I'm pretty much a product of my "envyronment" My Dad was convinced by his buddies to start hunting when I was a very small boy and he was in his early 40's. They were a bunch of farmers & rural labourers who had heard about the fantastic moose hunting available in the Cumberland House marshes of NE Saskatchewan when the "new" Squaw Rapids dam was built on the Saskatchewan River in the early 1960's. My 10 yrs older brother got to join in soon enough, but I had much more than ten years to wait to hunt moose with Dad. Nothing in the world could possibly seem as exotic and desirable as my Dad's hunting stories about Cumberland House, and the truckloads!! of moose that they brought out were truly amazing to my young eyes. I would pet and covet Dad's sporterized .303 SMLE any chance that I was allowed to.
My maternal Grandpa would come out each October from his new home in Edmonton to hunt ducks at our farm. I was his retriever. We'd drive the back roads in his Caddilac and jump shoot teals ( me wearing a huge pair of waders the whole time) , or wait at the edge of a barley field and shoot mallards. The skies were dark with ducks.
My first really good toy was a double barrel "shotgun" dart gun ordered from the T. Eaton Co's Christmas catalogue. It had had a wind up Mallard as a target. I bought my first Daisy BB gun at 9 yrs, with $2 that I earned myself on our farm, and got an impressively powerful .177 pellet rifle the next year. My younger brother and I were hell on english sparrows, mice, rats and ground squirrels on the farm after that. At 10 years of age, I figured I was ready for the big leagues and longed to graduate to duck shooter instead of dog. I bought my first .22 at 12, and got the chance to hunt ducks at 12, using my Dad's 12 ga Ithaca pump, and to hunt whitetail deer at 14, using my Brother's .303. Have been hooked ever since.
Last edited by castnblast; 09/11/14.
