Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire First thing you hunted

I can't say for sure. It was likely birds with a BB gun. The first thing I remember killing to eat was rabbit. We hunted them with our 15# fiberglass bows and a field tip on a wooden arrow. Not too long thereafter, I'd shoot diving ducks off the water with my pellet gun at the borrow pits not too far from my house.

Gophers (Richardson ground squirrels) with a Winchester 68 that belonged to an uncle killed in WWII. Brother still has the rifle, still kill shoot an occasional gopher in the same area.

Late 50's/ early 60's grasshoppers hangin out in the garden with a Daisy BB gun.

not counting BB gun, my grandfather would take me coon hunting with his Black and Tans

Doves.

Tweety birds around the yard and hood with red rider. Still have my red rider and it still works.

Anything I could find with homemade bows and arrows, sparrows and rats with my bb gun moved on to squirrels with my grandads 22

Picking locusts out of the trees using chinaberries shot from a homemade slingshot.

Bunnies

Small birds with a BB gun. Then cottontails with a .22.

Rabbit hunting, with the best buddy a kid ever had, Alvin the beagle.

Just about anything that moved with slingshots. Then rabbits in front of the family pet, a beagle gifted as a puppy from the Cornell Vet School virus free breeding stock. When he first struck fresh rabbit scent at about 6 months old he was virtually obscured in a Mayapple patch, kiyiing, and we thought something was attacking him. His baying became less shrill as he matured. When it was time to quit we had to stand across the path the rabbit had taken and catch him as he came up the trail. Winchester M37 single shot 12 ga with a full choke. Didn't dare shoot anything up close or the game would be absolutely shredded.

Something not needing a hunting license: gophers out in the pasture in central ND.

Something needing a hunting license: ducks.

Strapped a flashlight to a bb gun and shot birds in the out buildings at night. Scary by yourself. I remember sprinting back to the house a few times convinced a monster was chasing me.

Squirrel and grouse for an actual real licensed first hunt. 12 years old. Was hell on pigeons much younger than that with my daisy

Great thread.

Mine were shrikes, AKA butcher birds. I thought they were kind of cool birds, they way they would impale lizards and what-not on Joshua tree spines.

But - I got paid a bounty for them, and at a nickle apiece I'd overlook that fact that I liked 'em.

5 or 6 years old, Daisy No. 102 model 36, 500 shot tube. Still have it!

Graduated to a Revelation .22 magnum I bought from Western Auto partially with that bounty money, which did a more thorough job of killing them and obviously at longer range. Also let me move up to jackrabbits and coyotes. The old Daisy would only piss off jackrabbits when I could hit 'em.

But that Daisy is what "taught" me to still hunt. Had to get pretty damn close to knock a shrike out of a Joshua, then run up and grab it and wring it's neck.

Dayum, most guardians would get arrested these days for paying their kid for such wholesome behavior.

Doves - I was probably 9 or 10. Dad had recently bought me a Stevens 94 20ga Youth and we had two boxes of Sure-Shot #6. It was an all day late season shoot on a hog farm and it was COLD! I can still see the first dove I hit peeling out of the air. My dad was more pumped than I was as he pounded me on the back yelling "You got him! I managed to kill four that day. There were hogs in the field and I remember the hogs watching the sky for falling birds. You had to get to your bird before that hog or they'd gobble them up.

Rabbits, birds, coyotes….

I once killed 86 black birds with 2 12 guage shells. Made chili out of them

Coyotes

Ground squirrels - with a baseball bat. Dad knew after my first kill that it was time for me to have a rifle.