Almost that time again! Well here anyway. My son is 7 and wants to hunt this year. I am going to take him squirrel hunting and out for the mentored youth deer hunt. Plus he wants to start trapping.

My son’s first deer
 

My 12 year old boy got his first whitetail the other day. A happy day for him and a proud one for me. One shot with the .243 my dad gave him dropped it right where it stood.

After 5 years of trying and being shown up by my daughter, I finally got a deer last week. At 52 years old, my first deer was a 97 lb doe. It will taste good. Going again Sunday

Anyone excited for this season? I will be hunting in west virginia along with pa this season. Last year did a elk hunting trip to colorado. No elk but had fun and learned alot. I will be buying my 9 year old son a cross bow too.

Looking forward to duck season. That's the only hunting I do any more.

I never duck hunted. Looks like fun.

I moved to the Lowcountry 30+ years ago. Started hunting deer, dove, pheasant and duck. I really only took up duck hunting because I had a Lab and wanted to see what he would do, and he LOVED it. It's so cool to see good breeding and instincts kick in. Loss of land/habitat since then and I stopped hunting altogether until a friend hooked me up with a nice place to hunt ducks, so for the last several years we've hunted, some seasons great, some not so great. (And a friend gives me venison occasionally.)

Mornings in the duck blind: hardly any place I'd rather be. My old Browning A500 serves me well, none of those lightweight shotguns that the younger (and more serious) guys use. And duck can be mighty tasty.

Went to a 3d archery shoot this eve. Only saw 1 kid other than mine. All old guys. Used to be alot of kids shooting when i was young. Guess im an old guy. Wish people would get their kids out more. Most of the old guys stopped and talked to my son.
I guess its easy to turn on the tv, computer or smart phone and put your kid infront of it.
We will be going every tuesday till archery season starts.

Our SCDNR has a program called take one, make one. Not just kids, but anyone that wants to get involved in hunting. They do shooting classes, hunting classes. Have different groups get together(Veterans, women, kids, etc...) they also overlap with special hunting groups like Outdoor Dream foundation(my daughters thread is on here somewhere). If nothing else, it got me interested in hunting. My cousin is a SCDNR officer and now doing shotgun clinics with kids. Now if I could just get a decent lease within an hour of my house.

Been off the site for quite a while - password problems. It's good to be back and see that things are still percolating along with you all.

Went to eastern Oregon for a guided cow elk hunt and between my son, a friend and I, we got two nice cows. Would have had three, but my son's rifle wasn't shooting accurately, so he declined to take a 300+ yd shot - he made a 200 yd head shot to put one down that our friend had a round in. His rifle is going off to get a good stock fitted - hopefully that will fix the problem.

I haven't hunted big game for ages and was surprised at how different field shooting is from the range. I got down with my new bipod and found the grass completely blocking my shot - I've got some work to do to get prepared for the next trip.

Another surprise was how tender the meat is. Beef round steak is usually pretty tough, but the elk has been really tender. Not a lot of flavor, but a little garlic powder and other stuff takes care of that.