I guess there no right way no wrong way. It all comes down to getting kids in the woods. Yet I draw a caution line of hunting for them.
What’s changed? Why?
- Thread starter Floki
- Start date
Big_Holla
Senior Member
I think its a combination of laziness and everything coming easy in a microwave society....LOL! The laziness can be our own fault in that we would rather get home, eat dinner and plop our asses on the couch to watch TV til bedtime. I remember when it was squirrel season as a kid I would come home and often skip dinner to go back behind the house with my dad to hunt. This is where I point the finger at myself in that it has been a long, long time since I said let's go and head back there to sit for a while. I remember so many hunts like that with my dad but damn if I remember many with my kids. Guilty as charged. When it comes to the microwave I like to use that as an example of how impatient we all are to hurry up, get things done and then sit around to 'relax'. A toaster oven or regular oven does a better job, it's just what we accept in life though. So enough of the analogies, kids these days have attention problems and it's up to us to show them the 'other things out there' when waiting for that big buck that doesn't show up within 15 minutes and guaranteed to be in the back of the truck before dark. Drives me crazy to sit in a blind with my son as he is bouncing all around in his chair playing video games while I'm watching that squirrel looking in at him thinking WTF is that in there. Last year we were in a buddy stand and I got him to quit long enough to watch this little chipmunk working up and down inside this short snag of a tree. Must have had a hole from top to bottom and it was about 5 ft. high. He would have never seen the antics of that little guy had I not pointed it out to him and wouldn't you know he put his phone away the rest of that night. It's like Phil said in another thread, plant that seed because some day they will start surprising you. Oh and stop coddling the fuck out of them and let them get bruises and make mistakes!! I've been guilty of trying to lead mine to a trouble free life myself. LMAO!
triple_duece
Ragin Cajun.
- 9,498
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Wow I just seen this thread. I’m 52 and lived through a lot of the changes discussed. All of y’all are right in some way or another. We are not clones nor the kids of different time periods.
Back in the day when mom was the caregiver cause dad worked his hands to the bone. He might have had weekends off or maybe not. Mom was tired of supervising your ass and pushed you to dad’s free time.
Further back in time people hunted and fished to eat and supplement the table.
When I was a kid, it wasn’t a worry to have food on the table. Dad worked ALL the time and so did mom. You didn’t eat supper till dad got home.
If you were fortunate, dad knew a thing about hunting and fishing and he enjoyed doing it. Other kids played in the street on weekends, I was going hunting or stayed at grandparents while all went commercial fishing. They lived on the water and many catfish and perch gave up the ghost to me. During hunting season dad would take me out of school to go cut blind material for our weekend duck hunt across the lake to a wma. I lived for that shit. We loaded the truck with cane and back to the boat to load it up and roll out. We had sandwich stuff and maybe a cooked meal to eat cold when we were out. We would kill our limit every hunt (10) a person. There were specks and redfish to catch, usually could catch two at a time. We didn’t fish much as dad was commercial fishing his entire life and hunting was what he wanted to do. I think I can count on two hands how many times he took me fishing. As soon as steel shot came around, he quit hunting for ducks and just about everything else. We did join a deer club that ran dogs a couple years tho. Dad didn’t grow up deer hunting. Onward with the years football was my thing and believe it or not I was good. I always hope we lost our playoff game so I wouldn’t miss the opener of duck season lol. I always played to win. Girls was in but hunting was number 1, I could see girls at night. I eventually found friends that loved to hunt and we learned to deer hunt and bow hunt. Our dad’s didn’t hunt. Many years passed before I killed a deer w a bow. Yes I killed during rifle season but bow hunting I sucked at w killing. I got better and would kill a deer about every other year with a bow....not much has changed since lol.
Met my future wife before I turned 18 and strongly told her I fished and hunted before you and nothing would change that, so if you think different, let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya. She was raised by her mom so wasn’t the outdoors type except they came from a commercial fishing community. My passion transformed to duck hunting every day of the season to the occasional duck hunt, I was deer hunting now. This caused problems cause I wasn’t home for days. Fast forward a few years and now there is youth seasons. I wanted my boys to follow in my footsteps as I knew this was a healthy lifestyle. Soon they were ready to hunt deer. Quit hunting public and got into a lease. Everything was about them and getting them hooked. My boys played ball and I took them fishing regularly. They ate it up cause I catered everything to them. As we crossed some threshold moments in the woods and on water, they always dogged me cause they always did better than me. I started taking the gloves off and making them do the things they needed to learn to be successful. To this day my oldest does it so he’s not left out and the youngest, well it’s always a competition. They are 23 and 21 now and ate up with fishing and hunting at times. They have their own core of friends that are like them for fishing and hunting. Shit I have 4 of them going this weekend to the camp to work.
I did what I thought I had to do to build that drive so we can experience the outdoors together. Once they had it, they had to stand on their own feet.
All in all the whole thing is a process and no two dads are gonna do it the same. My youngest is now finding spots for me to hunt and fish. We have done good in the outdoors department.
I also put my kids in special drawing youth hunts and the open youth hunts. These hunts were just about them and I was there to share and make memories.
One message I’d like to share is don’t spoon feed your kid game. If it comes easy there is no drive to do it again. Enjoy them growing up cause you can’t take any days back to do it over again.
Back in the day when mom was the caregiver cause dad worked his hands to the bone. He might have had weekends off or maybe not. Mom was tired of supervising your ass and pushed you to dad’s free time.
Further back in time people hunted and fished to eat and supplement the table.
When I was a kid, it wasn’t a worry to have food on the table. Dad worked ALL the time and so did mom. You didn’t eat supper till dad got home.
If you were fortunate, dad knew a thing about hunting and fishing and he enjoyed doing it. Other kids played in the street on weekends, I was going hunting or stayed at grandparents while all went commercial fishing. They lived on the water and many catfish and perch gave up the ghost to me. During hunting season dad would take me out of school to go cut blind material for our weekend duck hunt across the lake to a wma. I lived for that shit. We loaded the truck with cane and back to the boat to load it up and roll out. We had sandwich stuff and maybe a cooked meal to eat cold when we were out. We would kill our limit every hunt (10) a person. There were specks and redfish to catch, usually could catch two at a time. We didn’t fish much as dad was commercial fishing his entire life and hunting was what he wanted to do. I think I can count on two hands how many times he took me fishing. As soon as steel shot came around, he quit hunting for ducks and just about everything else. We did join a deer club that ran dogs a couple years tho. Dad didn’t grow up deer hunting. Onward with the years football was my thing and believe it or not I was good. I always hope we lost our playoff game so I wouldn’t miss the opener of duck season lol. I always played to win. Girls was in but hunting was number 1, I could see girls at night. I eventually found friends that loved to hunt and we learned to deer hunt and bow hunt. Our dad’s didn’t hunt. Many years passed before I killed a deer w a bow. Yes I killed during rifle season but bow hunting I sucked at w killing. I got better and would kill a deer about every other year with a bow....not much has changed since lol.
Met my future wife before I turned 18 and strongly told her I fished and hunted before you and nothing would change that, so if you think different, let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya. She was raised by her mom so wasn’t the outdoors type except they came from a commercial fishing community. My passion transformed to duck hunting every day of the season to the occasional duck hunt, I was deer hunting now. This caused problems cause I wasn’t home for days. Fast forward a few years and now there is youth seasons. I wanted my boys to follow in my footsteps as I knew this was a healthy lifestyle. Soon they were ready to hunt deer. Quit hunting public and got into a lease. Everything was about them and getting them hooked. My boys played ball and I took them fishing regularly. They ate it up cause I catered everything to them. As we crossed some threshold moments in the woods and on water, they always dogged me cause they always did better than me. I started taking the gloves off and making them do the things they needed to learn to be successful. To this day my oldest does it so he’s not left out and the youngest, well it’s always a competition. They are 23 and 21 now and ate up with fishing and hunting at times. They have their own core of friends that are like them for fishing and hunting. Shit I have 4 of them going this weekend to the camp to work.
I did what I thought I had to do to build that drive so we can experience the outdoors together. Once they had it, they had to stand on their own feet.
All in all the whole thing is a process and no two dads are gonna do it the same. My youngest is now finding spots for me to hunt and fish. We have done good in the outdoors department.
I also put my kids in special drawing youth hunts and the open youth hunts. These hunts were just about them and I was there to share and make memories.
One message I’d like to share is don’t spoon feed your kid game. If it comes easy there is no drive to do it again. Enjoy them growing up cause you can’t take any days back to do it over again.
This might seem brash to some but I agree that manufacturing success for the kid isn’t going to deliver the intended long term result. However I do believe youth season provides opportunities during the late rut that would otherwise be unattainable and can turn gun hunters into bowhunters. And is an intentional way to get kids more involved which is always a good result. The reply about you not killing enough is misguided I think.
I have next Thursday-Sunday with the wife gone out of town. It's going to be an all squirrel shroom dove weekend with the 3 kids. I don't know if I can get all three at the same time to shut up for deer yet (I'm taking each one alone so there's zero argument on who shoots). My grandfather took me but we always split up, I just realized this. We'd kick brush piles together, but with a dog we'd always post separately as the rabbit circled. Squirrel hunting we'd split and go our separate ways(even when I was pretty young). Hunting alone has been a norm in my life. I'm hoping to have my kids have many memories of us sitting together while young. No screens.