Back when we were kids . . .

A

AWHOLELOTTABULL

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A lot of tension on this site this time of year so WileyWapiti got me thinking on another post about simpler times and I wanted to hear some stories that make you smile when you think back.

How many of you wore tennis shoes and jeans to hunt in when you were younger? I remember more times than not carrying my iron site lever action .300 Savage around than mountain . 5 steps out of the truck and I was soaked to my crotch and hunted all day like that.LOL I remember pushing deer for my dad and walking in to a thicket of oakbrush with one of those old plastic orange vests and coming out the other side with that vest in pieces. I remember taking my first sip of beer around a deer camp fire. Some good times there boys!!

It's always an adventure!!!
www.awholelottabull.com
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-16-10 AT 11:43PM (MST)[p]I pretty much grew up on a working ranch and we realy didn't have a whole lot of extras.

My tennis shoes were for gym class at school and hardly ever came home. I wore rough out cowboy boots, white t-shirts and a navy blue windbreaker,if it was cold. Sweatshirts were gym cloths also.

When it got REAL cold it was white long johns under the other stuff. I had a Levi coat with a blanket liner.

When it came time to hunt, I had a black and red wool checkered coat......and it was NEVER worn for anything else.

Just putting it on, made Fall something special. It lived in my Army surplus, external frame backpack and smelled like deer, campfire and Kipper snacks.
 
My fondest memories of hunting as a kid were hunting lion and bobcat with my dad...still think that's the funnest hunting in the world!! We'd roll out of the driveway around 3 in the morning in that old ford ranger draggin the sleds behind. We'd get there, fire up the sleds, go cut a fresh track, and send the dogs out!! As a kid those dogs were my best friends and I remember the weird feeling in my stomach that wouldn't go away knowing my pets were out fighting those wild cats...it was pretty nerve racking at times. I remember sleeping on the sleds under the stars in below zero temps because the dogs were still out chasing...lol that's definitely where I learned to love hot black coffee because those mornings waking up on a sled were miserably cold!! I about fell over when my dad had to go into a mine shaft after the dogs and he handed me .45 telling me to shoot the cat if it came out...about 5 minutes later I hear a hell of a ruckus going on in there followed by echos of gun shots and yelling...lmao that was intense as a kid!! Probably where I got my addiction for adrenaline from too... :) Funnest hunts ever fo sho!!

~Z~
 
Spending a few important childhood years living in Thompson Springs Utah being raised by a single father..

My babysitter was either a Sheridan .20(5mm) caliber pellet rifle or an old Marlin bolt action .22 accompanied by our Red Healer 'Misty'...

I'd leave the house after breakfast in the summer and wouldn't get home until dusk..

Cooking LGB's (little gray birds) and if I was lucky, a jack rabbit (if you've never tried it, you should. It's pretty good and I like it better then cotton tail) over an open fire on a spit. I tried my hardest to be a mountain man. Sitting on top of a knowl and picking prairie dogs off a whole lot further then an open sighted .22 can (supposedly) shoot...

Gone are the days a 10-12 year old boy can take a .22 and wonder a desert with no adult present.

If a friend was present the .22 wasn't allowed.. "One boy is a boy. Two boys are a half a boy. Three boys are no boys at all..." The old man would say....

Awww... Good old Thompson Springs Utah..

Todd
 
My baptism into the hunting family started when I was 5 years old at "Docs Cabin". It was built by some doctors from "Up North" and somehow my family came to own it. I can still hear the crack of the pine burning in the ol Pot Bellied Stove and hear the rats rnning across the rafters the second the lanterns went out.
I too remember the plastic Blaze orange vest and soaked muddy jeans. All the rifles in camp were walnut stocked model 700's, 70s, or old sporterized springfields.
The ol '77 Chevy scottsdale rumbeling down the mountain roads, and having to lock the vise grips on the handle to roll the window down.... Those were the greatest days of my life...

Hunting is my way of life
Sgt. Petersen
USMC OIF OEF Vet.
 
When I was "kid," they were called sneakers. :) If I recall, they were available in high-tops only.

TONY MANDILE
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How To Hunt Coues Deer
 
Some good memories growing up. First backpack trip I did was when I was 7-8 years old. Me and my dad, his buddy and his son backpacked 6 miles into a little fishing lake. Weather was absolutely miserable for the first 3 days and we spent most of the time in the tents, then the sun came out on day 4. Even at that young age I could appreciate the beauty. I still go back to that lake every year, not to fish but to look at some of the timberline bucks that live there. Maybe thats when the addiction started.
 
What Nickman said, except I had tennis shoes, too....for me it was a farm, rather than a ranch....everything else was like that.

Seldom got very wet.....'cause there's not that much moisture in Idaho. If it snowed, we did rubber boots....really.


Within the shadows, go quietly.
 
I remember we always stopped at the Hub Cafe in Heber City. I started tagging along when I was eight. After breakfast we would either head up Big Hollow above Daniels or up above Woodland. I remember thinking how cool it was to be in a 4x4 going up some step snowy muddy hills. I can still remember the sound of the chained up tires going through those rutted roads. I shot my grandpas 30-30 for the first time then, only once lol.

When I was 7 I had to stay back in Daniels. I had an uncle that lived there and that was deer camp. I remember playing in the yard and looking off into the mountains with my sister and cousins. The "men" were out hunting. Now remember we are little kids with BUCK FEVER even though we could not go along.

My cousin who was younger than me would look at the mountain and swear she could see our family packing a deer out on a cart. lmao.

As kids we were so excited when my dad and uncles would come back, we would race out to look into the truck bed. They did not shoot well but sometimes tagged one.

I think my best memories are being with family who is now to old to hunt or has passed away.

It is OUR job to pass it on to our kids, family or whoever you choose to hunt with. Time spent with the ones you love is invaluable regardless of the kill.
 
Check?n traps and skin?n muskrats after school every night

Sold a seasons worth of pelts and bought a BMX bike

Pulled up on my first goose at 12yrs old, killed it?it was a blue heron

Shooting dads .06 at ?the quakie?. That tree took pounds of lead and finally fell just a few years ago.

Dads little 2 point rack on my bedroom wall was my BB gun holder

14 years old, pre-dawn, opening morning of my first big game hunt, more excited and anxious than the first day of Jr. High, first kiss, wedding night!

30.30 open sites

Hunter orange pilot hat with ear flaps and chin strap

Kmart Bulldozer boots

BBQ potato chips were brand new, we ate bags and bags of em

11am opening day road hunter parade

First time you stick your hands in to the warm cavity of a deer

The first time you smell a gut shot

Mom burning a tick out of my skin with a match

Shasta soda

Ready to cut into your 2nd deer and realize you didn't pay enough attention to dad?s gut?n lesson on your first deer

Getting out of school for what was officially called ?Deer Hunt? on the school calendar

Coming back to school on Monday and almost every boy had stories from the past weekend

Just a few. Thanks for the topic and the chance to walk down memory lane.
 
...........and ordinary people want to know what the big deal is that you get out of hunting.

You cannot buy this stuff.
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-17-10 AT 06:16PM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Mar-17-10 AT 04:58?PM (MST)

Ohh I like this topic.

Here are some of my early hunting memories:

Purchasing my first governor's tag! Only had to bid a mere $100K! Pretty good bargain though for a 13 year old.

Riding on the Leer Jet 9 hours (man those things are slow when there is upper atmospheric turbulence - and to top if off we ran out of Evian sparkling water!) just to get to the state we were hunting in that year. Then taking another 35 minute helicopter ride to the lodge, (luckily the concierge was able to get us some Perrier - not as good as Evian, but hey - this was hunting so we had to do with what we had) and the feel of the silk sheets in that itty bitty queen size bed in my room. (Which was next to the guide's quarters! Are you kidding me?? SO close to the help???)

Only having 117 cable chanels and an old Mattel Intellivision at the lodge (they should have at least had a Nintendo 64! So primitive!

The excitement all balled up inside me when the guide told us he had that big 375 bull in a drainage with lookouts posted on all escape routes so I would be assured to get him. (Dad wanted to take the 400 Bull for himself!)

The 12 minute drive in the Suburban over those rough roads! There must have been at least 3 potholes! And the coldness of that wind when I rolled the window down to shoot! (Glad the heater worked - and thank goodness for those long range shooting tips and that nice Huskemaw scope on that .338 Weatherby Mark V Deluxe - glad they had it all dialed in and all I had to do was pull the trigger - it would have been a cooooold walk over that 700 yards to the mineral block, and I may have had to crawl on my knees if I were to have stalked that bull! AS IF!!!)

The sheer joy when the guide and his drovers brought the bull up to the Subarban (took them long enough to cape and quarter it!)

Braving that cold wind to have some photos taken. BTW - that photog was really a very pleasant chap. I am glad we hired him - he was so worth the $250/hour!

Ohh and can't forget that spa and massage treatment back at the lodge! well worth the extra $1500!

Ahhhh the memories of when hunting was a true sport! A gentleman's sport!
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-18-10 AT 10:24AM (MST)[p]I remember stuff like my old single shot Colt .22 as my first gun. Got it when I was 9 or so. Gave it to my nephew 30 years ago; his dad still has it. Collecting rounds...mom and dad would go to town once a month to get groceries. I could take a dollar and walk 5 blocks to the sporting goods store and buy one cartridge. I still have them all.

Drank my first beer at hunting camp too; Coors out of a bottle in 1968 on the side of a mountain I still hunt on. Never used sneakers but, I do remember making my hunting boots last at least until I outgrew them a few years later. I wish my kids had that same passion for hunting.

Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
 
I killed my first buck when i was ten but i hadn't yet got one. I remember being pissed off when Dad took our neighbor instead of me. Even though i was too small to open a couple of the gates by myself, i could open some and i could spot deer way better than Dad or our neighbor could.

Dad usually got back from the ranch about an hour after dark. If it was much longer than that, i just knew that they killed a buck. Probably my dad killed it, our neighbor couldn't hit the broad side of our barn and even though he thought he was Joe hunter, he got all excited and chased the bucks away long before he could get his fat butt outa my dads pickup truck.

Our neighbor was named Clay. Lazy bastard! I don't know why Dad takes him instead of me. I'm looking out and down the street from my bedroom window, I should be riding shotgun instead of him. I hate him! It's almost two hours after dark now,.. where are they at? Oh, here comes some lights, YES! It's them. Five seconds later, i'm looking ina back of the truck and have mixed emotions that there's no buck in there. Seems Clay missed one, least that's what i can make of their last words while Clay grabs all his fancy stuff up off the trucks seat and dashboard, shot a bunch of bullets at it i guess as Dad kidded him about getting some better bullets. Clay took his cased gun outa Dads truck and walked across the street to his house. "Thanks Paul" he said.

In the house while dad put his gun and gear away, i had to hear all the details; where they saw the buck, what part of the ranch, what time, who spotted it, was it running, how big it's rack was, all of it! Dad finally got his stuff put away and had filled me in on their evening hunt. "Tomorrow, if you want, just me and you will go! What do you say?" "You bet Dad!"

All was right with the world and the next day at school, all i could think about was our hunt together that evening and how i'd be sure to get that one tough gate open all by myself and to spot a buck for Dad.

Joey
 
So, the first gate was nothing. All i had to do was put the right key in the right lock. I'd known for years, all the key numbers and all the different locks on the chain designed to allow those that were supposed to be in, in...and those that weren't, out. 3256 was the key to that gate and casually opened the right lock and swung the gate wide as Dad pulled thru to let me close and re-lock the gate. The next gate coming up was the one i dreaded. I'd always needed help with that sucker.

"Do you want help with this one Joey" he asked. Naw, i'll get it! The gate, like a lot of the gates around our ranch was made from oak limbs and barbed wire only on this one, the wire didn't sag, it was pretty tight. I'd been shown how to get my arm through the two top wires and reach ahead to the post, use my shoulder and weight, pull in and try to slip the hooped wire over the top of the limb and open the gate. I had been able to move the hoop before, but this time when i reached thru and grabbed that post and squeezed, the hoop slid over the top and the gate was open. Dad had to help me close it...but i didn't care to much about that, i had got it open!

"How old are you now?" Dad asked.
"i'm 10" i replied.
"If you spot a legal buck tonight, i'm gonna let you shoot it"
"I've never shot your gun before"
"you've shot with scopes before, it's the same thing"

We hadn't been more that 3 or 400yds on our property when i noticed a deer on it's hind legs with it's front half up in the branches of a big old oak tree. As i noticed the deer and before saying anything, he came back down on all fours, bigger than snot, was one of the biggest bucks i'd ever seen on our ranch during the hunting season. "Dad, Dad, Dad, STOP!" As i'm pointing out my window, "There's a great big buck right down there under that tree"
"Take my gun and shoot him." he said all calm like.

So, i'm sitting on the edge of that ol dirt road. I got the bullet "in the barrel" and the gun pointed at the right place under that big oak tree, looking thru the scope but, for the life of me, i can't find the buck. "There he is Joey, up on the hill above the tree." With the gun lowered, i see the trotting buck stop and look back towards us. Looking thru the scope, i see the deer, i see the cross-hairs, and the gun goes off in a jerking white blurr, kaboom! "You got em, You got em" Dad yells.

I didn't pull the trigger, at least i don't remember doing so. Of all the deer killed on our ranch that year, i think mine was the biggest. Dad proudly put his tag on that deer. I was 10 and i was on my way to being a big buck hunter!

All was well with the world!

Joey
 
I can remember bouncing around in the truck, sitting in the middle not being able to see anything but the dash board. Holding my dad and uncles guns so they could drink coffee, doing my best to keep them from bouncing against anything on the very rough road. Just happy as could be to be there. Following my dad through the trees moving as fast and quiet as my little legs would take me trying to keep up in the steep terrain. Being there to try to hold the leg so my dad could gut the deer and try my hardest to help him drag it, although looking back my dad was dragging both of us. He always had a smile on his face and so did I.

Trying to walk on top of cattails and through water knee deep to my dad but almost waist deep to me following the dog around pheasant hunting.

I was sitting in class when I was 11 mad as could be that my dad made me go to school instead of letting me go deer hunting with him. The intercom called me to the principals office, I was sweating bullets all the way up there trying to figure out which stunt I got busted for, more mad that if I was in trouble there was no way I would be able to go hunting. My dad was sitting in the office and had that look.... The principal handed me a stack of papers and said here's your homework your dad is here to check you out. WHAT?!? REALLY!!! I was on cloud 9! We were walking up the bottom of a ravine bordering some agriculture fields and on the sidehill I could see a deer. I showed it to my dad and he said it was a little buck. With a smile on his face he handed me his reminton adl 3006 and said I'm following you. I was soo excited as it was I didn't know how on earth I was going to be able to hit it. After a 200 yd stalk we were within 75 yds and he had no idea we were there! Laying prone on a little finger feeding into the draw, the buck had worked his way into the tall sagebrush. I tried soo hard to settle the crosshairs but couldn't hold still. My dad put his hand on my back and said calm down, breathe, put the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeeze the trigger. BOOM, the scope hit me in the eye and knocked me silly for a second but I dropped the buck right where he stood. I'm still very proud of my monster (barely legal) 2 point, I still have the picture of me holding his head up grinning ear to ear with a huge black eye and dried blood running down my cheek.

There is NO better adrenaline rush, feeling or experience in this world!!


NO GUTS, NO STORY!!


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LAST EDITED ON Mar-18-10 AT 08:06PM (MST)[p]Cold and showing always got the blood flowing.
Carrying fox and mink back to the truck from the trap line.
Trying to trap 2oo rats in a season. running a 200 traps in a season with my nephew.
Spotting the first Good buck of the season.
Guiding pheasant hunters and not having to go to school on those days.
The rabbit hunts of the 70's 40-50 guys would surround a section of land (1 square mile) put 10-12 guys on each side and walk in toward the middle as the rabbits would run out of the circle you turn and shot them, sometime you would shoot 2-3 boxes in just one drive, we killed over a thousand rabbits alot of times. I think the most we got one winter day was alittle over 1300 of them.
We sold the fur for buck and the meat to the mink farmers for 50 cents. All the money was used for Oyster feed with shic a bobs everyone around was invited.
Those were the good old days.


"I have found if you go the extra mile it's Never crowded".
 
yep, it's me alright- - killerbee [lost my password]


great topic!

1 person i give all the credit to in my life for making me the hunter i am today, my dad!

when i was 5 yrs old for christams i got a h@r 4-10 shotgun- we went out after present opening and hunted around, i shot my very first rabbit. later that winter i shot my first quail- unfortuantly my dad was driving truck and wasn't with me, but he did have my mom drive me to the spot on opening day to do it.i can remeber calling him that night, telling him i was the "great white hunter!"

most importantly, i remember my dad telling me in the fall, when i was 6, if you wake up at 3:00 a.m. you can go with me bow hunting.if not- i'm going without you.. i will bet i was up at 1:00 a.m. that morning waiting for him! we went out to a ridge, and i remembember my dad doing a "voice bugle" as corny as it probably would sound today- he got an answer! the bull never came in, in fact i believe he left early because he was afraid of the bull charging us.that is being totally honest]

after the hunt, he put me in front to find the truck. it seemed like miles. but somehow[ i'm sure with some help] i found it all by myself!

i still hunt there these days, it's probably only 500 yrds from that road, which is closed down now- and is a 2 miles hike to get there, but those memories are what got me started.


i can absolutly say , without any doubt- my kids will be raised the same way i was!

thanks dad
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-19-10 AT 06:52AM (MST)[p]Some cool posts guys. I love hearing about the old times. Here's something for you. How about a then and now equipment list.

Then & Now

Wranglers to Camo Pants (quick dry)
Flanel Shirt to Camo shirt (quick dry)
Old white thermals to Under Armour
White Tube socks to Wool Poly mix (wicking)
Right front pocket - bullets, Left front pocket - knife to Backpack/fanny pack with matches and a flashlight
"sneakers"/cowboy boots to Danner Pronghorns (waterproof)
Gloves? how bout pockets or down your pants to thinset/waterproof. No Binoculars to 3 pairs (8,10,15 power)
.300 Savage open sites to HS Precision .300 WM with a Vortex Viper 6.5-20x50. Carried no water now I don't leave home without it and a couple of snickers bars.

Pretty fun to look back and compare. My dad looks at all the stuff I have now and just laughs and shakes his head.

It's always an adventure!!!
www.awholelottabull.com
 
Pay phone in town, to Cell phone service on the mountain.

Suzuki 185 motorcycle, to Polaris sportsman 800.

16 foot jet trailer, to 38 foot fifth wheel with triple slides and built in generator.

Getting lost from the critters eating your trail of bread crumbs to GPS.

Just a few more lol
 
We lived in town until I was in 7th grade. I have very little recollection of those days. Then we moved to the country. Dad bought 3.5 acers for $3000, and my whole life changed. It was all covered in redwoods and doug fir. Beyond that was trees and logged over for miles. I never did know who owned it. I never did ever see anybody. The creek about 1/4 mile below our house was full of cutthroat trout and the woods had deer, quail, brush rabbits and bandtailed pigeons. If you followed the creek downstream you came out at Andy Carlsons place. Then you could walk the road back up the hill to home.

I had a Benjamin .177 pellet gun and later a .16 gauge bolt action shotgun, and then finally a .22 rifle semi-auto. I fell in love with the shotgun and duck hunting.
 
Reading many of the post really took me back to when I was a kid growing up in Fresno,CA in the mid 1950's.

My cousin who I still hunt with today lived in the north end of Fresno in the Pinedale area and we would leave his house early in the morning with a lunch, couple of tubes of ammo for our BB guns and shoot birds in the orchards all day or until we ran out of BB's.

Back in those days there was little more than fields and orchards in that area and for kids our age it was a bird hunters paradise. Nobody ever bothered us or seemed to mind a couple of kids walking around the orchards with BB guns. We would shoot all types of birds except dove because my dad told me if he caught me shooting dove before the season he would take my BB gun away and he meant it.

The real trophy for us was "Red Winged Black Birds". If we were lucky enough to get a couple we would carry them around with us all day and take them home to show them off.

When we got a little older we graduated to .22's and either my Dad or my Uncle would drive us out to the San Joaquin river and we would spend the day hunting jack rabbits and ground squirrels. I can remember we would mow lawns, rake leaves, take soda bottles back to the store and get the deposit so we could buy .22 shells. I can remember as long as we had a note from our parents they would sell us .22 ammo at the grocery store and of course we would always buy as many boxes of long rifle hollow points as possible because in our minds they had so much more killing power than regular long rifle ammo, and we hated having to use .22 shorts or longs.

Many days were also spent shooting bull frogs in ditches and irrigation canals and we would take them home and have frog legs for dinner. We also would go to the grocery store and buy some stew meat and tie a string to a branch or some other long piece of wood and tie on a piece of meat dangle it close to a crawdad and once they grabbed it you could lift them out of the water if you were careful. It sure did take a lot of crawdads to make a meal but they were good eating. We also spent days fishing for catfish in the canals and I can remember catching huge carp and we thought we really had something.

Toward the end of summer our biggest event was drawing near..
That would be September 1st and the day Dove season opened. I can remember we would take our 20 GA single barrel shotguns apart and clean them and re-clean them making sure they were ready for the big day. Dove hunting was all we could talk about the week prior to the opener. I don't think we ever had more fun than opening day of Dove season and even today my same cousin comes here to southern CA and we go on a dove hunt in the Calexico area. We have been hunting together for 50+ years and would never miss a dove opener, our dad's, uncles, and some of the family friends that started this tradition are gone now but we have kept the tradition alive with our kids, nephews, and grand kids.

Today's' kids cannot do many of the things we did when we were kids. Can you imagine what would happen if a kid was riding a bicycle down the street with a .22 rifle or a shotgun? We did it and nobody ever thought twice. The mid 50's and early 60's were a great time to be a kid and I have lots of good memories growing up with a large family. The annual dove hunts, the family deer hunts, camping / fishing trips. To me those were very good years I will always look back on fondly.

I'm sure my Dad probably said the same about how things had changed from when he was a kid growing up and each generation gets to experience a little less than the prior generation.
 
Going to Yellow Front to stock up for the hunt,spending the five extra bucks for the Kiabab tag,having my jacknife fold up on my fingers while I carved my girlfriends initals on a aspen tree and everytime I smell canvas I remember the army surplus tent we used for camping.My first time I gutted a deer by myself,the great hunting partners I have had and how I never get tired of our sunrises and sunsets.
 
Thanks BULL for this post. I love reading stuff like this and all the neat replies. I was the oldest of 5 kids, never had to hunt in sneakes. My Dad worked shift work in a mine 6 days a week, plus odd jobs on his time off...all for his family mostly. I remember a new pair of Alpine boots from Sears & Roebuck, plus my own hunting knife. Binoculars, a borrowed Stevens bolt action .30-30 rifle, hunting vest,and hunting clothes (even the long johns) that may not have quite fit (handed down from an uncle that had outgrown them, or no longer hunted). Seems a lot of our camping gear was also JC Higgins (Sears brand)or Army surplus (WWI or Korean War vintage-I still have a canteen or two stamped 1945). The first few years, my Dad drove a 1937 Chev pickup. He and his friend barely fit into that cramped cab with their rifles, my friend and I would bundle up in sleeping bags, or be covered by heavy canvas tarps in the small bed of the truck until we arrived to whereever it was we were going hunting...I remember one trip of a couple hundred miles that way, with stops to see if we were ok under the tarp!We upgraded the vehicle when I was a teenager to a 1962 Ford F-100 with camper shell (my Dad still drove this 'til he died last year at 87). In that, I have fond memories of my Dad having a top "bunk" of a bed, with me somehow fitting UNDER his "bunk". We also hunted with horses, so I remember all kinds of blankets, tack, camping gear and us stuffed into that camper every night... if there was any discomfort, I can't remember it...I remember sometimes Dad reading by camping lantern just before lights out; then in the morning, all the condensation inside the camper turning into frost during the night...At 4am getting all the horses ready, all the gear packed for an all-day hunt, and just moving around to thaw out just being part of the hunting experience. I too remember wet trousers, either from rain or snow. Sometimes, the damp trousers would really stiffen up while you rode; when we dismounted for deer or whatever, it was difficult to even walk!I remember several trips back home in a truck cab with heat on high and in long johns 'cause I'd even soaked my back-up clothing! Great memories; hunting was ALWAYS an adventure!
 
Mom always took me she said Dad might get lost so I had to stay with her. We lived on the outskirts of town. I was about 7 and we had to go down the street to the neighbors to get milk. Mom asked if I wanted to go with her. Sure can I take my bow? I had to use dads arrows and couldn't pull the bow to full draw. I had been hunting pheasants with my Dad before and knew how this was suppose to be. I spied this Robin sitting on the neighbor?s lawn. I draw back and bull?s-eye. I took that robin and stuck its head in my belt. No matter how hard my mom tried to get me to leave it there was no way. I packed that robin around all day.
I remember Grandpas house. I would sit outside and wait for my parents to return. Grandpa?s house was at the mouth of the canyon and all the hunters had to drive pass! Not a truck went by with out me checking out to see if a buck was in the back of the trucks. Mom would always get her buck. She didn't care how big or if it was a buck. It was Thanksgiving when I got my first big game animal. I finished eating before anyone else and headed up the creek to check out the wilds. Alas I find a dead skunk someone killed I took it home and walked in the house. Everyone was eating pie and finishing up. I held that skunk up high for everyone to see and hell you would have thought they had seen a ghost. The men folk ran me out of the house and the women folk took the garden hose to me. And it wasn't any to warm. I think I was 6 there about.
At 8 I got to go. Yee ha! Dad wouldn't let me hike with him but mom would. She didn't care about killing deer but packed her gun. 30-30 M-94 buckhorn sights. We were hiking along she told me to watch for deer but she was more interested in looking for arrow heads. She finds what she calls a corn grinder mutates and asks me to pack it. It looked like a rock to me. The thing only weighed 25 lbs. This doe jumps up and she fires at it and misses. She hands me the gun and said maybe you can get it. I took that gun and shot straight in the air. Some where I laid the rock down never to be found again.
At about 10 it was a buck hunt and I was packing a 20ga. Blasting rabbits. Dad and a couple Uncles had wounded a big ole 4 point and had pushed him to the bottom of a canyon. We were trying to push the buck out the bottom where they could finish him off. I was walking through the sagebrush and that buck jumped up 5 feet in front of me he was staggering couldn't hardly walk. I blasted him with buck shot in the arse at about 20 feet. He ran off and dad and the boys killed him about 100 yards in front of me. Hell that deer had 10 holes in him
 
I remember my first hunt as a kid growing up in the hills of Kentucky. I was about 12 years old when my dad took me on my first squarrel hunt. We arrived in the woods before daylight and dad placed me by a hickory nut tree where the squarrels had been feeding. He told me that when it started to get daylight the squarrels would come to the tree to feed and to not shoot the first one but let them get into the tree first. He then went up on the hill to another spot to hunt. As it started to get light I noticed some squarrels jumping from tree to tree and enter the hickorynut tree. I waited until several had arrived and started to feed then began to look for one to shoot. I picked out what I thought was a squarrel and took a shot, it turned out that what I shot was a knot on the tree. After the shot the tree exploded with squarrels jumping out - I took more shots but missed during the excitement. When dad came down later in the morning he asked "how many did you get" - of course I just told him I missed, didn't say anything about the knot. That was 58 years ago. Funny how I remember that hunt in such detail after all these years. There is just some things you never forget like having your dad take you on your first hunt and your first case of "Squarrel Fever".

I have really enjoyed reading the hunts on this post -

Wildsage
 
+1

sounds real familiar. killed my first bull elk at 50 yards wearing a carhart, silver belly cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. i snuck right up to him. it was the late hunt in november and my feet were freezing....lol. without a doubt, the best hunting equipment made today are good shoes.
 
LAST EDITED ON Mar-22-10 AT 11:12PM (MST)[p]Super thread WholeLot,
Takes me back too.

First deer hunt, 1961, November 14th, "Doe Day" Buffalo, Alberta. Hunting with my good friend's family. Gun, WWII British Lee Enfield .303 Cal. Cost $15.00 from Mcleod's Hardware in Brooks, Alberta. Looked like this but more banged up.

1387smle1long.jpg


Never told the guys at camp I was shooting at a different deer. My skills haven't changed much over the years.

247first_deer_1961.jpg


I can't get started on all the great memories of those day's, the Canadians would still put me in jail and it would fill volumes but it's been great recalling them as your stories have brought back wonderful memories of my youth. Thank you.

DC
 
>How many of you wore tennis
>shoes and jeans to hunt
>in when you were younger?


WHAT THE............................




Are you calling me immature?
 
Out of school early on Friday and off to the Parker to set up camp! Afternoon spent setting up Paul and Dads tipis. Dutch oven dinner and off to bed after the fire has warmed up the tipi.Not sleeping all night, because morning can not come fast enough!

Opening morning sounds like a war zone. Me and Dad count 21 different hunters gutting deer from our look out point. I spend the better part of the morning steaming mad at dad for passing on a couple nice 4X4. He assures me we can find better. Spend the afternoon pushing the deep sage with Dirk, Jason and Scott. Hot Pepsi and cinnamon bears! Drive the old green Blazer into some nasty situation! (Man I thought that thing was invincable). Same routine the next three days. I am pretty sure that life does not get much better! (And I think I might have been right)

Thank 2LUMPY!!!!! Those were times I will never forget!!!!!!
 

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