How we hunt changes as we age.
I had to grow up in a town of about 20,000. Papa grew up in SW Texas during the depression and actually worked his early years as a "cowboy", staying in line shacks and traveling by horse a week at a time tending the livestock. He knew how to use up every bit of a rabbit except the hop. Papa was about 22 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He then went from ranch hand to Navy Metalsmith 3e and spent the war in Guam assigned to floating drydock USS SDFB 3. After the war, he and momma settled near Dallas because that was where the jobs were, but he was always a county boy at heart. When he retired he moved to East Texas and got some cows.
Papa was 38 when I was born. He wanted his kids to be exposed to the country life. When I was a young teenager (early seventies) Papa would take me hunting for Christmas holiday and we would "rough it". The drive was 350 miles to SW Texas. Often only the two of us would be on a thousand acres of very rough hill country. We would camp in a tent for up to a week. It was often very cold. No runnning water, electricity or other comforts. A campfire, coleman stove, and coleman lantern was it. Water was obtained at a windmill, stored in buckets. Papa would be up around four AM stirring the coals and making dutch-oven bisquits from scratch. He said it reminded him of his cowboy days. I helped with the boiled coffee,fried eggs and bacon. Then I washed dishes with boiling water. Papa taught me much about old style camping. He had taken me camping as much as possible since I was about three. He was later also scoutmaster to about thirty kids that had never been out of the city. I was the camping expert around the other kids (ha ha).
Big breakfast finished, we headed out on foot.The truck stayed at camp because that was where the road (jeep trail) ended. We would walk to the canyons we had picked to hunt way before daylight, sometimes nearly a mile from camp. We sat on one side of a canyon and hunted the other side across from us. We each had a canyon, hunting alone, but about 1/4 mile apart. Average shot was 200 yds. We carried empty backpack frames to pack out the whitetail if we got a shot. No radios, no GPS, no phones, no feeders, no stands, no does allowed (rules set by the rancher who owned the place). Hunted each morning till 11 am then back to camp. Stirred up the coals and cooked a hearty lunch. Went back out at 3 pm till dark. Did that for about five years in a row. Sometimes we filled our tags, sometimes we didn't. Best hunting I ever did in my whole life! Deer were sometimes scarce. We rarely ever missed if we were lucky enough to get a shot at one. Over the years we got five pointers to twelve pointers. Once I shot a javilina sow at 300 yards. A day later Papa shot one (a big male) at 20 feet that would have charged him had he not hit it in the brain. We butchered the sow. It was not bad. I shot a turkey at 50 feet with my .270 when about 20 walked by me. The old rancher had said he had not seen turkey on that place in decades. I hit it in one drumstick and tore nothing else up on it. It made a good Christmas bird.
Now I am fifty. Papa passed on 23 years ago. I live on a small ranch in SW Texas about 40 miles from that place we used to hunt. I am surrounded by deer, turkey, and other game everyday (even up into the yard). I harvest a nice fat doe or two every few seasons because I still love the taste of venison (you cant eat the horns, so why go for a tough old buck). It is not hunting anymore, more like butchering a domestic animal. I limit my shot to a morning kill, so I dont have to clean it after dark. Mostly I either shoot out of the upstairs bedroom window, or off the back porch. I still go out and sit in a blind at 1am sometimes and shoot hogs. They tear up my fences and I try and reduce their numbers, but that is a losing battle. I hope Papa doesn't mind that I now "camp" in a 32 foot fifth wheel and shoot deer off the porch. I still cook his famous scratch bisquits, clean my own game, and think of our hunts often. I started up again reloading this year, something Papa taught me nearly thirty years ago.
Take your kids hunting and teach them the old stuff before they grow up and loose interest. If you do, they just might type up a story about it in 40 years.
See you in a couple of decades Papa, we'll go hunting again. I'll bring the tent.
