doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How many hunting seasons for you?

Foxie;
You're just a mere young'un hardly out of diapers yet. I graduated HS in 56.

I started late in life, I was 31 in 1986. my buddies all talked me into it and I was hooked.

Then they all quit within 5 years because their wives didn't like it but I'm still at it.

Legal hunting age in my state was 12 when I got my first license, so 45 years of legal hunting for me. My Dad allowed me to shoot a groundhog with his Savage 340 .222 Rem when I was 8. When he told my Mom about it after we got home, she freaked out and said he was turning me into a poacher. I remember thinking she was being unreasonable.

I got my first .22 rifle at age 10, and still have it, along with the Savage model 220 20 gauge I bought with my paper route money at age 12. Prior to that, I did serious damage to the local bird and chipmunk population with my Whamo sling shot. I had a large bing cherry tree right outside my bedroom window, and when the cherries were getting ripe, the robins would wake me up at sunrise eating the fruit. One morning, my Dad yelled at me as he was leaving for work because I already had 3 large paper grocery bags filled with dead robins. He said they were protected birds, and I couldn't shoot them, but black birds, bluejays, and starlings were OK to shoot. I argued that the starlings ate the whole cherry, and the robins just pecked them and ruined the fruit... to no avail. I still hate robins to this day.

A couple years ago, I was deer hunting with my nephew. We came to the edge of the woods and saw that someone had left a very old man sitting alone in a lawn chair with his rifle, overlooking a small creek bottom. He had to be in his 90's, very frail and decrepit looking, and covered with a blanket on a cold snowy day. I thought that would be how I would like to end my days. Hunting is ingrained into my soul, and it was something I wanted to do as soon as I was old enough to comprehend it. It must be a large part of my DNA, so I guess you could say I've been into hunting for 75,000 years or so.

My story has a pretty similar timeline to yours, keith. I think I learned to 'hunt' with a BB gun when I was in lower grade school. A buddy's dad told us to bring home any green frogs we got for him to eat. It just clicked where I knew I had to make clean one shot kills and pass up other shots. I wasn't supposed to touch kitchen stuff, but by about six, my mom let me choose any knife I wanted to scale and clean buckets of fish because I felt like it. There have been seasons where I haven't done as much hunting as I would've liked, mostly supporting kids when they were in things like fall sports, but some how or another, I think it's in my DNA too.

I've never quite understood the rationale behind thinking bluejays were okay for a kid with a BB gun to kill, but cardinals and mockingbirds weren't. I've always kinda liked bluejays. The ones I absolutely refused to shoot with my BB was a bluebird and a tanager, like a scarlet or painted. Sparrows were fair game ............ woodpeckers, yellowhammers, and pigeons were BIG game. I once killed a chicken with my BB, head shot. That was a mistake ............

I can empathize with the old guy in the chair overlooking the bottom, except I'd rather it be a dove shoot. I am aiming to kill a limit of doves on my 100th birthday, which is October 13th (34 years from now), and if they have to call the coroner afterwards, well .......... that will be okay, too.

SRH

my first trap line was 1945 0nly had about 20 traps. 1946 hunted deer in maine until 1952 when I enlisted and went to Korea 1955 I went to Alaska and flew bush [ beaver L-20] for the USAF and hunted there been at it ever since. hope to make it this year again. dove season opens in sept.

My first was 44 years ago. That number may be somewhat skewed, though, due to the 20 years of active duty mixed in. I was not able to hunt every season.

Stan, I never understood the general disdain for bluejays either. I really learned to like bluejays when I learned that they robbed robin's nests, and ate their eggs and chicks. I can't tell you how many times I climbed out on limbs as far as I dared to reach a bunch of just ripened cherries, only to find that the damned robins had pecked the backside and ruined them. When they weren't eating our cherries or other fruit, they were in the lawn eating the beneficial worms and night crawlers which we also used for fishing bait. When my Dad yelled at me and told me to not let him catch me killing any more robins, all I can say is that... he didn't catch me.

I hope you get to shoot doves on your 100th!

They say bluejays go to hell on Fridays. Bobby

Stan, some people will do anything to get out of cleaning birds. Good luck in your quest to shoot until 100. I took my father and sons Dove shooting when he was 90. Got his limit of doves in less than a box of shells, using a Fox 16 I loaned him. Not bad for a fellow with only one good eye I thought. Heck I'd just like to be moving and lucid at his age. Sad to say he is done hunting he says. Just has no desire to shoot.