testtest

Hunting is never going to be the same

Sld1959

Sld1959

Ronin
At 62 I just have to learn to have hunting never be the same. My father passed away in December and he was my life long hunting companion. He took me with him when I was 6 months old and we never missed a year in my life. 62 years either archery or rifle season.

Then my best friend became interested and it was the three of us for nearly 40 years. Don was to be my partner when dad passed but he passed two years ago from brain cancer.

Hunting camp won't be the same solo, but... still better than any other game going...
 
Pretty much the same situation with my dad. A few years ago we went out for the last time. I passed on every one I saw until pop filled both his tags. I had already made my mind up that when dad couldn't hunt anymore I was done too. I've taken hundreds of deer in my life and the last 5 years I found myself feeling bad every time I shot one. Getting soft in my old age I guess.
 
Sld1959 said:
At 62 I just have to learn to have hunting never be the same. My father passed away in December and he was my life long hunting companion. He took me with him when I was 6 months old and we never missed a year in my life. 62 years either archery or rifle season.

Then my best friend became interested and it was the three of us for nearly 40 years. Don was to be my partner when dad passed but he passed two years ago from brain cancer.

Hunting camp won't be the same solo, but... still better than any other game going...
Click to expand...
Sorry for your loss.
fantatic memories with your father afield is what your father would be most proud of.
 
My Dad started me out young also. He bought a shotgun for me when I was nine and I went pheasant hunting with me many time. He started me on deer at about 12. Hunting definitely isn't the same since he passed away. I have only been deer hunting once or twice since when I was trying to introduce my grand son to hunting. Venison is one of our favorite meats around our house.
 
It sounds like many of us started out hunting with family and their close friends. I like to tell folks that I was "trained" to hunt. From the early 60s I can still remember those cold Saturday mornings when I was allowed to tag along with my dad at the local hunt club. I had many teachers for my hunting lessons that spanned several years. If you're a hunter you know there is so much to learn. Getting to carry a gun with ammo and getting to take a shot was the last stage of this process. By the mid 60s my dad and his friends had built a hunting camp on a piece of land my parents purchased in the mountains of western Virginia. Like Sld1959 I've spent the last 50+ years having a ham and cheese sandwich for the Thanksgiving Day's meal. One by one my dad's hunting buddies passed away leaving behind the memories of many days of hard hunts. Those of us left often relived these times during the evenings sitting around the wood stove probably much like stone age hunters did sitting around a fire long ago. My dad has been gone for 20 years, and it fell to me to keep the tradition going for those that were left. And one by one they are now gone as well. It's just me and one of my sons now. He has about 30 years of hunting under his belt, and has a great foundation of memories and stories to pass along.
 
Boy, this is such a familiar scenario for a lot of us. I dad a bio-dad and a step-dad, both who hunted with me over the years. Both are gone now.

We all go through it and we miss those who taught us so well. It's our responsibility to now pass it on to all those we can the very best we can. At 74 I can say I'm about done now, but I can also feel good that I did my part and took part in teaching many.

Miss you dad's !!!
 
I feel the pain also. I lost my dad back in 1980. We had more than a few years of hunting together. I will never forgive him for starting me out on Doves though. LOL I was using a model 31 Remington pump that didn't have a padded butt stock. I fired two boxes of 12 ga. #8s before I pulled the first feather. :unsure:

Man did I have fun but my shoulder sure was sore the next morning. LOL
 
We are all in the same boat. I guess I did not think of dad's passing in the terms of hunting until I started reading some of the hunting posts. I don't have a son to pass the tradition on to and my nephews are only semi interested, when nothing betters going on.

My wife is not overly thrilled about me going to the cabin hunting alone, but it's who I am. I really don't know another life.
 
I am sorry for your loss and understand your pain. When my Dad passed more than 30 years ago the pastor asked what I remembered of good times with him, and if I had any regrets. The best time I recalled was sitting on the bank of our lake fishing with him. I was able to say my only regret was that I did not spend more time with him. With my sons it has been bird hunting and fishing that have created many fond memories. It is gratifying now that my sons are inviting me to fish with them on their boats, and we have a pheasant trip planned for South Dakota in October, a nostalgic tradition that has been repeated from time to time for more than 30 years. As I have said many times, I can go to the store and buy all the food I need, this is about the memories.
 
I can understand the loss of a loved one, but i also don't have the memories. I am a self taught hunter. My father although he is still around, Is an anti-hunter, anti-gunner. So i never got to experience the life that everyone here is posting, But i have done it for my son. We go hunting, fishing and shooting together, I won't deny my son those stories and past times i was denied. We love going in the woods together, he has been my hunting partner the last 15 years, he's 23 now. He's been going in the outdoors since he was 9. I'm jealous of him though.;) I only get out a few days a year now, while he goes out almost every week hunting and fishing. ah to be 23 and free again.....
 
Frankplsr said:
I can understand the loss of a loved one, but i also don't have the memories. I am a self taught hunter. My father although he is still around, Is an anti-hunter, anti-gunner. So i never got to experience the life that everyone here is posting, But i have done it for my son. We go hunting, fishing and shooting together, I won't deny my son those stories and past times i was denied. We love going in the woods together, he has been my hunting partner the last 15 years, he's 23 now. He's been going in the outdoors since he was 9. I'm jealous of him though.;) I only get out a few days a year now, while he goes out almost every week hunting and fishing. ah to be 23 and free again.....
Click to expand...
You have your memories, its just with a younger generation not older. Cherish them, the time goes so fast.
 
Frankplsr said:
I can understand the loss of a loved one, but i also don't have the memories. I am a self taught hunter. My father although he is still around, Is an anti-hunter, anti-gunner. So i never got to experience the life that everyone here is posting, But i have done it for my son. We go hunting, fishing and shooting together, I won't deny my son those stories and past times i was denied. We love going in the woods together, he has been my hunting partner the last 15 years, he's 23 now. He's been going in the outdoors since he was 9. I'm jealous of him though.;) I only get out a few days a year now, while he goes out almost every week hunting and fishing. ah to be 23 and free again.....
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting. Welcome Frank!
 
Frank, certainly not trying to detract anything you've said here, and not trying in any way to analyze your dad's mindset, but from what you write it sounds more like your dad was a non-hunter rather than an anti-hunter. There is a significant difference in the two.

And the fact that he was a non-hunter and simply not interested, he apparently didn't dissuade you from enjoying the outdoors, hunting and fishing, etc, with others. So, in his own way he made it possible, maybe even probable, for you to be even more insistent/consistent with enjoying those activities with others and especially your son.

Hoping I'm right in my generalization here, and that it's taken in the right vein, you and your son will have many happy and fulfilling memories to share together in the future. Oh, and welcome to the club!

Quoting @Sld1959 from msg #15 above: "You have your memories, its just with a younger generation not older. Cherish them, the time goes so fast." (y)(y)(y)
 
Sorry for your loss @Sld1959. Completely understand where you are coming from. My dad passed along everything he knew. I haven't hunted since he passed but I do fish once in a while. Certainly not as much as I use to with him. The conversations and laughs we use to get into. I miss him and those days. I notice his mannerisms with me when I am with my kids. We have plenty of laughs and hopefully, they will pass that along to their kids.
 
Pretty fortunate fellows here. My Dad never went hunting or fishing, hardly ever done anything with me. Would ride the entire day in the pickup helping him on a salt route and never say a word to me. We played checkers a few times. He was a good man, just did not know how to express love or play or teach his children. Never shed a tear and hardly missed him when he departed. But I turned out alright and looking back I learned a lot and understood more from the memories as I matured. One of the pleasant memories was the only time he gave me money; at the supper table for raising the runt hogs I saved into the pen with my sister, he had included them in the last load of hogs sent to market and I never gave it a thought. This boy never saw such a pile of money, in the late fifties. Then he took me to the little sporting goods store in town and I bought my first rifle, (.22 Winchester, clip fed) picked it out and paid for it myself with my own money. No one ever showed me a thing about how to handle and shoot or clean it. But back then, farm boys just seemed to know. My best buddy, the next farm east had a single shot and we run the woods and streams all day long and no one worried about us. Both of us could just naturally shoot the eyes out of a snake. Shot a lot of squirrels. And acorns. One of us would shoot beside a bullfrog in the mud, launching it high into the air and the other would shoot it in the air! One day I tried something I seen in a western movie; the barn had lighting rods on it and the one on the end had a weather vane on it too - I drew a bead on the tip of the arrow on the vane and squeezed 'er off. Much to my surprise it did not spin but only broke off! These days, with a red dot, can't hit half of what I did as a boy with open sights.

I did do one really bad thing with that rifle. My buddy was one of six boys and two girls whose father died young and left his mother to raise them all. She earned money by babysitting and cleaning and raise them she somehow did. They had a few acres she rented out, a ramshackle house, no plumbing (the long handle pump gave delicious cold black sulphur water) and an out house. One day Marv told me the neighbors hogs had gotten into his mothers corn field and ruined much of the crop. Then few days later the hogs were back.......one of the older brothers had told/asked the neighbor to repair the fence but he never did. As the hogs continued to wreck the crop of that poor lady, with my buddy giving me updates, one day a righteous indignation set in and we planned justice. Since the neighbor would not repair the fence and seemed unfazed at the widow's ruined crop we would pop a couple of those pigs! We went to the high river bank on his mom's side, got prone and waited. Then a sow with several piglets trailing took the trail down to the water. He popped one and I popped one. Then he popped another an me another. There were many hogs of all sizes coming to drink and soon there was two excited boys shooting pigs fast as we could. It was such fun we did not stop. Hogs were laying all over the place and the wounded ones ran back into the corn on the owners side. When the action slowed down (think we ran out of ammo) and we stopped, the reality (and seriousness) of what we had done set in. Now we were scared, really scared. And the farmer could not help but find out as we estimated there were perhaps a hundred or more dead/wounded hogs. What should we do? Well, for one, get rid of the evidence. We dragged as many as we could to the current hoping they would wash away. We soon were tired and unable to move the larger ones.
So with our knives we began to slit the bellies of those laying about and what we could find in the corn rows.....they would rot faster was our reasoning. But it was a certain thing this slaughter would be found out. He headed home and so did I. And did not see each other or leave the house for many days. I was scared to death and watched the lane every day knowing the Sheriff would show up. And Dad would be no help, he had told us boys that if we got into trouble, better to deal with the law than with him! To this day it is a mystery that Marv nor I ever heard a word about it. The law never showed. There was no talk about it that we heard. Nothing in the paper. Still, it was a long time before we got together again and done any shooting with those rifles. Surely the statute of limitations has run out and am safe to tell this story? I would have been nine/ten years old.
 
Although my father never talked about the war I believe he saw way to much carnage due to guns so never had much interest in firearms, we shared a love of working on our cars. He passed in 1984 and I still find myself wishing I could sit and talk with him again.

Happy Father’s Day Dad! Miss you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top