mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Postal service in my neighborhood isn’t very consistent, so it can make for some interesting deliveries. The other day, a neighbor two blocks over walked to my door to personally re-direct a newsletter she also receives. It was touching, and perhaps something that would only happen in a small town or at least on the West Coast.
And just yesterday I arrived home to see the February issue of Field & Stream on the kitchen table, and was saddened a little to realize it was merely mis-delivered & if I were a good neighbor I’d head right back out the door and return. Which I did, but not before sitting down to read a cute FOB section in which readers submitted pictures of their sons tagging along for the hunt. Took me back to my rural roots, where a good third of school kids had November 15th off for the first day of deer season, and the best parties always seemed to happen at someone’s deer camp. But thankfully that whole experience has been streamlined into “Dear Camp: the Musical.” I’m told I went pheasant hunting when I was three, but ended up sabotaging everything when I insisted on charging the pheasants, shrieking to my dad & co. for back-up. Were any of you ever recruited for hunts w/your fathers or others?
Comments (7)
Comment
I was never invited to go hunting with my dad, but I am still traumatized to this day by the memory of dead animals hanging from my swingset.
posted by Melissa in MT on 1-20-2008 at 9:59 am
I definitely did — the magic age was 8. The first time I went bird hunting with my dad and grandad, I shot at a bird and they told me I just missed hitting two birds with one shot. Which I believed until I was 25, when I found out that they told the same story to each of my sisters on their first hunting trips.
posted by mamacita on 1-20-2008 at 10:24 pm
I was allergic to dogs, which deprived my dad of owning a German shorthair hunting dog like his father had owned. Consequently, when I was a young girl, aged in the single digits, my dad brought me along on pheasant hunting trips and instructed me to run around in the stubble corn and try to scare something up. It was fun, it was Wisconsin, and it didn’t seem at all strange to me at the time. [You’re probably wondering, but no — I wasn’t expected to fetch back any kills.]
posted by Jean Cain on 1-20-2008 at 10:58 pm
Went hunting at arounf 9 or 10 with my Dad, looking mainly for grouse but hoping for a moose (oh how I miss the taste). We had a rule that whoever sees it first gets to shoot. Never did see a moose that first time, but there were plenty of grouse to go around.
posted by Sean on 1-21-2008 at 8:24 am
Duck Hunting was our thing, my Father, our Chesapeake Bay Retriever “Molly”, and myself. We would sit in a duck blind in the middle of alligator infested waters for hours. My Mom has pictures of me sitting in front of the outside refridgerator (Where the dead ducks were stored before they were cleaned) with ducks laid out around me. I was trying to “heal” them.
posted by QuinO on 1-21-2008 at 9:07 am
Not exactly me, or hunting with Dad, but still. My mom was once watching her sister’s kids, and the son, who was then 4, started out the door with a sack and a gun. “Where do you think you’re going?” she cried, in (natural) alarm.
“HUNTIN’.” Assured this was perfectly normal by his two sisters, my mom watched him stalk out to the woods.
Apparently he returned with three dead squirrels in a sack. Congratulations, Josh. Now he’s a lumberjack. Ah, Splendora, TX. You make America proud. (If America knew about you.)
posted by Sarah on 1-21-2008 at 10:00 am
While my father was stationed in England for the Air Force, we would go Pheasant hunting at a local farm. I was about 8 at the time. The hunts usually consisted of about 10 hunters and whatever children were available. We were given heavy sticks to “beat the brush” with and scare up the birds. My first experience actually spooking a pheasant was memorable… It shot up out of the grass only inches in front of me, the flapping wings brushing my face and scaring the bejeezus out of me. My father, walking about 10 feet behind me, shot the bird when it was just a few feet over my head. I promise you, the sound of a 12 gauge shotgun going off directly behind you, aimed at something just over your head, will tests the bowels of an 8 year old kid! And to top it off, if the pheasant wasn’t killed outright by shooting it, the kids were expected to grab it by the neck and swing it around a few times to “dispatch it cleanly”, as the British farmer would say in his proper English. It was quite an introduction to huntig.
posted by Bill on 1-23-2008 at 8:26 am