My Dad got me into hunting and the outdoors when I was about 8 years old. Over the years we went on many hunting trips all over Africa. It wasn't until we ended up in a hunting camp with a Bowhunter that this new form of hunting peaked my interest. It was my first time having ever seen a compound bow. I was fascinated and somewhat skeptical of its abilities on some of the larger game species we had. That is, until he harvested a giant Eland Bull that very next morning. I was blown away and immediately asked my dad for a bow. He bought me a recurve to see whether this was something I was going to really get into, or if it was just a "phase"...here I am 20-something years later. His teachings will forever be ingrained in my mind!
My dad got me into bow hunting, he had me shooting archery since Had to wait until I was 12 to hunt, my first hunt was in November that year, I turned 12 on Halloween, first hunt on my walk out my pins got loose and were sliding all around so I put them where I thought they should be, ended up shooting just under a nice 6 point, I was hooked on bowhunting way before I was ever allowed in the treestand, can’t thank my old man enough for the great gift he gave me, the love of the outdoors Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
My daughter got me hooked. I was a gun hunter when she announced at 13 that she wanted to bow hunt. Started her with a Mission to see if she would like to shoot a bow. She fell in love with it. Well if she was going to shoot I needed to get a bow to shoot with her. Has only been one year but I see why my buddies on the lease were always carrying their bow out in the morning. I may still gun hunt some when it is real cold but plan on mainly using the gun for long range work (400 +). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I got myself into bow hunting late(age 24) just to give myself more time in The woods. Several of my family member's are hunters, some of them do a little bit of archery, but most of them hunt with guns. But one year I decided to try bow hunting, I had a Alpine Ridge runner bow I bought at a bow festival for $100 the previous year, bought a climber treestand and basically learned by trial and error and reading. Had some close calls early on and the first year I archery hunted I was hooked by the end of the season. Took me 4 years before I shot my first buck with a bow, but I was also hunting for mature buck. Now days there isn't much that I look more forward to then archery hunting. Sent from my XT1585 using Bowhunting.com Forums mobile app
When I was 14 I asked for a bow for Christmas Dad went out and got me a Pse He bought himself a browning as well. Bow hunting was always the end goal we joined archery club shot the rest of the winter and summer Then started bow hunting the following fall.
Had a local bow shop not far from home, started hanging out, got my first bow started shooting, then began bow hunting. This addiction started back in the mid 80’s. I only bow hunt have not hunted with a gun in the last 20 years, great sport. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Been hunting, fishing and trapping as far back as I can remember and thought everyone grew up that way. One day when I was 14 a Neighbor noticed I was left handed and gave me a 50# Bear recurve bow and a dozen cedar arrows. Pa thought I had lost my mind when I said I was going to hunt the archery deer season. Back then you hardly even seen a deer and it was hard enough to even get a shot at one with a gun. That fall standing on a oak limb 10 feet off the ground wearing blue jeans and red flannel shirt I stuck a doe on my first bow deer hunt. I have come a long ways in 42 years.
When I was 11 I helped my dad for a couple weeks during summer break while one of his employee's was not working. He asked if I wanted to be compensated for working with money or a bow, I chose the latter of the two and the rest is history. We went to Sioux Falls on the weekend to Chuck Bledsoe's Archery Den. What a great guy Chuck was, very informative and just an all around good guy.
I wish I would of started young like you did. I didn't start bow hunting until I was 38. I'm 46 now and have never hunted with a gun. I love my bow. I shoot once a week all year long. (Every Tuesday). I count down the days until October 1st every year. This year I started at 191 days out.
I never had an interest in bow hunting until I was 16 and listened to a Joe Rogan podcast with Cameron Hanes. Before the podcast was even over I was setting up a time and place to meet a guy off Craigslist to buy a Martin fire hawk. My first season bowhunting I missed 5 deer total and was VERY close to giving it up. I was so frustrated with myself that I posted my bow onto Craigslist after missing the fifth deer. The first guy to talk to me about it asked me why I was selling it and I told him because I couldn't hit a deer with it that I was done with bowhunting. The guy who was interested in the bow sent me a link to a thread on this forum about proper form. Once I fixed my form with the help of that thread and a few videos I was getting better groupings than ever and I decided I was ready to be back in the woods. My first time going back into the woods I smoked a 6 point at 20 yards and ever since then I have been addicted to every aspect of bowhunting. Sent from my iPad using Bowhunting.com Forums
my old man. He was mostly a rifle hunter until I got to be 10 and back then in MI you could not hunt with a gun until age 14. But I wanted to hunt like daddy. So in early summer he bought me a used 40# bow and said if you can pull and shoot it by September I will take you hunting. It took me a few weeks of trying before I was even strong enough to pull it back. By July I was hitting a paper plate out to 30. By September I was busting nocks. That year we spent every weekend in October in a groundblind together, and even though we only saw a couple deer I was completely hooked. By the time I was 16 I was pulling 80# (I don't anymore), and I was a skinny kid (also not anymore.) But I shot literally hundreds of practice rounds every week. Usually over 100 per day, weather, school, and later work permitting. The old man had no idea what a monster he had created.
Good thread! I really have enjoyed reading everyone's posts. As for me, I was born into it. I weighed 8.5 pounds when I was born because I was carrying a 4 pound bow. Like one of the previous pics, dad had me shooting a little toy bow and a suction cup arrow when I was like 4, don't recall for sure how old I was but I recall that little bow. Dad grew up hunting, trapping and fishing and passed it on to me. Dad started out in archery with recurves and homemade arrows, the rest of his family was strictly firearms but a big hunting family with annual deer camps at grandma's farm, the family homestead started back in the 1840's. By the time I was 6 I was shooting a little bear youth compound that had a white metal coated riser and something that resembled cams on both limbs. I still have that little bow. By 7 that bow got turned up to something halfway serious, by 8 I had a bigger youth bow that was capable of killing a deer and I did just that. I had already killed my first deer with a rifle the year before, I little six point and a doe. The next several years we rained terror over the local deer herds. I didn't particularly care or think about what I was shooting, no management mentality at all. We lived in town and my parents owned and operated an earthwork construction company so I was out in the country with dad all the time on jobsites. I was a town kid but I had the soul of a farm kid. In 1988 my folks bought a farm in the neighboring school district and we moved. Now that I had my own land and room, at 13years old, I started looking for more depth and started planting food plots and managing the hunting environment. I had enough experience by then to see how I could change the landscape to make hunting easier/more fun and that evolved into being able to alter the environment to grow better quality animals. Somewhere along the way I got into dogs and bird hunting also and quail hunting was about as big a deal to me as deer hunting. Then we started losing quail numbers and I shifted back more into archery. I got bored with archery and deer hunting back in the mid 2000's and quit for a few years before getting back into it around 2013 after sort of falling into managing deer on a local ranch and farming more land. Now it seems like I started oddly young in comparison but it seemed natural to me. Most of my cousins followed a similar youth hunting experience. Most of them were more firearms focused though with the exception of two cousins, my dad's older brother's two boys, quite a bit older than me. They grew up bow hunting in that 60's, 70's, 80's era when archery and compound bows were going through radical growth and development. I came along later just at the tail end of that, close enough to it to grow up with the relics. The odd early compounds with multiple pulleys and cables, oddball aluminum shafts, fletchings, broadheads, early trail camera contraptions, trail timers, three wheelers. It was a cool environment to grow up in and have memories of. So that's how I started out and ended up 42 years old with kind of an unusual amount of hunting experience and memories.
I got addicted to archery at the age of 10 shooting bows with my cousin. He hunted a little bit so I guess it was his stories that got me going. I started bow hunting in 1971 when recurves, micro flite arrows and baker treestands were cutting edge equipment. A lot of cool stuff has come and gone since then.
My uncle's and brothers got me into general hunting. But bowhunting i got myself into it. Started in 1992.
Made dad and uncle got Me into hunting. Mainly waterfowl and small game. My dad took me deer hunting a couple of times with a gun because I was interested. He was never a big deer hunter. I tried bow hunting once in middle school without success. Fast forward to 2007 (I was 25) my step dad got me more involved with deer hunting with a gun. He was also a bow hunter. Then in 2013 I got some private land close to my house to hunt and decided to try bow hunting again. My step dad gave me his old Hoyt since he had a shoulder injury and had to use a cross bow. Been hooked on bow hunting ever since and plan on getting my kids involved once they are old enough Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Honestly, listening to Joe Rogan podcasts. From there I got put onto guys like Steve rinella, John Dudley, Adam greeters and cam hanes. I never knew anyone who really hunted. Sent from my SM-G950U using Bowhunting.com Forums mobile app
I read a whole bunch of biographies of famous early Americans like George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davy Crocket, Francis Marion, Black Hawk, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and so on, and I wanted to be a mountain man trapper. Then at the age of 9 I went to 4H camp and discovered archery. In my family we all hunted, but only with guns. (I almost got my first ruffed grouse with a wrist rocket.) In 1986 I bought a Bear Whitetail II bow and my first archery license because I only had about two weekends to hunt deer with a gun, but could hunt from the middle of September to the end of December with a bow. I finally killed my first deer with a bow in 2002, and it was worth the wait. As a teacher it fits my time schedule much better. When I was teaching in Nebraska a friend of mine took me to his private lease a couple of times and then my deer hunting career went into overdrive. I found a sweet place on public land where I killed three or four deer a year (mostly does) until EHD wiped out about a third of the herd in my area. Now I live in Montana and have the best of both worlds, because rifle season is six weeks long, and so is bow season. I tagged three deer this year, and the one I got with my jeep was in good enough shape that I was able to salvage that. Now my oldest son hunts with me, and he will only use the bow. My younger boy likes guns, so he gets the late season with me. Next years goal is to take 3 deer again and arrow my first elk.
My Dad was a bow hunter, all his friends bow hunted, all my family that deer hunted also bow hunted, most of my friends bow hunted. So I started bow hunting in "85" when I was 12 year's old. So, no one really started me bow hunting, I just started...because that's what everyone done in the world I grew up in. Kinda like driving a car, no one got me started driving, I just started driving everywhere when I was 16, lol.
My brother got me in to gun hunting back in high school, but I much rather have been on the water fishing somewhere. Joined army at 18 and never really hunted again. After a few tours overseas just didn't feel right with weapon in my hands. Then about 3 years ago an old army buddy of mine told me hunting helped him out a lot, so I give it a try. It has helped me out a lot and I fell in love with it. Wanted more of a challenge so bought a bow last year. Killed 1st for and buck last year. I am now hooked on bow hunting. Thank you to everyone on here for helping me out and giving me advice. I think it would have took me much longer to figure out how to set up and sight bow without all the help I received on here Roll Tide Roll
