Mine was squirrel, long time ago

Sage rats,.......not much "hunting, more shooting". But I was 4.....so that's something, to a four year old.

You still hunt them?

🦫

Beaver.

rats at the garbage dump

Love squirrel gravy and biscuits. But think the rebs will take offense since I'm from Iowa

A sparrow with a Benjamin I still own and shoot 53 years later.

[bleep], been selling off most my excess varmint rifles. Local farmers have damn near poisoned the all off, and BLM patches have become a joke. But, yep.........just hard to find most places now a days, without some bullshit&it pay to shoot

Chocolate Chip cookies.

Nipple.

Been finding the same, mostly poisoning out of Burns.

🦫

Wabbits

Hell I don't remember. Birds, chipmonks, frogs, salamanders, they were all on the menu for me and my trusty Crosman.

Rabbits. Started when I was about 7, at first trailing one or other of my older relatives as they were walking around with a .22 or shotgun, and later shooting the bunnies myself under adult supervision. I also learned from my grandfather how to set traps for them.

My parents gave me my own .22 when I was 10, and they'd give me one round at a time and send me out by myself. I'd have to make that one count, or be prepared to explain myself. What with our place and various neighbours (most related to us) I had over 3000 acres to hunt on.

There aren't nearly the numbers of bunnies around as there were, but I still do enjoy going out for a walk with .22 or shotgun and seeing if I can knock a few.

Black widows and pigeons with a BB gun when I was 7or8 . There was a vacant trailer park across the street from the house and an old McCormick Deering barn a little ways down the street.

Rabbits. Practically every afternoon after school with the .12g or .22....rabbits have all but gone for decades, decimated by calicivirus.

Blue grouse

Squirrels. Down in the creek bottom below our old farmhouse.

Jack rabbits and grouse

Squirrels with a single shot 22.

Roamed the backyard with a bb gun for a long time. Sparrows and starlings were fair game.

First licensed hunt was for squirrel.

-Jake

Head shooting turtles in a pond with my Uncle's octagonal Model 12.

And water moccasin...

Doves

Rabbits

Rabbits at the age of 9 with a single shot 28 ga.

Squirrels

Rabbits... badly.

It wasn't initially explained to me that you wait for the dogs to circle the rabbit. I took a fox 'n hounds approach and followed the dogs. With me crashing through the brush the rascally rabbit was hesitant to return and we were all headed for the county line leaving gramps far behind scratching his head.

Snipes

Squirrels w .22 LR around 4th grade.

barn rats. Grand dad gave us two .22 shorts for each dead rat we brought to him.

Titty.

Squirrels with a 410, that I still own.

We had some kind of small red squirrel in our woods. Dad seemed pizzed at them so he started me off with his old mossberg 22 rifle and a box of ammo. That rifle was very accurate. Had a full wood stock. I havent got it out of my closet for years and haven't shot it in 30 years. I shot the heck out of them squirrels. Dang if Could kill them all.

Crows. They would sit on a swing set and make all sorts of noise every morning. Dad said I could shoot one. I took the screen out of my window and popped one with my pellet rifle the next day. Crows never sat there again. All I had to do was set the window screen on the ground and you wouldn’t see a crow on the property til I put the screen back.

Rabbits with a Ben Pearson fiberglass bow, wooden arrows with field tip.....shoot them and most times had to chase them down and shoot them again

^^Same^^

Frogs with a Daisy BB gun.

Doves with a slingshot, shot large ball bearings, very lethal. Graduated to a pellet pistol when I was older.

Squirrel with my dad and one of his coon hounds.

Doves. Single shot 410. Wasn’t very effective on flyers, got one the first year and two the next. I could ground sluice them or wait until the landed in a willow though and do pretty good.

Birds, snakes, bunnys, with a BB or pellet gun.

Same here.

Sparrows, starlings, frogs etc with my BB gun from age 7-12, then Jack rabbits and cotton tails with my .22.

First game was a dove at 6. That was 1957.

First time pop took me hunting, I was 3 years old, 1953.
Piggy backed me up into a tree stand, wrapped me in a blanket and tied me to the tree so I wouldn't go 5o sleep and fall! 😃
We saw a doe and a yearling. I kept asking him to, "Shoot the little one!". Leon county was 3 point bucks only at the time.

Squirrels with a Stevens model 15a

squirrel age 7-8

Black-tailed jackrabbits, mostly - and some western cottontails, with a winchester 67a carbine.
Got that little rifle for my 7th birthday, my daughter has it now.
I used to take it with me every day, when I went to bring in the milk cow.
Got lots of jacks, back then.

Songbirds, red Ryder, 6 yrs old.
Had about a 20 acre patch of woods in the neighborhood.
My mom's cat used to follow along, he loved killing wounded birds just kill em for sport and wait for the next one.


Grab my red Ryder, he would hear the BB,s in it.
Be right at the door wanting to go out hunting with me.

Squirrels. Started out 62yrs ago...seems like 6 "weeks" ago, not decades! ha

Squirrel

Ron

Squirrels, chipmunks and any bird I could find with an old Sheridan blue streak pellet rifle

Definitely squirrels, we had pecan trees in our yard if i shot them my mom would fry them for us.

Squirrels

Sparrows with my trusty Red Rider

Rats,used to walk the riverbank behind the house with my .22.

Squirrels with a .22 when I was six.

Robins with a Benjamin, the moved up to a wWinchester 1904 I think. I still have it.

Cardinals, blue jays, mocking birds, wood peckers, robins.

A Coot.

Songbirds with a BB gun, barn cat would follow me if I had the gun, when they hit the ground she'd pounce on them and crunch their heads.

Kent

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.

Songbirds with my Daisy if you can call “shooting and killing” “hunting”?

Second was squirrels & rabbits.

Yep...me too! Then I moved up to groundhogs with a .22.

Any critter that happened to be within a 3 mile radius of my house and could fall to the power of 10 pumps on a Crossman 766.

Squirrels, and hunted rabbits with a “one eyed” with my Dad, uncles, and grandfather…..about 65 years ago! Tailing along with them at around 5, carrying my own gun at around 7!
memtb

Doves and squirrels

Squirrels.

2nd grade, I guarded the cherry tree with my Red Ryder.
Moved up to anything the Red Ryder Could do, fur or feather, then on to a Crossman 766 for the same. Brought them home by the handful for the dogs to eat.
At legal age I was able to hunt small game then deer with real guns, but the varmints and rodents, fur or feather, have remained a hobby to this day (today).

Shooting carp in the creek down on the corner of the farm at 4 years old with my dad and his 22 rifle which I have today.

Squirrels, started with a .410 not long after moved up to a 12 ga.

Am I the only one who learned to shoot sitting by a pond popping turtles with a .22 ?

Rabbits with a 20 gauge 870

Doves when I was a 10 year old, with Dad. Good memories.

We also shot a lot of ground squirrels with the .22 Marlin on a friend's ranch.

Then Dad introduced me to pheasant hunting later that season, when I was just ten years old. More than 50 years later, it's still my favorite hunt.

Good memories indeed. Thanks for asking the question.

Guy

No. Me and dad used to sit on the dock at the pond with a Marlin 60 and a brick of Federal Lightning shooting heads when they’d pop up.

Of course I’m in SWOK too so it might be a regional thing.

Frogs,toads,water bugs, turtles,chipmunks,squirrels,rabbits etc etc
Nothing was safe when we made a round with a pocket full off BBs

A friend of mine had a pond on his farm that was full of frogs, like hundreds of them.

You'd only see their eyes above the water, but we had a blast plinking them with his bb gun. Wouldn't kill them , just stun them, and we must have done that every Saturday afternoon for 3 weeks one summer

I hadn't thought about that in forever. I'm sure that made us better shots , at least with iron sights, just running thru those tubes of BBs

Baptist preachers daughters. Ooooooweeeeeeee, Mississippi was full of them when I was living their.

The neighbors cat with the good ole red rider for me.

Squirrels

Squirrels and doves as a kid.

Birds with a BB gun.

Squirrels

Red Fox (The 4 legged one)... When i was 13 my older brother bought me a 870 20 ga deer gun... After sighting it in with slugs for deer season, I loaded it up with some reloaded lowbase 9's over some highbase 4's and went out lookin' for some birds to shoot for practice... While crossing a snow covered creek i scared up a big Fox about 20 feet in front of me... I let loose with two of the 9's and he kicked hard at the shots... Then i got a #4 into him as i broke thru the ice... He was pretty far away by then and i thought he got away... I was wet and cold and it was almost dark... But i found him the next day... Hunting Lesson #1... Always load for Bear when in bear (Fox) country... PS, Got a nice fork buck opening morning...

Probably a deer.

The first things I killed were bear and 'coon, both long before my first deer.

Jeeze wasn't so much hunting as just another chore Vermints! Gophers, Red Squirrels, Raccoons, Rats, Mice, Pigeons, Woodchucks, birds in the granary, Crows! The cows when they we in the pasture might be a mile or so away and going to get them for the evening milking meant take a .22 along with and edibles like pheasant or grouse were always welcome. squirrels and bunnies likewise. Varmints like fox, coyote and wolves had a bounty on them. Never got a wolf back then doing that though. Crows, striped gophers and pocket gopher bounties were pocket spending money.

As far back as I can remember.

Pollywogs Frogs and Night Crawlers

Yep those too, use to selll crawlers for 50 cents a dozen pkg up in paper bedding.
Good reminder!
Thanks

Polly woggs were fun to run a bb thru too as well as grasshoppers n butterflys

Squirrels. My aunt had a pasture full of hickory trees and it was right across the road from our place.

kwg

Sparrows with my Red Ryder at about age 5

Pheasant

I had a Good Business going selling Night crawlers.
I built it up over several years and had people coming from all over the SLC Valley to get them from me.
I was about 12 in the early 70s when I made $2000 in a summer.
The next year the IRS shut me down.
They told my dad that he had to add my income (a 12 year old) to his House hold income so I had to stop selling them.

I was bringing home Pollywog's and frogs when I was maybe 6 years old.

Fun Time Just be home before Dark.
Our Parents never knew what we were up to or doing on the weekends /

Summer Vacation at 8 I was masking in windows for my dad's Painting Business and was probably over paid at ether 25 cents to 50 cents an hour.

Shoot, as a kid with access to a good.22, it was Chipmunks and Red Squirrels, along with Black Birds and Starlings.
When I finally reached 12, old enough for a hunting license in PA, I finally got to go with The Old Man, hunting Squirrel and Rabbits. Dad always loved hunting Cottontails behind a good Beagle! I caught holy hell for shooting one on the jump!
“Dammit, boy, let the dog bring them around! That what the dog is for!”
Shucks, here I was thinking the shotgun was for shooting them!
But the high point was going up on the mountain in deer season!
I know that getting a hunting license and going with The Old Man on the mountain meant more to me than turning 16 and getting a drivers license.
I’ve been hunting deer around here for 4&1/2 decades now.
I’ve been as cold, wet, sweated, caught in brush & thorns, and every other discomfort you can bitch about!
I’ve come home dragging a nice buck, and I’ve come home empty handed, cold, wet and disgusted!
But I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for all the tea in China!
God has blessed me being born into a hunting family, and as I said in previous post, hunting with the people you love, is one of His greatest blessings!
7mm

My wife’s first hunt……at 24, her first hunt/kill was a Shiras Moose! She got a late start…..but, quickly made up ground! The moose with a borrowed .264 WM, later that year she got her first deer and first elk with a borrowed .243 Win.

I guess that I can “rat her out” now as the Statute of Limitations has passed. The next year she “ground sluiced” 5 Sage Hens with one shot….with a borrowed shotgun with a bent barrel. 🙀 To compound the problem…..only one was needed to fill out! 🤔 memtb

Squirrel for me.

I was about 6 or so and had shot my brothers Remington .22 auto a few times. Dad took it and me down to the river bottom to shoot some squirrels.
After about a 45 minute walk and several misses, we were back at the truck. Dad saw a squirrel on a limb and handed me his model 12 16 ga.
I got that squirrel but what I really remember was my dad yelling "finger off the trigger, finger off the trigger", as the recoil of the old Winchester spun me into the trucks windshield

Tweety birds.

Doves, that I remember, was in my teens. Then grouse and rabbits. Didn't deer hunt until my early 20s

We used to drown out the rats and let the terriors take care of them

Squirrels

Are they using the zinc phosphide like they do here for the Belding's squirrels?

I just have to find out. I see Joshua tree in your post, so I'm guessing you were somewhere in CA-NV-AZ? But, what was the reasoning for a bounty on shrikes?

All the bugs they eat, anyone in farm or garden country should be happy to have them around. In the desert I can't see what harm they'd do? Quail chicks on their menu???

Probably doves.

Yep

Crows, with a .22LR - it was my job to protect the fall pecan crop by rolling up the welcome mat for those thieving birds.

Tweety bird with a BB gun. Squirrels as first game animal.

Yep. 40 years ago and I can still see the squirrel in the trees and the smell the gun powder from my single shot 20 ga.

Same

Doves

Jack rabbits with a Daisy BB gun. First kill was a quail sitting in a fig tree. One BB to the breast knocked him down and you can bet your ass I proudly ate him.

Sparrows with my BB gun, at age 5 or 6, then doves with a H&R Topper .410. And also frog and snapping turtle shooting with my first single shot .22 in the Ranch stock tank.

Wharf rats for a 10 cent bounty. Smooth bore .22 calibre.

Doves.

Never stopped, either.

Starlings and sparrows with a BB gun.