I grew up with a Dad who introduced me to the outdoors as soon as he could, as I'm doing with my boys. We did a LOT of fishing, frogging, and rabbit hunting -- things that were easily accessible in the area I grew up. There MAY have been one deer in the surrounding six counties, so we didn't deer hunt.

When I moved off to college, I was attempting to supplement the grocery bill by going out and kicking up rabbits out of fencerows. Not having the benefit of our outstanding beagles from home, my return on investment wasn't nearly as good. I went home and pulled out the state's regulations (I was in college in another state from the one I grew up in...) and began thumbing liesurely through it -- and happened to come up on "deer hunting." I looked at their gun season and saw it was something like nine days long. Kept reading, and came upon their archery season: Oct. 1 - Jan 15. Hmmmm.... four months to kill a deer? Surely even I could do that with no experience. Drove to Wal-Mart that night and bought a used Bear bow package off their shelf (have never seen a used bow in Wal-Mart since) complete with brass pins and a rubber "flipper" rest and a 2"-too long draw length (I had no idea), but it got me started.