My father hunted when he was a kid growing up, partly on a homestead, in central Montana, but didn�t by the time I was born. He kept a few guns and liked to plink with a .22 rifle or handgun but that was about it. Apparently he didn�t like eating a lot of jackrabbits and sage grouse when he was a kid, which is apparently what the family subsisted on a lot during the homestead years.
I apparently got my hunting fever from my grandmother, who didn�t hunt much either by the time I knew her, and died when I was five. (Grandpa died during the Depression.) But she was a tough woman who homesteaded by herself just after World War I, and a hell of a rifle shot, even using one for wingshooting birds. She liked to hunt deer and elk for meat, and pronghorn when they finally became legal game again. She couldn�t cook anything worth a damn, whether game or tame, but apparently I didn�t eat enough of her cooking to turn me off eating game.
Some of my dad�s friends took me deer hunting when I got old enough, and I did a lot of small game hunting on my own, especially when working in the tiny tourist town where my dad�s brother Larry ran a summer theater. He had hunted deer when younger, but didn�t hunt much by the time I got old enough to go after big game.
My brother didn�t inherit any of it, though he fishes some, and one of my two sisters has fished some too. For a long time they kept waiting for me to grow out of hunting, but finally realized it wasn�t happening.
