I was lucky enough to grow up in a family with a very long, rich, and deep hunting tradition. My Dad's uncle was a professional trick shooter for Savage Arms. He did shooting exhibitions all over the Ohio and Pennsylvania area, bestowing the virtues of Savage Arms. Dad said he was an amazing shot.
My earliest childhood memories are of climbing over the mountain of gear that accumulated in the dining room before deer season. Dad took an old Army backpack and cut holes in the bottom for my stubby legs to dangle through, and pretty much from the time I could drink from a cup, I went hunting with dad. When I was about 8 I started small game hunting. Dad ran beagles for rabbits and pheasants, and his dogs were very good. An invite to join Dad for a small game hunt was not to be taken lightly. The dogs did all the heavy lifting, we just had to make the shots.
By the time I was 11, I was fully expected to put food on the table in the fall. We hunted squirrels and between me and my older brother, put a lot of meals on the table. The tails were kept and sold to Mepps. A year's haul of tails usually bought us enough .22 ammo to get us through the next year. My first deer rifle was a Model 94 chambered for .32 Special. It would be a full 10 years before I killed my first deer, a spike buck that walked in front of me up at camp in Pennsylvania. Sadly, Dad died the following spring.
I realize how lucky I was to grow up in a hunting family. It's too bad more kids don't get the opportunity. So many great memories. Squirrel hunts in the huge beech trees of Ohio, the whistle of a wood duck sideslipping down through the branches of a tree in a beaver pond, so many deer hunts with and without my father. As I often say, I'm a very lucky man.
