My dad didn' t hunt. My two uncles did. They got us shooting at a very early age. I grew up in the Adirondack foothills. I was hunting alone with a 22 at age 8. I bought my first shotgun with money my brother and I got from trapping muskrats when I was 12, a Mossberg bolt action 20 guage. That gun nearly killed me when I shot it. When I was 14 I had a great trapping year and bought a Browning Light 12. I hunted nearly every day. I' d jump off the school bus after an hour ride and be stripping off the school clothes as I ran to the house. I' d change in an instant, the gun was loaded when I hit the back porch and I could literally expect a partridge or rabbit or something the minute I stepped out. No it wasn' t legal for me to hunt at that age, we did it for food. Family of 7 and the most my dad ever made in a year was $5,500 dollars. We had a 3 acre garden, canned everything(no freezer), picked every berry for quarts upon quarts of jams etc. It was all about food. I quite often when hunting with one or two shells and was expected to bring something home for a meal. It was a GREAT life. I got caught by the DEC when I was 12 hunting without a license and under age. He took me home, told my folks I shouldn' t be allowed to hunt but if I did it would be better if I stuck to the woods away from the roads. The same warden and a bunch of others always harassed us in the spring when the walleyes were running. We ate them lunch, breakfast and dinner. It was all in good fun. SO, if the Indians have a right to heritage hunting I think I should too. I grew up with it more than most of the Indians of today. My mom always called me RIP after Ripvanwinkle(spelling?) On more than one occasion I lay down in the woods and fell asleep, only to wake and find it was dark. I' d come home, my mom would heat my dinner up like I had been off to work somewhere. My mothers voice would carry miles on the hills. The neighbors used to joke about Dave must be hunting again, Mary can' t find him. We had 100 acres with access to any land as far as I wanted to walk or ride my bicycle. I was never forbidden permission to hunt as a kid. If they had had drugs in those days I wouldn' t have had time for them. I didn' t start bowhunting until I was 27.

My hunting roots always served me well, whether it was learning to bowhunt or hunting in Southeast Asia. []

My dad was a hunter and started taking me out at around 7 years old. It was mostly bird hunting where I only carried the birds for him and my bigger brother. He gave me a youth model 20 Ga. to shoot in 5th grade and that kicked off my dove, duck, squirrel, and rabbit hunting. 30-30 lever action in 6th grade and Rem 700 .270 in 7th grade started me on deer hunting but then my family spent three years in Germany where my hunting was put on hold. I hit the jackpot in 1980 when my dad was shipped to command in Alaska where (starting with my senior year in HS) I spent 16 years happily hunting and fishing in AK. Moved to Wisconsin in 1996 where I picked up bowhunting and have been hooked ever since. Now I' m trying to back track all my gun hunting trophies with bowhunting trophies.

The majority of my relatives and my wife' s relatives are hunters.

my papaw has taught me a lot about deer hunting and turkey hunting. i played too many sports in high school to really appreciate the woods, but now that i' m in college and i' ve finally realized that this is my true worldly passion. my papaw is about 83 now and all he can do is ride his 4-wheeler to and from the barn, stand, house, etc...but he stills kills deer and turkeys. i try my best to come home from school and get out there with him and see him and hear about the turkeys he' s been seeing or the big buck he saw a few mornings ago. i appreciate his passion for the woods and the animals and reall wish i' d have let him teach me about it a lot more when i was younger. i guess it' s better now than never though.

my dad' s dad, who died when i was really young, was a determined quail hunter from the deep south in Georgia so i learn bird hunting from him. we got german shorthairs now and try our best to find those elusive bobwhites that are struggling to make it.

however...my new passion is waterfowling. me and my dad are both crazy about it, but have never really lived in an area where we can hunt so i' m learning a lot about that from reading stuff on here and going on as many hunts with friends as i can. i guess that' s about it...maybe one day ill get to go out west and shoot and elk or something!!

These are some really interesting stories ...... I' ve always wanted to do some research on the old hunt camps in my area ..... nice to make a book with old photos, stories, traditions ...........

I hunt mostly by myself when it comes to deer, but still love to go with my Dad for ducks and geese ....... and fishing of course.

Thanks for the interesting replies !

I' m heading out soon to try an evening hunt for that wily buck I saw on the weekend in my back field !

My story:

I grew up in upstate NY (also like Davidmil, I know the Adirondacks very well - my folks had a summer camp up there).

This only marks my third season hunting, and I' m 42 yrs old!! My dad and uncle have hunted back in the 50' s and 60' s and then way later in 1982, my dad tried hunting one last time with some friends - but by that time, I had already moved away and was serving in the Coast Guard.

With me being the baby of the family, I was way too young to tag along when my dad was really into hunting - heck I probably wasn' t even born yet for that matter! I never got the opportunity to hunt with my dad though, as he passed away last year at the ripe age of 80. We spent many many years fishing for trout and bass when we' d all go camping in the summer, which was great. But with hunting, I guess it was case of being born a little too late. You see, when I became of age and was ready to get up and go, my dad' s " get up and go" had got up and left!

So, still to this day, I have nobody to show me the ropes, except you great people on this board! {Awwwww, warm fuzzy feeling} My dad never shot a bow and wasn' t into archery, that I know of. He just had a .308 Winchester w/scope and a real old, break-your-shoulder-off, type of 12GA bolt action shotgun, that I remember.

Anyway, I just try to learn more and more each time I go out and without a hunting partner or my dad or uncle, I find it very tough to be successful. But I keep trying and trying and hopefully this season, I' ll get my buck, doe, or turkey or whatever game I am going after.

Butch

I grew up on Long Island, and had a stream in the back yard, lake down the road and the bay a little further away. I spent my summers fishing on the lake for carp and gold fish. Also, I would go wood chuck huntng with my Dad and brother in Vermont, at our family vacation home in Randolph. Also I played sports like football, baseball, and basket ball. This was during the 60' s and 70' s.

I started hunting deer in ' 95 and got my first buck in ' 99. I moved to PA from NJ in ' 95 and my friends here all hunted. We purchased our current home with a few acres near a lake. I now fisk for bass, pickerl, trout, bull heads, and blue gill during the spring and summer. In the fall all effort goes into hunting, shooting at the range, and occausionally scouting.

Tomster

I really started going out with my dad at about 6-7 years of age.
I " hunted" with no weapon until about 9 or 10, then dad let me carry a single shot 22 rimfire rifle. At age 12 after passing my hunter education class, I began packing on old Win. model 94 in 30-30 caliber. I switched to bow hunting with my friend back in the late 80' s.
One thing that I REALLY enjoyed was getting my dad into hunting tukeys, which he loved doing until his passing.
I hunt deer and elk mostly with a bow now. I have now started my own boys rifle hunting and that has been great.

My dad' s uncle had a hunting camp that I grew up and began to learn deer hunting in. However, it was all gun hunting and there was no scouting done at all, except by my dad' s cousin, but he only scouted the top of the mountain. The wisdom that was passed on to me consisted of:

Hunt the top of the mountain, or the bench at least! All the bucks are up high. The bench was a flat space about half way up the mountain, about 100 yards wide. It still took 45 minutes to an hour to get to.

Stay still.

There' s more space around them than there is to them.

That' s all I can remember ever learning about the art of deer hunting at camp. It didn' t matter, though, because I loved the atmosphere of camp. The penny ante poker, the pipe smoke, the stories- most of which I heard the year before and every year before that, the food, the visitors, visiting other camps, the smell of the wood stove, the glow of the lanterns before we got electricity, the snoring, etc. etc.

I have really learned far more about hunting from this board than I ever learned at camp, and from archery hunting in particular. Archery hunting forces you to learn. I try to keep learning so that in nine years when my three year old is ready to go, I can teach him some real hunting skills about scouting, picking stand locations, reading rubs and scrapes, locating bedding areas and how to hunt them, etc.