Growing up where and when I grew up, I didn't know anyone who didn't hunt. And I guess my family being in the rural south since about 1700, they always hunted. From the time I was seven or eight years old, I had a BB gun in my hand every single day terrorizing all the local birds. My dad had been a big hunter, but by the time I got big enough, he worked too much and had sort of lost interest. Of course, he took me enough to get me started and by the time I was 11 or 12, I was out after squirrels practically every day by myself.
There is something to the genetics thing though. My grandfather on my mother's side was a big dog guy. He always had dogs running "wolves" as they called them and my uncle loves to run dogs on deer. My brother has told me about going out on countless nights with Papaw as a little kid and sitting with Papaw and his buddies while they drank a little and listened to the dogs. Well, my mom's maiden name comes from a Norman French word that means, literally, "Keeper of the Hounds". Somewhere back in time, one of my ancestors was a hound keeper and that love of the dogs has made it all the way through to the present day.
