How many of you grew up in a shooting/hunting family?

Status
Not open for further replies.

George Dickel

Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
1,131
Location
Florida
I didn't even though my family were farmers. I don't believe my grandfather ever owned a gun and my dad had a single shot .22lr rifle when I was very young but I never saw it after that. My dad was an only child so there weren't any uncles other than great uncles. Only one of them was a hunter/gun owner. He lived in Wiggins, Colorado and had a hunting cabin in the mountains. He would sometimes come back to Iowa to see family and would bring back venison and elk meat for us. Even on my mother's side of the family, 9 brothers and sisters, who were farmers there weren't any gun owners or hunters. From an early age I had an interest in guns but didn't get one until I was 14 and it was a bolt action .410 shotgun. A couple years later I bought a .22 rifle and got ahold of an Argentine Mauser that I used for hunting.
 
Now, here's a man of few words ...

Dad was a Korean war vet, his dad was a WWI vet, both owned rifles, no handguns. Dad taught me to shoot an air rifle when I was 6 or 7, a .22 a couple years later. Mom's pop, a Finnish immigrant, was a die-hard hunter of all the kinds of mammals you could hunt in the mid-west, owned a lot of great deer rifles, shotguns and a few pistols. His family of riflemen fought the Russians and the Germans for years.

I learned young.
 
I was raised by lefties...
My mother's parents were lefties and my dad's parents were immigrants I guess that means zero guns . my dad did have a S&W police trade in revolver when I was young but by the time I was old enough to shoot it had been sold to make ends meet. My mom does have a gun, a horrendous amt 380 - it doesn't even work according to her but she thinks it's still useful, it's got the same ammo she bought with it in about 1998. She firmly disagrees with anyone owning guns bit thinks it's ok for her because she's a "good person"- typical hypocrisy.oh well, at least I'm a normal guy with a fully functional brain and a damn respectable pile of guns.
 
Oh yeah - mom, dad, granddad, uncles and most all of mom's and dad's friends were all hunters. Even one my younger sisters still hunts occasionally.
My wife, on the other hand grew up in a non-hunting, non gun-owning family in Southern California. Her family wasn't anti-hunting or anti-gun though, they just weren't into that kind of stuff. All of that changed for my wife when she married me (in 1971), and now she's probably killed as many deer as I have, nearly as many pheasants, grouse and ducks, and God willing, we'll be hunting elk together again this fall. She also has as many guns as I do, maybe more.
Talk about irony though, my wife and I have two daughters that grew up hunting with us. The oldest loves hunting, she's good at it, and she raised her 3 sons as hunters. However, our other daughter, the youngest is way too tender-hearted to kill an animal, and she's the one that's a big wheel with one of the nation's largest hunting and conservation organizations.o_O
 
Last edited:
Dad was in WW1&2--he hated guns
Think I was 13 before I got near a gun.
My older brother was the starter.
Both Grandfathers were combat veterans of the Pacific Theater. Neither owned a gun in civilian life. One was an avowed pacifist. He earned his viewpoint ten times over and I respected it.

My Dad got into shooting in college. There was a NRA sponsored shooting program at Case which counted as an elective credit. He qualified Expert and ended up buying his rifle from the school afterwards. He still has it.

Being the rather bookish type, I think he was at a loss for father\son bonding activities when I was young until I got old enough for a .22. After that, our primary interaction was shooting and going to shops and shows. He still didnt own a handgun until much later in life.
 
We had guns about, and went dove hunting a few times a year. Occasionally I deer hunted with other friends whose family was more "into it". We fished much more than hunted or recreational shooting. I kind of went that direction on my own in my teens.
 
My family were all hunters but my dad only took me shooting a couple times, didn't very into shooting until in my 20s but really only started putting round down range in regular basis a couple years ago
 
We hunted for meat and recreation. My dad always took me along on his deer hunts. I remember the first hunt when I was 7 or 8. I shot my first deer when I was 14. We also hunted upland birds as they were plentiful where I grew up. There was a period in my life when I didn't hunt (30's and 40's) but started again around 50 and stopped when I was about 60. I have my dad to thank for all the memories and good times.
 
My dad was a hunter. Always guns around the ranch. Winchester .25-35 over the back door. Took firearms everywhere, usually .22s. If the fish weren't biting, we'd plink tin cans. Stopped for lunch while fixing fence, shoot cow chips. First .22 single shot for Christmas at age 8. Iggy my neighbor beat me by a year.
 
My grandfather was nuts about guns. He was fairly wealthy and when he had a "log castle" built on his Missouri ranch as his retirement home he included a huge basement "handloading and gunsmithing" room with built-in gun cabinets. I only wish I'd been old enough to truly appreciate it before he passed and his treasures scattered.

My father had nothing against guns - his old 721 in .30-'06 lived in his closet as insurance against intruders - but the gun nut gene skipped a generation.
 
I grew up on a dryland farm on the south plains of Texas. Any varmint that that destroyed any part of a crop was fair game, fur, feathers, or weeds and actively eliminated. I started at an early age when I got big enough to shoot my dad's model 12 Remington pump 22. There were no deer there in those days although there are now and the antelope were off limits. If one was destroying crops you could kill it, contact the game department,and they would come get it. You didn't get to keep the animal or receive any renumeration for damages. We never shot one. We would just run them off but coyotes, jackrabbits, and cottontails got shot. We ate the cottontail and fed the jackrabbits to our two dogs. I also popped a huge number of grain eating birds in the fall. It really wasn't cost effective but it sure was fun. I never went deer hunting until I was married. We have a season on antelope here but I've never been interested in hunting them. Using a rifle it would be about like hunting cows.

PS: I really didn't like swinging an idiot stick to deal with those weeds.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top