition, curse , blessing or whatever you want to call it. Certainly people can be taught to hunt, and do it well and safely, but that isn't what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about whatever you call the thing that takes hold of you as a small child and drives you to seek the outdoors and all it has to show you. I'm talking about your daytime hours taken up with wonderous imagined hunts in wild dangerous places. Sneaking out of the house before daylight on Saturday mornings, before you were chained to the dreaded lawn mower,to explore the fields and woodlots, a can of beans and a potato in your pocket for a gourmet meal, burnt in a campfire.And a few matches, a knife, snare wire, parachute cord and maybe a belt axe, in case some "emergency" required that you had to stay out over night.

I'd like to hear about your first hunting experience.
Not necessarily big game or even a "real' hunt. Just the first time you had the "symptoms"

As a child, my earliest memories are about hunting. My dad hunted and trapped and I saw the results of his efforts. Jack rabbits [yes !!someplaces in the world they actually eat them ] bigger than I was, ducks and Canada geese that were huge!! Of course I was only about 3 years old.

My first serious hunting trips, trips where I actually had great expectations of bringing something home for the table, happened when I was 5 years old.

Somebody cue the theme from the "Twilight Zone"

Thanks

Picture if you will a small child with a look of determination in his eye and fire in his belly, about to embark on an adventure that would hopefully end in death. Not for this mighty hunter, but for his prey.
His weapon, perfectly balanced and sized to fit in his hand, was a paring knife, procured secretly from his mom's utensil drawer. The finest sheffield steel, a miniature " Excalibur" deadly in the hands of the "Hunter."

This day he is accompanied by another, Roland,same age and stature, but lacking in resolve, as we are about to see.

With the weapon firmly tucked into the waist band of his dungarees, [ no Wranglers then]the two head for the vast tracts of the....cornfield. It is late October, another bright sunny, southern Ontario, morning. Everything was awash with the brassy yellow of fall sunrise. As the day unfolds we will see that the sun is not the only thing yellow in this vast 10 acre wildermess of dried standing cornstalks.

As the two make their way through the rows of corn, ever watchful for some sign of wildlife; a crow, cottontail, pheasant, anything to pit predator against prey in this ageless dance of life and death, something has been added to the mix.

The goose!!! Oh not some ordinary little cackler, no, this is a behemoth. It is a Greater Canada Honker.

As the two intrepid hunters approach the end of the cornfield, the sound of huge wings beating against the stalks of corn is deafening. The beast with the wingspan that seemed to reach across six rows of corn is trying to "Get Air". As he clears the end of the cornfield, the hunt gods smile on the two tiny predators and send "The Goose" crashing into the page wire fence at the end of the cornfield.

With his "Excalibur" unsheathed our hero charges forth with his chest about to explode from his heart pounding. His eyes the size of dinner plates.The autumn morning is filled with his primordial hunting screams.

His partner is screaming as well, ........like a little girl. Terrified at the scene unfolding in front of him, he is as yellow as the autumn sky or the front of his beige pants, and has no stomach for the hunt this morning.

Meanwhile the "Excalibur" is flashing in the sun, the hunter and the hunted are locked in a fight to the finish. The pendulum of survival swings first one way then the other.
There is blood everywhere. Unfortunately it does not belong to the goose. In a moment of incredible luck, the goose has managed to bloody the nose of the hunter, with his gigantic wings. Several times.

The screaming and shrieking continues, but alas that is all Roland can bring to the brawl.

As the hunter falls backward, the goose manages to take flight. The encounter is over but it will never be forgotten.

Bloodied, battered, and bruised with his pride scattered at the end of that cornfield, he barely has enough strength to give Roland a whack so he "has something to cry about."

As he heads back to the house with the whimpers slowly fading behind him, he knows there will be another cornfield and another goose. Now if he can just figure out how to get the "Binford 9000" butcher knife out of the kitchen, the scales may tip in his favor.

Some people hunt, and some are hunters.
 
Redfrog...you certainly have a way with words. Had me feeling like i was there! Sounds like a good time, and a big ole supper if it he ever caught up to that honker.
 
The earliest "hunting" I can remember, I must have been about 4 yrs old in Jacksonville, FL. My mom or dad had told me that if you sprinkle salt on a birds tail, you can catch it. I spent hours in the back yard chasing birds that perched in the bushes, and finally realized that my movement scared them away. After that (on the advice of "uncle Dutcher", a Navy friend of my dad's) I spent untold hours standing stock still, right hand extended (for the bird to land on) and left hand "cocked" above my shoulder with a pinch of salt to "capture the bird with". I had many birds land in the bushes right beside me, but none landed on my hand. I gave it up when THE MOM stopped the "salt allowance" (or took pity on my gullibility, depending on your perspective).

Maybe a year later (still not in school), one of the really old boys in the neighborhood (maybe 8 or 9) caught a water moccasin, and the hunt was on. We "baited" the "Great Swamp" (probably just a local slough) off of overhanging branches using string with the bait (a piece of meat) hanging just above the water. We caught thousands of snakes...well hundreds...okay, maybe it was just a few, but we could have caught thousands if my 1 year younger brother hadn't had such a big mouth. THE DREADED MOM put a stop to that in a hurry, unfairly notifying other MOMS in the neighborhood and precipitating a sudden and inexplicable anti-hunting craze among the neighborhood moms.

My next hunting memory was when I was 6, the summer before I started school in Key West. Kindergarten wasn't required (or free) back then, but summer school was (free). I quickly figured out that I could use my milk money to take a (school) bus ride to the beach with the kids who were taking swimming lessons. I didn't need swimming lessons, already being at least as good a swimmer (and at wrestling crocodiles/snakes etc) as Johnny Weissmuller was in those Tarzan movies, so I (and other experts) were really just getting a ride to the beach.

While most of the other kids were having their swimming lessons, I and the other "experts" would swim out to the reef to hunt. I had a mask and a snorkel, and traded off the snorkel sometimes with an older kid so that I had 1 fin.

There was no fish large or small that was safe from my spear gun. Well actually the "gun" part didn't apply since all I had was a spear. It was a very superior spear though, designed by me and sharpened with my very own very special Swiss Army pocket knife (5th birthday present). That spear was capable of killing the largest most voracious shark in the ocean (it's just lucky for him he never showed up). If I had had 2 fins and a snorkel, I for sure would have killed some other kind of fish with that spear (at least once). Lesson learned for life, always have the proper and best equipment.
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My first firearm hunting experience was with a single shot .410 shotgun my dad had just given me (8 or 9 years old?). For at least a lifetime (or so it seemed), I had been shooting my .22 Remington bolt action rifle at targets without being allowed to kill anything. This despite the fact that my .22 was undoubtedly the best, most accurate rifle that had ever been produced by any gun manufacturer in all of history and was capable of taking any game in the world, even elephant. I had finally been upgraded to a "Big 5" gun with the .410, and was going to be allowed to shoot something other than targets.

Coming home from the range where I had shot it for the first time, we saw a jackrabbit frozen in the headlights maybe 20yds away. My dad told me I could load the .410 and shoot the rabbit if I wanted to. Already being an expert, I grabbed a shell from the box, broke open the action, very quietly got out of the truck, put the shell into the action, closed it, cocked the hammer (this whole process taking perhaps 2 minutes in which the rabbit just stood there), and then fired about 15' in front of me (well short of the rabbit).

I suspect this was probably a "good thing", since the embarrassment over "buck fever" on that first jack rabbit has kept me from repeating the mistake.
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That salt thing must be a pretty common prank to play on young kids. My ma was just telling me the other day that when she was little her grandpa told her that if you sprinkle salt on a rabbit's tail it would fall off and she could keep it. Apparently she spent quite a bit of time running around the field across from their house with salt shaker in hand! Haha. I'm actually more surprised she didn't try to pull that on me than i was by the actual story.
 
I'm loving reading all these memories! Unfortunately I didn't have a hunting upbringing. We lived in Northern MN where it was all ice fishing, all the time. I still learned to handle a single shot 12 ga that was kept around the house. Even at 12 and 13 I loved shooting with it, the farm was free of pesky groundhogs, and we had some big ones! The shotgun also did for a fisher and mink that showed up to hassle my chickens. My stepdad tried getting into coyote hunting not long after we moved west, but I didn't really get to hunt at all until I met my husband. I'm still a newbie with only 4 years of serious hunting under my belt.

It doesn't take that long for me to remember my first real hunting memory.
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The hubby got me a Charles Daly youth model to start with, I'm a shortie so a youth model fits the best. We were out duck hunting, and I had yet to shoot a duck. I did just fine on clays, and that dove season, but the first duck was still out of my reach. DH and his friend had gone out to rearrange decoys during a quiet period in the hunt, when I look up and see a teal coming in. I stopped worrying about hitting things, and just let instinct take over. I don't even remember consciously thinking about my aim, I didn't feel the kick of the steel, I just shot, and watched it crumble. Our Lab dove in, and we shared that triumph that comes with your "first" since it was my first duck, and her first retrieve ever.
 
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