RE: How many times do you take a youngster hunting ?
I voted 4-6 times.
I have 3 kids but my oldest is only 6. She would go way more than I take her, but my theory goes a little like this: I don't want to burn her out, or myself for that matter. I know when I take her, my chances of harvesting an animal go way down. It's hard enough for me to get one by myself, much less with a restless 6 year old. I think because she only gets to go a few times in a season, she really looks forward to it. When she goes, if we see deer, she's totally satisfied. I have taken her twice this year, and once we saw a small fawn. She wanted me to shoot it, but I used the opportunity to teach her a little something about deer biology. Once she understood that the fawn we were watching might be a buck ( I'm almost positive it was ) and that if I let him go, next year he'd have antlers, and the year after they would be bigger and so on, she was totally ok with just watching. I also try to make the outings short. Generally it's only in the evening. We'll head out about 2 hours before dark and then she never gets to the point that she loses interest. That works for her.
GH