One Obstacle in Getting Kids Started Hunting

[GRIT]

I would love to see the late juvi closed and give them that whole entire week of the end of October instead that Saturday and Sunday. Your right about the lack of participation in January. So many years I've planned on taking kids and gearing them up to have the weather keep us from going or only giving us one setting. So by the time gun opens up 3 weeks later they've already been educated. If they had those 7 days thats possibly 5 more after school evening chances they could have. The participation would really be the same adding those 5 vs the numbers in January.

That would be great except one thing.
There are a lot of men that use there kids as a prop to get out there and kill the deer instead of letting the kids kill them.So giving them 7 straight days at the end of October.Have you ever noticed during the first juvy how many 5 year old little girls and boys kill really nice bucks at 150 yards.

 

[Poleaxe]

I would love to see the late juvi closed and give them that whole entire week of the end of October instead that Saturday and Sunday. Your right about the lack of participation in January. So many years I've planned on taking kids and gearing them up to have the weather keep us from going or only giving us one setting. So by the time gun opens up 3 weeks later they've already been educated. If they had those 7 days thats possibly 5 more after school evening chances they could have. The participation would really be the same adding those 5 vs the numbers in January.

That would be great except one thing.
There are a lot of men that use there kids as a prop to get out there and kill the deer instead of letting the kids kill them.So giving them 7 straight days at the end of October.Have you ever noticed during the first juvy how many 5 year old little girls and boys kill really nice bucks at 150 yards.

Your right but it's gonna happen regardless. They'll be in school during the day so they couldn't use them til the evening if they were sorry enough to attempt that. I think the shots we hear during bow season far outweigh the dad's your talking about during juvi

 

[MickThompson]

Another thing to consider- unless you're on eastern time, it will be very hard for a parent to get off work and get to the woods with any amount of hunting light during the week. I think the juvenile hunt is about right, especially realizing that kids can hunt the entire season as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TheLBLman]

Mike started this thread about "one obstacle",
and he did say "hunting", not just deer hunting.
But truth is there are many, many obstacles, possibly including "too much of a good thing" so to speak.
Perhaps we have too much focus on just deer hunting?
At least in terms of helping kids become lifetime hunters?

Each generation tends to want to make things "easier" on their children,
parents want their kids to have everything "easier" than did they.
But sometimes our loving efforts can be counter-productive.

As to any of us who want to get a child into hunting,
generally speaking, there has never before been so much "opportunity" for that,
and that would be the case even if we didn't have any special "juvenile" hunt.

True, most of us don't have the "walk out the front door" convenient opportunities of prior generations,
but that may be more than off-set by the long seasons, and ample public lands. Plus, we now have much more effective weapons for our children than those of yesteryear. My 1st deer kill was with a 20-gauge shotgun, at age 12; my first bow killed deer was with a 40-lb simple recurve bow at age 13. Never even went deer hunting with a rifle before I was 20 years old. All I had was a shotgun (and a primitive bow by today's standards).

Today, young children have scoped rifles and scoped crossbows.
Some even have scoped muzzleloaders, for which a muzzleloader season segment didn't exist prior to the 1980's.
And deer season is open more days in a single year than it was in a 3 to 5-yr-period when I was a child.
Heck, most TN counties didn't have a deer season period back then.

But I was "hooked" on hunting, long before I killed my first deer at age 12,
which was long before anyone even conceived of a "juvenile" deer season weekend.
Wasn't just me, either, as most kids my age were also "in to" hunting.

But today, we're discussing the kids having hunting clothes less comfortable (today) than the clothing of most their parents.

 

[TheLBLman]

Speaking of those public lands, there is currently more WMA acreage open to deer (and turkey) hunting now in TN than when I was a teenager, and believe it not, fewer hunters hunting those lands than a few decades ago. Just saying, the quality of most public land hunting (and private, too) is better today than it was in the past, at least for many species, such as deer, turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. It's also better for geese, possibly as good or better for ducks. Only quail hunting has truly deteriorated (on public lands). Raccoon hunting opportunities have deteriorated on private lands (despite more raccoons than ever) due to mindset changes, but even raccoon hunting may be about as good as ever on most public lands.

But where did most "kids" get their start into hunting in times past?
P.S. It wasn't with deer, nor with turkeys, nor does it need be today.

I'll try not to get too side-tracked here, but it wasn't that long ago that the most popular hunting activity in TN was squirrel hunting. Almost every kid went and enjoyed it. Ironically, very few adult hunters, much less juveniles, squirrel hunt today. Even more ironic, there is tremendous opportunity for almost anyone with the desire to find good squirrel hunting places, close to their homes, and often all to themselves, so unlike when I was growing up. We had the close-by woods, but the squirrel-hunting pressure was then higher on private land than it is today on public lands! Heck, even the deer hunting pressure on the private land I was privy to hunt was much more intense then than the public lands I occasionally hunt today!

Bottom line remains, more lifetime hunters have come to be by first becoming small-game hunters.
That opportunity for what was once Tennessee's most popular small-game animal, squirrels, remains fantastic.
It may be we adults who have more obstacles than our kids.