Gents:

A week from Saturday we venture to northern Maine for our moose hunt with two tags in hand (bull for me and a cow for wifey). While we don't plan to have our 2 year old daughter with us during the actual hunts it is inevitable she will see many moose at the tagging station.

She loves animals and I do not want to do her any harm by the sight of it all. How did you introduce your little one to hunting and all it entails?

Thanks!

Jeff

treat it as normal and don't make a big deal of the dead ones.
show excitement that mom and dad got their moose.
starting them so young is the best way imo.
by the time she is 8-10 she will want one of her own.
kids need to know where their supper comes from.
good luck on the moose hunt....

That is a tough one.

When my daughter was 4 she went with me on a hog and deer hunt and she was fine with us killing and cleaning the "ugly" hogs but the "pretty deer" was another story. I had to
have a talk with her about us eating the deer and not killing for fun etc. The whole "Circle of Life" thing. Don't be afraid to use something she can relate to...I used the Lion King.

However, two years old is a bit young and they have short attention spans so you may have to repeat this again. Just don't force it or try to be too hard core on the issue.

Also, don't let the mom do all the work here. This is an excellent teachable momement from Dad, just go lightly.

Good luck on your hunt. It takes a man to raise a daughter.

Boy this is a good one!

I have pictures of my daughter at age 4 out in the woods hunting with me, and with her feet in my daypack sleeping while we were hunting.
At less than 2 years old she was in her moms arms watching me skin and process our deer in the garage. We never made a deal out of it, yet alone a big deal; it is what is required to do so that she can grow up healthy and strong.

She has hunted with me as a spectator since she was 4, both small game and deer. At about 12 years she started asking about shooting her first deer. Since then she has had her own rifle (Ruger 10/22) for our practicing. At 14 she shot her first deer (a doe w/ 7x57) and it nearly made her pass out from the emotions, she was fine gutting it, but skinning was tough. We are planning on hunting together again this year and will be small game hunting this weekend, we both drew doe permits in our rifle zone this year. She is now 16 and my best hunting buddy, and probably the best person that I know, I look so forward to spending time with her. We have discussed the world’s problems, our problems, and our aspirations for life, all while hunting. She was there when I shot my 3rd deer of the day, at my longest distance (383 yrds.), and I was there when she shot her 1st.

Let her decide what she is ready for, you just offer, then follow her lead.

Doug

I don't know but what a sudden exposure to a gutted moose carcass might be kinda overwhelming. My kids were exposed to a parade of small game being brought home and then deer hanging in the shed waiting to be cut up. But we never made a big deal of it. It was just the way life is. If the kids wanted to watch me skin and gut small game, fine; if not fine. If they wanted to see the deer carcass, fine, etc.
Kids want to please you and how you approach things will matter a great deal to how they perceive things.

Really great responses from all.

I tell them they are good to eat the worst thing to do not expose them.

Tell them you hunt you eat.

Don't fall into the liberal trap that showing them the facts of life well hurt them.

I have pictures of my kids holding dead game from the time they could walk. I didn't let them get out of helping clean skin and bucther game.

By the time they were old enought to hunt they knew that they would have to help gut, bucther ect.

I started my kids (boys) very young also. Though girls develope what seems to be a lot more sensitivity to emotions, I think at two your child will react to the situation based soley on your reactions and emotions. So your and the wifes excitement and enthusiasm will make the impression.

Above all be honest with her. When she asks what things are tell her. My kids learned anatomy, what parts of the animal we eat, and how to take care of this wonderful gift of life sustaining protien. We started explaining that the meat we were eating at dinner was flesh from various animals and what part of the animal it came from. They understood that meat on the plate was muscles from the bone. It was no issue. It's much the same as establishing a level of understanding about nudity. It's only as big a deal as YOU make it. Nate

I had to butcher a young goat for a friend .His young son was there and wanted to watch.I explained that it wasn't the most pleasant thing to watch but he insisted. So I took the opportunity to teach him some anatomy.Organs , bones , muscles and pointed out where I could those things in his body. The curiosity and learning overcame and unpleasantness.

Here on the West Coast I had a hunting partner(Ca hwy patrolman) take his daughter(8yo) and son(6yo) fishing for trout.

His little princess caught a fish and he asked if she wanted to take it home and eat it, or release it. She said, "let's eat it!"

He explained that this would require killing it and she said, "OK".

When he made the first cut his son screamed: "NO! We must let nature live!"(where do you think a 6yo got that???)

Anyway, it was soon clear that his 1st grade teacher was indoctrinating him.

My pal took a hard line on educating his son, and when he went to "Open house" he looked for his son's picture on the "nature wall".

His son's drawing was of a nice male deer with the caption: "You only shoot the bucks".

Yes, my pal was proud.

I would also treat the sight as "normal." That is, tell her that these are animals that once were alive and running around but that hunters killed them and will now take them home. There they will skin them and cut the meat up, put it in the freezer and later take it out to eat.

At two years old I doubt a child will have had much opportunity to develop any prejudices one way or another about the sight of a dead animal. I took both my kids out in the woods at about that age, not actually hunting, but I did take them out for walks, with me carrying a gun-- and after a while, usually the kid as well. On several occasions I was able to get one or both of them out to help with field dressing and packing out. When my oldest son was three I went out bow hunting for deer and was able to drop one not too far from the cabin where my mom was looking after him. I took him out to where the doe was laying, took a great picture of him with the deer and a big grin (which picture sits on top of the bookshelf in my office) and then started gutting. He got to help by holding a leg. When I pulled everything out he shouted, "That looks just like sausage!"

Death is a part of life, and in my family hunting is how we get our meat. Treat it as something in the natural order of things and be ready to answer questions honestly and simply. She'll do fine.

I have a couple of youngn's, my son is four and my daughter turns eight this weekend. They have both been around dead animals almost since birth.

I remember shooting a doe whitetail when my daughter was two. I had found the deer already, but walked back to the house and asked my daughter if she wanted to help dad track a deer. Of course she couldn't wait. I sent her in front of me into the thicket where the doe was. When she saw the deer 15 feet in front of her she gasped, then pointed and said "look, deer". She was nervous about it at first but after some coaxing she pet it and got her picture taken with it. My wife took her back to the house before I gutted it to spare her that part.

Now when I kill one, her and her brother are fighting to get out the door first to see it. Sometimes friends or neighbor kids come to help "drag one out". We alway treat it as "no big deal, this is where our food comes from." Also, gutting has turned into an anatomy lesson, they are always shown the different inards and explained their purpose, well...most inards.

Good information. It is important to get kids off on the right foot, so they don't fall into the "cute, cuddly, cartoon creature" trap. Many of the teachers in urban schools could learn a lot by reading this thread and teaching like some of you folks do.

Biggest mistake I made was letting my son see a bunch of dead deer hanging at a processor when he was 5 or 6.

Lot of death at once. Too much for him at that age.
He was upset but we had a good chat about it.

He is certainly not anti-hunting now (age 13)and we are going to Africa this spring/summer.

But I still regret the way I handled it. He had seen dead ducks, small game, and even a deer in the back of the truck, but all those carcasses hanging....