Grew up hunting in Texas and my family was transferred to Alabama when I was in my teens. We lived in a very rural area and if you didn't hunt, fish or chase cows there wasn't much else to do. Family had access to 16,000 acres to hunt back home and moving from that to Alabama hunting clubs was a major adjustment but I believe it made me a better hunter.

Killed my first deer when I was 6yrs old with a single shot 20ga. Was a little 6" spike. I was mad at my dad that whole morning because on the way in we literally drove past multiple 120-130 class deer but he wouldn't let me shoot one of those because we were not "hunting". That land was something special and I'd imagine it still is. I haven't been back since my grandfather passed 7yrs ago but I will never forget those pastures and river bottom.

grew up hunting squirrels rabbits and quail in nectar.(back when there was wild quail).killed first deer on sky ball mountain.

I didn't. My dad took me backpacking, canoeing, camping and such. We loved the outdoors, but didn't fish or hunt. I picked up fishing around 10 years old and was proverbially hooked. After college, I took my first church at 21 in Coffee Springs, AL. One of the guys in the church said, "Preacher, you hunt?" "Not yet, but I would love to learn." I spent the year learning to climb trees and clean other people's deer. I never even saw a live deer. The next year I moved to Beulah AL so I could go to seminary in Atlanta and serve a church in Alabama at the same time. That second year, another church guy introduced me to bow hunting and I shot my first deer. The rest has been history. My kids have grown up shooting and hunting in addition to the camping and canoeing.

I grew up hunting deer with dogs in south Alabama (Escambia county) in the 80s and 90s. We hunted and fished thousands of acres of papermill land with friends and family. It was some of the most fun a kid could have. Hunting was in the fabric of our lives. Everything revolved around it. Every hunter and some wives had a nickname that was used on the CB radio (called a CB handle). The dogs were like celebrities and I cant begin to tell you the bond that develops between a boy and his hunting dog. There is nothing else like it.

We would start looking for tracks around 5AM. A lot of times, someone would "drag roads" the night before with a small tree or man made drag. It made finding fresh tracks easier. We would decide which tracks we liked the best and surround the area. Trail dogs were sent in to "jump" the buck that we put them on. It was always something going on. Listening to the dogs, talking on the CB with friends or just enjoying the woods around me. Once the race was on, the excitment racheted up about ten notches. Listening to the pack and hoping you had the right stand. If you heard a shot, you knew it was a buck (No doe shooting back then). Who shot? Did they get him? Did he turn back? Did he get by an now everyone is trying to get to the next crossing. It was tons of fellowship, tons of stories and tons of fun. Too bad that like most things, greed and selfishness have robbed the next generations of some of the true joys of life. Its now a business or competition. It saddens me that my boys will never know what hunting once meant.

Daniel Boone (My CB handle

I grew up dirt poor on a small farm and I was born with hunting in my blood.

Pop taught me how to hunt and took me squirrel hunting ever thing else I learned on my on.

Some of my earliest memories are squirrel hunting with my dad
I was so small he’d have to carry me sometimes
Didn’t start deer hunting til I was in my late teens
Still to this day there hasn’t been a memory about deer hunting that compares to squirrel hunting with my dad

Daddy had to uncock the 410 for me that my grandparents gave me when I just turned 6. Before that I picked up and toted the squirrels.

I grew up in Crenshaw county. My dad left when I was 4 so my uncles were always taking me hunting. I killed my first squirrel when I was 6 in 1964 and was hunting by myself before I was 10. We didn't have deer until around 64 and one of my uncles would ride the dirt roads on the weekend looking for tracks. Most of my early hunting was pulling vines for squirrels or stomping through the briers to flush out some rabbits for my uncles and their friends. Quail hunting was big back then and there was always someone to tag along with even when I wasn't hunting. They wouldn't let us kids deer hunt running dogs. When I was 10 or 11 one of my uncle gave in and carried me on a hunt. I had a double barreled 12 ga and he put me on top of a wide open hill with a 20 mph wind at about 40° and I stayed there for what felt like hours and we didn't have any cold weather clothing. I didn't ask to go deer hunting again for a few years. I own that property now and I can tell you there was no chance of me seeing a deer that day and I'm sure that why my uncle put me there. When I see threads about kids killing deer at 6-7 years old I always think back to when I was a kid and remember that. I encourage people to take kids hunting but sometime I do worry that the kids are to young to learn anything from killing a deer at such a young age. Back in the 60-70s we could hunt anywhere we wanted so we never had to ask, we would just stop next to a bridge and start hunting. The good ol days.

Grew up hunting Choc, Ft.McClellan and Pelham Range.
Back then you had to line up to get assigned area on Choc/Ft.
As well, if you're my age, winters were a Lot colder back then, same as the rest of the country.

Never killed a deer growing up!
First deer I ever got was in VA., when I first started bow hunting in 2004.

It is what it is.... There was 20 years I rarely hunted cos I was in the Navy riding submarines 🤘

Really interesting posts

The older I get, the more I realize very few folks grew up hunting the way I did. I look back now and think dad's way of hunting with me was "tough love" (as was pretty much his way with everything, God bless him). I don't remember ever being catered to (hunting wise) like we do with youth today. There was no youth weekend or anything like that. We weren't in a club or anything like that (this was in the early-to-mid-80's, and I don't even know if hunting clubs were a thing then?), we lived on Cheaha Mountain (National Forest) and my earliest memories of hunting were us splitting up and making big walking loops (dad called it "slipping around"). Well, he was slipping, I was a terrified 10 year old walking in the woods for two hours simply trying not to get lost, I wasn't even looking for wildlife, I was mostly trying to remember the directions he gave (which seemed to never look like he explained, but somehow I always found my way back to the truck).
This was normal: We would park at a turnaround at the end of a gravel road, and let's say there were two dim woods roads going out different ridges."You go out that right road. Not far down there it's going to turn to the right, when it does, walk out that big pine ridge to your left. That ridge will nose off to the creek down yonder, so cross it and get up on that next ridge on the other side. You know, it runs out there and hits that other road, and I'll meet you right there and we'll make another plan to hunt back to the truck."
Naw!!!...it never looked that way when I got out there LOL! The road never turned to the right, all those ridges split (which split do I take??), that creek was belt deep for half a mile so I had to detour, and in my head this was going to take 10 minutes--but it was a mile or more and took me an hour. 10. Years. Old. And I'll be damn if I didn't fairly often walk up on a longbeard gobbler or a buck, I can't explain that, because it never happens today when I go do that for old time's sake.
I was always scared and crying, and it would piss daddy off when he could tell I'd been crying. His way of hunting was like throwing a kid in the deep end of the pool and saying "swim!" But I wouldn't trade that for the soft, babysat life of a kid learning to hunt today. I never knew it was happening, but by my early teen years I was no longer scared of the woods, I had killed more critters than any of the other kids I knew, we were calling turkeys, gutting deer, finding our own sign, and I swear I know every rock and leaf on 100,000 acres of national forest still today LOL.
I never learned how to treestand or bow hunt until I was nearly 20 years old.

By my early teen years, we started hunting the Anniston Army Depot where my dad worked. Even though it wasn't legal, we'd man-drive that place every weekend (which is funny, because that kind of stuff would tick me off today, now that I'm a fancy treestand hunter). If I told you half the stories of those late 80's / early 90's years at the Depot you wouldn't believe me. That place was a total zoo, never seen anywhere else in my life, anywhere in the country, with more deer numbers AND big bucks. Every Saturday was like a dove shoot with us mandriving those deer. But again, it didn't matter to dad that I was still a "kid", I was expected to walk just as much as stand. And I loved it. Many of those old men I grew up around doing that are dead and gone now, but I still see a few of them these days and we reminisce about how "folks would never believe the deer we saw and killed."

Grew up farming in TN. My father was a "gun guy". We did a lot of hunting and shooting in general. We spent a lot of weekends at the big gun shows like the Tulsa show, Dallas, etc. My Uncle is a well known gun writer. I had a rifle range at my house growing up. The backboards were in the hay field behind the house 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400 and 600 yards. At the edge of my back yard.... There were 8 permanent heavy wooden benches in a long row under roof with gravel base with a set of gun racks in the middle. There was a place to shoot skeet and a pistol range right next to this but I did most of my pistol shooting standing at the 25 backboard. I couldn't even begin to comprehend the number of rounds I have shot in my lifetime it is some staggering figure. I can't even put a number on it but 10-15,000 rounds of .22lr per year is just a start. Santa would bring me a case of 5,000 .22's at Christmas and they wouldn't last past turkey season. We burned powder in an excessively gross manner, much of it being relatively free or inexpensive as it was used to write magazine articles.


As far as deer hunting goes... one side of the family was from Jackson Co. Jackson was covered up in deer by the early 80's. Drove across the mountain and hunted all the big Jackson County clubs like Clear Creek and Jacobs Mtn in addition to family land on both sides of the State Line in that general area. Plenty of y'all know what that was like in that era.... that's where I cut my teeth when it comes to deer hunting. There is nothing easy about hunting mountain deer. Killed some good bucks during that time and had a polaroid picture on the wall at the local braggin board more than a time or two.

I started going with my Dad since before I can remember. We as a family dog hunted before I was around and I'm 44. I was taught hunting was about having fun and socializing as much as it was about killing something. When we did kill something, It was a team effort between all the guys in our group and the dogs we spent years raising and training. Nobody cared about age or scores because the experience mattered as much as the size of the deer you killed.

I'm raising my kids the same way. Both kids, now 15 and 19, were 10 months old when season rolled around. I didn't get as much hunting done when I was by myself with a baby in the woods, but I took them. They both love it today as much as I still do. And they have both killed a deer or 2 in front of the hounds, which isn't easy to do where we hunt (heavy hunted, public land where bucks only are legal.

My parents had a 350 acre farm outside of Valdosta, at 9 years old I would move cows from one pasture to the next on horseback. I would always see a bunch of deer and I would lose track of what I was supposed to be doing and just sit and watch the deer. My dad must have noticed and we woke up one morning went and plowed about 1/2 acre on the edge of pasture. My first plot that I ever planted was pink eye purple hull peas. He built me a wooden ladder stand, I would jump off the school bus quickly do my chores and run all the way to the ladder stand with no gun just to watch the pea patch. I guess I did that for about a year, just watching and learning. Christmas rolled around and Santa brought me a 30-30 H&R single shot. Took me till 11 years old to finally figure out how to get the gun up without them running off. First one was a doe, we didn’t weigh them back then. I shot her in the neck and she started hollering and trying to get up and I was scared to death, dad taught me to cut the throat, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it with her still moving, so I shot her again. I have been hooked ever since and really enjoy watching them to this day, I usually pick a buck and hunt him until we cross paths, more often than not they must die of old age …lol. Hunting is an addiction that I can not shake. Never had money for other addictions because I spent all my money on hunting.

Started out hunting with my dad, Grandpaw, uncles, and a few close friends when I was probably 4 or 5 in Pickens county in the late 80s. They dog hunted and me and my brother was just along for the drive! We also hunted family land in Madison county with dad but I really got into when we leased 6k acres in north Jackson county. Same group of uncles, Grandpaw and my dad and a few of their close friends. Deer and Turkey galore and a kid could go forever chasing both. 30 or so food plots and nice shooting houses (to a young boy) on each one. We slayed the deer, no antler restrictions and and we could way lay the does, no one really cared about giant bucks. There were some killed but it wasn’t that important... Killed my first deer and Turkey on that mountain… All that was great but camp was a blast. My grandmother and my great aunt cooked big breakfasts every morning. I’d eat before I left and sometimes would only hunt an hour then come back and eat again. Every night there was a big camp fire built at my uncles camp trailer and everyone discussed what they saw and what the plan was the next day. Then my grandmaw and great aunt would cook a big supper. Best time of my hunting life.

We raised and hunted GSP and English pointers for quail & doves in NC. Always dove hunted with family and friends every year, it was always fun and a great social event. Don't remember not hunting. We shot ducks and squirrels occasionally but never deer hunted. Dad went a couple of times when buddies would invite him but us kids never got to go. Started deer hunting about sixteen once I could drive, joined a dog hunting club, still love hearing the dogs work, listened to the old guys as much as possible. Been hunting ever since as much as possible all over since we moved every couple of years being in the military. Love hunting in Bama!

Grandad had old country store that a lot of guys used to meet. When I was a kid, I used to hang around and if I got lucky got to go on a few rabbit hunts with my brother and his friends.

Uncle was an exec with US Steel in B'ham and he used to bring people up to rabbit hunt on our farm.

I remember not getting to go on a hunt the weekend John Kennedy was killed. I was around 7, and was bummed big time.

My granddad took me squirrel hunting when I was about 8 - been hooked ever since. He lived outside of Greenville in the country and had lot of land

My folks lived in Marengo county and dad was great provider and father but cheap when it came to things like hunting clubs. Finally talked him into the cheapest club I could find - we paid $120 yearly membership and it was the type of club you could go 7 days straight and May not see a deer 🤣 and deer sightings were plentiful in most places in Marengo county in the 80s. I was just thrilled to hav a place to go - been in clubs for 35 plus years after that - finally got my own lease few years back - made huge difference