My wife and I were cleaning up some of the stuff we just have packed away in the garage more than a year ago when we moved in. And I came upon these photos.

The first one is of my first recolection that I wanted to hunt. No one in my family had any interest in hunting whatsoever so it must be in my blood I was 10 years old (1986) and trying to hold a .308 rifle I think it was a musgrave. 4 Years later I shot my first warthog/s first time lucky with a double hit on two pigs, with that same rifle on the same farm. I do not have any pictures of my first hunts, my parents didnt think it was very important and I grew up with the same idea untill I started to read the Magnum magazine in 1993 and from there I had to take photos of what I hunted if I could. A lot of the photos are lost most of them were taken with other cameras than my own and I never saw the photos. Even if I do not have photos of my first kill the memory is as clear as daylight to me, and always makes me smile.



The second Picture is of course of myself when I was 16 in Pongola with a young impala ram for the pot back in 1992. Incidently on the same property and camp that Jaco Human is going to use for the AR hunt.



Sorry about the picture quality I do not have a scanner so I took a photo of the photos.

So, now what about all your old pictures of your first hunt/kills or whatever is related to hunting. Will, we will not mind old Sepia coloured photos

Common everyone Show and tell time. To let the time pass quicker untill hunting season.

SH,
Looks like we had similar trajectories in our hunting lives!
I came from a family that liked the bush/outdoors but no-one in my immediate family hunted or fished...my dad was a great in that he took me fishing and on my first 'real hunt'.

I grew up visiting an old German friend on his farm first in Kroondal and then later Vaalwater, in the school holidays. I used his ancient .22 Rem rifle that I shot at dassies etc. He was a also a hunter and would encourage us to be 'boys' and get out in the bush, not piss around town...

My old man then bought me a Baikal 12ga for my 16th birthday. A few months later, we borrowed a friends .303 and off we went to Makutsi Spa near Tzaneen where I lunged my first impala ewe in 1991 (and the missed my second impala due to extreme 'bokoors'!!!).

I was always a keen gun nut and bush-cat. I was a fanatical angler since I was 6. I still remember the seminal moment of the desire to hunt...my mates and I used to go fish for carp with floating bread crust in the reeds of the small spruit that flowed into Homestead dam in Benoni (a great spot, 10mins by bike from my house and excellent sight fishing for carp).

I was sitting there one day, watching my bread crust when two yellow bill ducks came down the river course on their way to the dam. I still remember looking up as they past at about 10m and thinking "man, I would love to have a .410 and drop one of those out of the sky!".

I don't know what spurred it, but I rode home and started devouring everything related to hunting I could lay my hads on! That was bout 1989, the same year I beagn to read Magnum.

Cheers

I have posted these pictures before, on the Big Game Hunting forum (in an effort to get others to post theirs, like you are doing here ), so apologies to those that have seen them before....

This picture is from my first big-game hunting trip. I only had a rimfire .22 at this point and shot lots of small game (grouse and hares) with my Dad. He shot this deer (a little two-point muley), and the two of us dragged it out together. I recall being a very big help! I was 8 yo, in 1978.




This is a picture of me with the first big game animal that I took myself. A calf moose, when I was 11 yo, in 1981, with a Win 94 30/30 Trapper.



I was hooked for life.

Cheers,
Canuck

Sorry, did not have cameras then.

The very first "big game animals" I have ever shot was a gazelle.

We used to go to an island called Furor close to the Iarnian coast, and hunt these imported gazells once a year.

As everyone took off to go shoot some for biltong, I was given the job of shooting one for camp meat.

I have no idea how old I was - probably 6 or 7.

I had a Browning 22 semi auto rifle. The ones you load through a hole in the stock.

One of the men who used to live on that island came with me, and I remember rounding a corner and seeing a gazell about 50 yards away.

One shot later, we had our camp meat.

I went to that island the next year, and shot 2 that time.

After that I only shot big game in the US - pronghorn and some exotics in Texas.

In Africa my first animal was a Waterbuck. That was in the summer of 1982.

No camera either, for my first "hunt." I went 'possum huntin' with my Grandfather, "Pop," and his blue tick coonhound, "Rack," when I was six or seven years old.

We followed Rack up a hillside off Possum Hollow ("holler") Road, a gravel road in Butler County, Kentucky, about 1961. Rack took a trail by nose and was soon sniffing inside a hole in the hillside, no baying for a non-coon critter, Rack knew. Good dog.

Pop reached into the hole with his bare hand and pulled out a fair-to-middlin' sized possum, good eatin' size, that was playing 'possum, hanging upside down by his tail.

Possum and sweet taters was a delicacy in Possum Holler, Kentucky.

I had to wait until my Dad, "Pop II," got home from Viet Nam to go on my first firearms hunt: Squirrels with my brand new 20-guage single-shot.

Around home, I prefer to be called "Pop." Pop III.

Please excuse the Popcorn.

Ok, I changed the heading to say your first ever picture that you can get hold off involving hunting.

BTW My pics are not showing at the moment because it looks like the webserver is down for Mpumelelo.

My son, 9 years old. Button buck. Very small button buck.
Bambi did not know what hit him (25-06, 100-grain).
This is Pop IV. He has a Schrade "Old-Timer" sheath knife on his belt, before he lost his baby fat. He is lean and mean now.
Bambi was very tasty and healthful.
I'll look for more Popcorn.

Not my earliest involvement but about 1980 or maybe slightly earlier. BTW - I didn't shoot the tiger, the pic was taken as a bit of a joke.
Sadly, a lot of my earliest hunting and hunting related pics were lost or damaged when I moved from the UK to SA some years ago.



This one was again C1980 that's me on the right in the ridiculous hatband!



Just for fun, here's a couple of pics that the famous taxidermists the (late) Van Ingen Brothers (John & Joubert) sent me of their home in India.

My first safari,Dorking England 1987

My first encounter with a Lion,British Natrual History Musuem.

Me on the left (with a hat) next to my younger brother and father.

I would post mine but how do you post tin types?

First animal taken was a rat in our backyard with .177 air rifle, circa 1963 (Poissy, France). No way would I have allowed any cameras on that hunt.

Second animal taken was a pigeon taken in San Diego, CA backyard, circa 1964 with the same air rifle. This was from a blind, which also doubled as my bedroom. My father, recognizing this urge I had to shoot things, took me on my first hunt in 1965 for ducks and pheasant. I was told that if I hit one of the dogs some very bad things would happen to me. I was given my first centerfire firearm for that hunt, a Montgomery Ward 16 gauge single shot shotgun (made in Germany). I still have it.

It's been downhill ever since.

My first encounter with hunting was in the early 70s when we visited a relative that hunted a lot in the open fields of southern Sweden. I remember how impressed I was over his shotgun (a Husqvarna 310 AS which I now own) and the fox skins on his wall.

The next time was when I took my hunters exam in 89/90 and these are the animals I took my first year.



A Hare with Shotgun January 1990



A Roebuck with a Tikka 30-06 in August 1990



A Moose with the same Tikka in October 1990

Then it took another 12 years before I got my first african animal which was a nice warthog (13 inches) that I took on my first hunting day in Africa July 2002.



Sand River, Messina,South Africa July 2002

like saeed there were no cameras back then, in fact i'm not sure there was a written language then either, we used clubs and stone axes then

I think I have found the picture of butchloc and Saeed's first hunt:

quote:

Originally posted by Wink:
I think I have found the picture of butchloc and Saeed's first hunt:

Christer so when did you transform into the Big Viking if I look at the pictures, it seems it was Africa that changed you.

All right.

Here is my first “big game†animal I think it was 1982 I would have been about 13 or 14 years old. I shot him with my trusty old M-77 in .270. ON about the 10th shot I think it was.



Here is my daughters first big critter she hammered him with one shot through the heart with her .308 M-70 at 102 yards in March of last year. She was 10 years old in that picture.



Here is my 7 year olds first ever critter. She got this fine jackrabbit with her Chipmunk in .22LR also in March of last year.

surestrike,

Great stuff especially with your daughter.