Hello guys, I post this discussion some days ago in the "American big game hunting" section, now here.
I'll tell you a story.
About 14 yeas ago I have a bad accident on the street with my motorbike (a very nice Ducati 900 SL), a old men don't see the STOP..........
At this time I was running in the italian superbike championship. This accident was a disaster for me, phisically and morally. I brock my legs in 7 points!!!
Of course the rehabilitation was very lond and hard. In this time a friend comes about every day to me, one he ask me if I was interested to learn to be a hunter. I have a lot free time!!! Why not, I like to know something new and I like animals and mountains. I start to read all possible about animals, hunting, guns, ammo ecc ecc.
So was born my passion for hunting and guns.
How is born your hunting passion?

Faina

I guess I was born with one - tho we had a cellar where my father used to hang all the game after hunt to cool down -it was a treasury room for me at the time - and when I was a kid of 3 or 4 years I still remember waking in the morning - climbing down the stairs to the kitchen where mom and dad were having a morning coffe (old man was allready back from the hunt) and I immediatly knew by the look in his eyes that there are things to be checked in the cellar - hum still can feel those antlers of those bucks and see the wound holes and a warm smell of the game hanging in the air...

I'm with mouse, it was something that I cannot remember being without. All the men in my family hunt. Most are crazy about it.

I remember waiting impatiently for my dad and uncle to come home from a hunt, unloading carcasses from the jeep with the animals in funny shapes due to rigor mortis.

I started shooting airguns when I was 8 and took my first duck with a .22LR age nine. I can still feel the pride I felt on that sunny day.

What surprised me on the other thread is the amount of people that took up hunting in later life. A great trend, something which I hope to help by introducing some non-hunting but curious friends to the outdoors soon.

Ny father took me hunting at the age of five, I saw him stay cool and shoot a Moose even though I was tugging at his coat, increasingly louder telling him to shoot dad, shoot, don´t let it get away....


Needles to say, it took a whole year until the next time but buy then I had learned to be quiet and patient,

At the age of 11 I got ny first airrifle a Diana 25, I got a 1 sek, 1/10 eur per each rat I shot and 5 sek per crow,

Needles to say spending every afternoon in the grainary took care of all my bullet costs.

I still have that old Diana......

Hunting is within my blood,

Age 11 I took the cours for hunting and fire arms permitts in Sweden, all of you meeting up in Baldock might take a look at the pic on the certifikate,

Took my first roe as a 14 year old, hare the prior year.

For some years in school fishing, esp flyfishing took ower, but now I am back at it again...

Hunting is the truest form of living.

/C

for me i say it goes back to when i was 6or 7 yrs old. like any american kid with access to a tv i watched FESS-PARKER the actor play Daniel Boone & Davey Croocket.

from there i had to have a cork-pop-gun, you know the kind with the cork on a string,there were no bb-guns to my knowledge. soon to follow were cap-gun 6 shooters.

beg as i did i was still to young for a real gun, fast forward to 13 yrs old. my parents bought me a mod.514 22 cal.rim-fire remington single shot bolt-action rifle.

that was my flying start those pesky gofers that ate grandpas pickel seeds and plants caught heck. my uncle and me 1yr and 1 mounth apart lit stick wooden matches with our 22''s at 15 yards with iron sites years before we could afford a 22 scope that was Big time ifin you had a scope!!!!.

jump to 16 yrs old i started driveing deer with my older uncles no weapon i was to young, at 17 they let me carry a shotgun, at 18 mom bought me my 1st mod. 94 winchester 30-30 with my hard earned pickel picking money! two yrs later i bought my 2nd deer rifle a rem. mod.760 gamemaster pump in 270 winchester, sold to a good friend and he''s shot 30 some wis- deer 1 bull elk 5x5,1 bull moose and its still going great,sold it cause i wanted a remington BDL bolt-action 270. got it too! sorry so long, but i'll hunt till i die or can't walk!!! great post subject Fania! regards 2 all

My father had two passions; Fine rifles (especially if they were chambered in the 7x57 or 6.5x55), and hunting mule deer and elk in the high mountains of Utah. He passed these passions on to me and I don't know how young I was when I first went hunting or shooting. It has always been a part of my life. I have always been a rifle fanatic.

My father was a (and still is) a liberal university professor from Chicago, where I was born. All I ever wanted from the time I could speak was a rifle.

Mom and dad finaly relented when I was five years old and bought me a BB gun for Christmas. I killed every starling and squirrel in a five city block area.

When I was a little older, I saved up for my first shotgun. I would break it down, put it in a sack, get on my bicycle and ride out into the country to chase rabbit (hossen), squirrel, quail, pheasant, duck and geese.

After the Army I was tired of guns for a while, but after a few years I got back to hunting. I hope I die at 90 years old while out bird hunting with a shotgun in my hand right after getting a double; right, left and all three of us hit the ground stone dead at the same second.

LD

I suppose I was a late starter, I'd always been into guns for as long as I can remember, when my mates were into computers I was into hunting rabbits with my air rifle, then I got my first shotgun at 16 and took up clay pigeon. Then along came girls and hunting went out of the window. Then when I changed jobs I met Puntgunner who introduced me to centrefire rifles at bisley and that was it I was hooked. Puntgunner was responsible for me shooting my first deer a yearling roe doe. It was one of the best days of my life. Since then I've never looked back I love my hunting and have been to Africa on safari, again with Puntgunner and loved it so much I'm going back again in 8 weeks. That man introduced me to the passion of my life.

I started reading Field and Streams at the local library at a very tender age...but we lived outside San Franceisco, and my dad was a merchant marine and gone for long periods, so no guns were allowed in the house.

Our family moved to Finland in -71 and I was promised guns, a pony and whatnot so I´d leave the US peacefully.

One should never lie to children.

My first gun was a Heinel pellet gun that I mostly used for punching holes in paper -bought it myself when I was 14. But that was about the time I got into progressive rock and for the next 10 years I forgot hunting/guns and was a roadie, studied and did powerlifting.

One day I bought a labrador retriever and a friend got me interested in dog training...so I bought a shotgun...

The rest is history

What a question.
Ok my great-grandfather (bisnonno) in my mother family was a hunter. He is rememberd for some/many performances like more animals than cartridges.

An uncle of my grand mother, always in my mother family, was known because he used the preys a s model to paint still life pictures. He was a mountaneer and his passion was to hunt on mountains.

Then for two generations no hunters in my family, even if there were no problems in eating venison or with the hunting friends.

Now about me, I was already interested when I was fifteen. I knew a hunter during my holydays, and he too had passion to hunt on mountains.

I begun with the gun licence, because for a crash with a motorcycle when I was 16, I did not serve in the Italian Army. Than a consequence of the fracture stopped me brutally, some month without moving from the bed, and some years with the crutches.

And I became diver an diving instructor, but I continued to go to the range and in 1984 I became range officer.
My passion was the rifle.
On 1992 or 1993, I do not remember, my sporting gun licence was declared not valid. The only valid and approchable was the hunting licence. I did it.

The first year had been disappointing, I was without experience, with very little money, and the hunters I knew were not the kind of hunters that I always want to be.

The range saved me. There I knew people who live in good hunting areas and I begun to go there. Some years ago I changed area for a more wild one, where I still hunt. this is my story.

About ten to fifteen years ago when they were introduced I applied for a European Firearms Pass. I was asked why I wanted it by my local police. I replied, quite truthfully, that I had been invited to go shooting on mainland Europe by a German. As also, I added, had my grandfather in 1914 and my father in 1939. However I would only be going for the wild boar. Their invitations had been for big game.

10 years ago I founded a great hunting world of hunting retrievers. Then with my dog ( http://www.pancho.it )the hunting world was more close.

After the birds hunt (first for my dear dog, then also for me), the first wild boar (a very small one ) comes, and the passion for rifles, big game and big bores will come soon.
Now after 10 hours a day of work, taking care of 2 babes (9 and 8 years old girls) and wife, finally for 30 mins, before sleep, I study animals or reload some rounds.

I'm allowed to hunt only 1 times a month (family first then huntin' passion) but the hunt for me it's a very way of life. For me hunt means passion for animal life and passion for rifles and ballistic issues, not for kill animal, the shoot on game in my mind it's only a final chapter of hunt, the best part it's before :studying and watching the animals.

Have a great hunting day, not only in mind like me...

Ciao

Great thread,

I think like many young boys my father was (and probably still is) my role model and I just wanted to hang out with him and his mates. at 5-6 years ld I'd get to go and sit in a pigeon hide with him and watch. As I grew up I was allowed to take the odd shot and when I was about 9 I started shooting for myself at Clays. These guys lived and breathed shooting. They would travel around the clay circuit and shoot 2 or 3 competitions in a day, where most of them were "AA" class for as long as I remember. I was always kept hungry for it, but gently encouraged.

Game shooting was a big part of our lives but I didn't come to rifle shooting until about 10 years ago. A freind of muine was a passionate deerstalker and once I picked up a rifle I couldn't believe what I'd been missing out on. As a reciprocation I brought my freind back to shotgunning and it's been great.

I now run a small shoot and nothing gives me more pleasure than giving people good shooting. introducing new people and children to the sport in a correct and respectful way has enourmous rewards..

I recently took my father in law out and handed him my gun. I slipped fern into anovergrown bombhole and she flushed a pair f Mallard which he shot both of. He's going to come to Baldock with me to see what stalking is all about as an observer. At 62 years old he's absolutely smitten with it and I'm thrilled for him.

Rgds,
FB

I hope you got back on the bike soon enough Faina. I have a 97 SS, I obvoiusly wanted a SL or at least a white frame model but I'm very happy with the one I got. It would be fun if Biaggi would teach them a thing or two tomorrow.

I got interested in hunting almost by accident. When I was about twelve I bought a gun/hunting magazine, and that was it. I persuaded my brother into buying a .22 and later I got a 1959 Bajkal shotgun. We bought shotshells in cartons, roedeer and fox really got the ball rolling. My brother is now a gunsmith, last friday I bought a Jämthund-puppie (the best moosedog there is) and after mooseseason next fall I'm going to north america deer hunting.

I've always put my interest in hunting (and soldiering) down to my grandmother. When I was very small my father was a farmer and my mum worked all day as a painter/book illustrator, so I was looked after by my elderly grandmother. She was one of 14 children of a very well to do Polish family (until 1939 of course, when she ended up here) and she told me stories of the hunting and soldiering exploits of her brothers, father and uncles. The family was sufficiently Aristocratic to maintain their own hunting forests and shoot driven boar and deer as English families might have shot driven pheasant in the same period (19teens and 20's).

When I was twelve I visited Poland and one of the family "hunting lodges" which puts most houses I've ever lived in to shame! Sadly, nearly everything was taken by the Nazi's and then the communists, and irrespective of that I am a long way down the family pecking order!

I first used my dad's air rifle (A webley Vulcan that I still have) when I was about 6, and would often take my stepdad's crossman pump up across the fields with a few stolen pellets in my pocket. Sadly, I didn't get much adult guidance on rabbiting so I didn't have any luck. I remained an avid reader of airgun magazines through my teens and shot .22 and fullbore regularly with cadets. When I was 17 I finally managed to buy myself a decent Air-rifle, a Logun Axsor, and started lamping rabbits regularly with a friend on his family farm. (My family had stopped farming by now)Over the next few years I worked selling airguns and shooting equipment and rabbited regularly. When I was 20 I finally went to university and bought my own house, one of the first bits of furniture was a gun cabinet, and I applied for my shotgun licence immediately. My Firearms (rifle) licence application went in 6 months later. I started with a beretta 303 with a 302 barrel fitted to it, with which I subsistance hunted rabbits through my first year at university, (Having spent my annual budget on clays and tuition....!) before graduating to a .223 for foxing and .22Lr and .22WMR for rabbiting. Hunting deer, boar, and other large game has always been "real hunting" in my mind, but until recently I didn't have the opportunity.

I'm now a shade off 24, and I've got a .243, a 7mm RemMag and a couple of shotguns. I shot my first deer, a fallow doe, last Tuesday, and my second, (and first with my own rifle) on Friday, a Chinese Water Deer on a shoot managed by IanF (Thanks again for the invite!) I have my own stalking permission and am looking forward to plenty more shooting and stalking in the future!

Strangely though, I recently discovered that my dad, who has shown no interest in hunting before, used to be an avid air-rifle hunter in his early twenties, before marriage, work, and me being born killed it off. He's asked me to take him stalking next season (once I know what I'm about) and I hope he will feel the thrill of the chase again. I guess it's never too late to start.

Hi 900 SS,
I return to drive a bike after 9 years from accident, why the phisical consequences was very serious and in case of a second accident I can probaly walk with much difficolt. But after 9 years I buy again a Ducati 1000 SS, drive this for 3 years with sotisfaction, then sold this why drive on pubblic street is to danger today. Now I have an "old" superbike Suzuki GSXR 1000 '04. This is a runnig bike only for the circuit, I'm to old to run, but I enjoy very much this bike



Faina