cooperjd
"Posted 13 February 2008 18:11 Hide Post
I was 'hunting buffalo' in my back yard (in the neighborhood in west tennessee) with toy guns before i can even remember. i just hear stories that my parents love to tell. i started squirrel hunting with a .410 at age 5, deer hunting with my .243 at age 10.

as a kid i loved it and hunted, just like my dad. as i got older and learned more about what i was actually doing, i love it even more now. i am man, born a hunter, and its in my soul.

i know very few people with a passion for it like myself. my friends think i'm nuts, they have nothing in their lives to be this passionate about. you can't explain it to them. fortunately, i have been able to share it with some, and you can see the passion being born into them, as they get in touch with the inner predator."

cooperjd,
You and I come from similar background. I was born in 1949. My parents say that I first walked for a coke and that the second thing I walked to was a cap gun. By the time I was 4, I was using a Red Ryder BB rifle. By age 6, I was using a 22 rifle and by age 8, I was using a 20 gauge shotgun.

I’ve been hunting for 54 years and have no plans to stop as long as I can get up the hill.

Faina,

In all honesty I can't ever remember not thinking of myself being a hunter.

I have many memories of killing blackbirds with BB and pellet guns, advancing to rabbits and squirrels. Always fishing, catching frogs, bugs etc. On to big game and it snowballed from there.

I grew up extremely poor and my father was not much of a hunter.It did not take me very long to figure out that if you wanted any red meat in your diet you had to go out and shoot a deer mostly with a 22 rifle.

Now that I have a fairly substantial collection of Blasers,Sauers and Sakos the need for such hunting antics is past however from my past upbringing I have a very hard time with trophy hunting as I still go by the "If its brown its down"theory of hunting I am a doe culling spike culling son of a gun.

For me, early on, I had a Dick Tracy snub nose. Real early.
Then I became obcessed with shotgun shells. On to 22 shells and I was an ammo collector by 2nd grade. by 10, I was hauling home wagon loads of old paper shells from the local hardware. Many of them, I did not even have a gun for.
I was broken in with a Hopkins & Allen single shot 22 and a Crescent 12 ga double barrel hammer gun. By 12 or 13, the whole thing just exploded. I was hooked on reloading by 14.
While an active hunter, I have never found the need to kill anything except for food. Ok, maybe a few varmints and pests from time to time.
The hunting however, is a means to an end. It allows me to be in the outdoors. I have in some way established a "connection" which far too few are fortunate enough to experience. I sense a purpose - almost a spiritual bond with my surroundings. When I respect the laws of nature, it continually teaches me those things the written or spoken word cannot communicate.
Bestboss

With me, it was completely inborn and just worked its way to the surface over time.

When I reached my teen age years, I just had an interest in the outdoors.

My Dad and I fished a lot, but he was never a hunter, and no one else in my immediate family hunted.

Some of the guys I went to school with did hunt, and hunting just facinated.

The first guns I owned were a 22 and a bolt action 20 gauge shotgun.

People that are open to the concept and interested, can enjoy hunting, and hunting camp life.

I think being involved in hunting and the outdoors grounds a person and gives them a better understanding of life and their role in it. JMO.