Charshooter
03-26-2007, 10:22 PM
My father was a farmer and a consumptive hunter and fisherman. These activities were not so much a sport to him, as he also trapped quite a good deal and we grew up on mainly wild game for meat. My parents were land wealthy, but money poor during the 1930s; by the time I was born, things had improved little, but during the war years, stock prices boomed. My father was still a man who did not believe in luxuries and for this reason, we ate wild game most of the time.
I started shooting in 1940s with BB gun that pumped several times to increase power, it was more like a pellet gun we find today, then got a 22rf about eleven years old and started hunting small game, such as squirrels and rabbits. At about this time our family relocated to my father’s brother’s spread in northern Wyoming and I began shooting center fire rifles. My cousins practiced shooting 44-40 cast bullets about this time; it was lots of fun and good practice. We would cast the bullets using wheel rights and then my uncle would load the cartridges for us, I wish I could have learned hand loading back them, but at least I had an early taste at casting bullets.
I was twelve when I started deer hunting with my father. We took mainly deer and antelope. I also used a shotgun, .410 single shot and practiced on tin cans thrown in the air and bird hunted about the same age. Later, I bird hunted with my father, uncle and cousins, we were a close family and all hunted. We also would trout fish and my father became quite an angler, I always favored the southern fishing sport, bass fishing.
By the time, I was thirteen; I was subsistence hunting every year with my father and small game hunting myself. By the age of fourteen, I was consumed with hunting and fishing and I never changed.
My oldest boy had a similar gun owning background; he had a BB gun Daisy model at ten and went small game hunting and bird hunting with me since he was twelve. By the age of thirteen, he liked bird hunting but was not as exclusively interested in consumptive sports as I was and he never developed an understanding of subsistence hunting or fishing. We used to bass fish more than hunt. At sixteen, he liked team sports more than I ever did and played high school football. At eighteen, he was still deer hunting and bird hunting, but not as a regular thing. Now as an adult, he bird hunts and hunts deer rarely, but he still likes bass fishing. My younger son hunted and fished, but he always liked team sports more and he now would rather watch a football game than go hunting or fishing. My daughters both hunted but they never took to it like the boys and the one that married a hunter seldom hunts, if at all, but she likes to eat deer and is good at preparing it. Her sister has never liked hunting even though I taught her young; she always tried to avoid family outings that included hunting. She did not mind fishing as a young girl, but in her preteen years, she said it was a “redneck’ activity. She is my youngest child and was born in 1973.
One extreme hunting father raised me and I was the same with my kids. My oldest boy still hunts and owns rifles and shotguns, but he just has other interests, while I had little interest in anything other than machine work, engineering and law officer work. He was exposed to a very different culture than I was. I worked outside the home while paw was always a farmer and rancher, I was I man with a job to go off to in the morning.
Unlike my parental family, my wife and I lived on a ranch and raised stock, but held jobs. We had a good deal more money and could indulge our kids much more than my parents did my siblings and me. We always had some town contact and my wife shopped at the supermarket. My mother, on the other hand, made things from scratch and cooked wild game more than store food. I think this is the big difference today; many, or perhaps I should say most men today are not raised on the farm and do not come from depression parental families.
Most of us born during the depression years and right after it make up one generation, some call it the silent generation, but I call it the last rural generation. The baby boomers that came after us were far less likely to be raised in a rural setting. America was on its great upswing after WWII and many men had GI bill loans and benefits. They bought houses in the suburbs if cities and built subdivisions on the outskirts of towns. The children of the late 1040s and 1950s had a very different childhood experience and this has caused the greatest change in American society since the War Between the States.
I have met many younger men, who were country raised, but their numbers are diminishing and in the world of tomorrow, the idea of saving money by hunting will seem strange. Hunting will be seen as mainly a sport and in some circles, not related to hunting at all. I observed on other websites that hunting guns take a backseat to automatic pistols, AR, AK and SKS rifles. It seem the focus is on a rather extreme perhaps paranoid delusional sense of self-preservation? Is their world really filled with so much fear of human violence, or have they just lost touch with the human males natural predatory instinct?
I started shooting in 1940s with BB gun that pumped several times to increase power, it was more like a pellet gun we find today, then got a 22rf about eleven years old and started hunting small game, such as squirrels and rabbits. At about this time our family relocated to my father’s brother’s spread in northern Wyoming and I began shooting center fire rifles. My cousins practiced shooting 44-40 cast bullets about this time; it was lots of fun and good practice. We would cast the bullets using wheel rights and then my uncle would load the cartridges for us, I wish I could have learned hand loading back them, but at least I had an early taste at casting bullets.
I was twelve when I started deer hunting with my father. We took mainly deer and antelope. I also used a shotgun, .410 single shot and practiced on tin cans thrown in the air and bird hunted about the same age. Later, I bird hunted with my father, uncle and cousins, we were a close family and all hunted. We also would trout fish and my father became quite an angler, I always favored the southern fishing sport, bass fishing.
By the time, I was thirteen; I was subsistence hunting every year with my father and small game hunting myself. By the age of fourteen, I was consumed with hunting and fishing and I never changed.
My oldest boy had a similar gun owning background; he had a BB gun Daisy model at ten and went small game hunting and bird hunting with me since he was twelve. By the age of thirteen, he liked bird hunting but was not as exclusively interested in consumptive sports as I was and he never developed an understanding of subsistence hunting or fishing. We used to bass fish more than hunt. At sixteen, he liked team sports more than I ever did and played high school football. At eighteen, he was still deer hunting and bird hunting, but not as a regular thing. Now as an adult, he bird hunts and hunts deer rarely, but he still likes bass fishing. My younger son hunted and fished, but he always liked team sports more and he now would rather watch a football game than go hunting or fishing. My daughters both hunted but they never took to it like the boys and the one that married a hunter seldom hunts, if at all, but she likes to eat deer and is good at preparing it. Her sister has never liked hunting even though I taught her young; she always tried to avoid family outings that included hunting. She did not mind fishing as a young girl, but in her preteen years, she said it was a “redneck’ activity. She is my youngest child and was born in 1973.
One extreme hunting father raised me and I was the same with my kids. My oldest boy still hunts and owns rifles and shotguns, but he just has other interests, while I had little interest in anything other than machine work, engineering and law officer work. He was exposed to a very different culture than I was. I worked outside the home while paw was always a farmer and rancher, I was I man with a job to go off to in the morning.
Unlike my parental family, my wife and I lived on a ranch and raised stock, but held jobs. We had a good deal more money and could indulge our kids much more than my parents did my siblings and me. We always had some town contact and my wife shopped at the supermarket. My mother, on the other hand, made things from scratch and cooked wild game more than store food. I think this is the big difference today; many, or perhaps I should say most men today are not raised on the farm and do not come from depression parental families.
Most of us born during the depression years and right after it make up one generation, some call it the silent generation, but I call it the last rural generation. The baby boomers that came after us were far less likely to be raised in a rural setting. America was on its great upswing after WWII and many men had GI bill loans and benefits. They bought houses in the suburbs if cities and built subdivisions on the outskirts of towns. The children of the late 1040s and 1950s had a very different childhood experience and this has caused the greatest change in American society since the War Between the States.
I have met many younger men, who were country raised, but their numbers are diminishing and in the world of tomorrow, the idea of saving money by hunting will seem strange. Hunting will be seen as mainly a sport and in some circles, not related to hunting at all. I observed on other websites that hunting guns take a backseat to automatic pistols, AR, AK and SKS rifles. It seem the focus is on a rather extreme perhaps paranoid delusional sense of self-preservation? Is their world really filled with so much fear of human violence, or have they just lost touch with the human males natural predatory instinct?