Jackie with her first Crow and her grandmothers shotgun
When my daughter Jackie turned 13, she wanted to join me hunting, so first she had to go thru a Hunters Education Class to get her license. She knew firearms safety already growing up in a house with firearms. I have been involved with Hunters Education since I was a teenager, but had not become an official instructor. I attended the classes with Jackie, and inquired about becoming an instructor, within a few short weeks, I had taken the exam and was on my way. I became a Hunter Education Instructor because I understand and truly believe that youth are the future of our sport. I have always supported youth events and activities which promote hunting and fishing. I also thought that I had something to offer to new hunters.
My parents started taking me into the woods when I was very young. I have pictures of me as a toddler in a backpack on my father’s back while on family fly fishing trips in the Sierras! We always hunted and fished together as a family. My favorite family photo was taken in the Sierras on a family fishing trip when I was 6 and my grandparents were there. I was 13 when my parents bought me a life membership in the NRA, an organization I would later go to work for, in part promoting youth hunting. Hunting and fishing were a huge part of my growing up.
My father passed away a few years ago (2010), and his absence during those following hunting seasons was heavily felt. Even though he was unable to hunt with me for the last several years of his life, I shared every experience with him on the phone or in person. He would tell me stories of his past hunts and trips as well. Even though I had heard them many times before, I loved to hear them again. My daughters never got to hunt or fish with my father, but hey have heard many of his stories, and I will continue to tell them as many as I can remember as well.
Jackie, who was 15 at this time, had really fallen in love with hunting and the outdoors. She harvested her first deer that year at Tejon Ranch during the Youth Antlerless late season hunt sponsored by the California Deer Association. The hunt was made more special because she used a rifle of my mother’s, which my father had also harvested a deer with some 20 years earlier. I know he was watching and proud, but I wanted so badly to call and tell him all about what Jackie had accomplished, and how proud I was to have been by her side at that moment.
A month or so later, Jackie and I took a walk in search of quail across the field from our house. She was excited to shoot her first quail with her Remington 1100, which she also inherited from her grandmother. I brought along my father’s Belgian Browning, which I had not shot since high school. We didn’t see any quail, but on the way back several Crows were flying over and Jackie asked if she could try to take one. I said sure since Crow season is open and at least she would get to shoot her grandmothers shotgun. As some crows approached the tree line through the fog from the other side, I told her to wait until I said to shoot. She waited patiently and when I said Ok, she shot and the crow folded and dropped. It fell for 5 feet or so, then opened it wings up and started to try and fly again, so I followed up with a shot from the Browning, bringing the crow down in the field next to us.
Something mystical had happened. I felt my father with me, hunting with us both at that moment; I felt a connection I had never felt before. It was almost as if I hadn’t shot that crow. I don’t know how to explain it, other than he was there hunting with us. I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t hear him, but he was there, of that I am certain. I felt as if he had taken that shot, not me. I had not consciously raised the shotgun or fired it, but it had happened. My eyes teared up, not just with pride in my daughter connecting with her first shot on a bird in flight, but the overwhelming emotion of the moment. A bridge was made that transcended the physical world. From my grandfather, through my father, through me to my daughter. A continuation of a family tradition, flowing through me at that very moment.
I always talk about ‘sharing the tradition’ and taking a kid hunting, but for the first time, I really felt why it is so important. At least for me.
me with my fathers Belgian Browning
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