Thread: How did you get interested in hunting?

I grew up in Auckland so it definitely wasn’t easy , my parents were very keen trampers and we did a fair bit of that , know one in the family were hunters , I had a definite interest in wildlife though as we had a set of animal encyclopaedia books I would spend hours thumbing through , funny I used to watch Grizzly Adams and wanted to live like him or his old trapper mate .
We lived on the fringe of Auckland so it was only 10 minutes on the bike to farmland where me and my mates used to catch eels in the creek and I started to try and trap Rabbits and possums with varying success , my bedroom walls were wall to wall fur, skulls , feathers you name it by about 14yrs old , my Mum was good enough for this not to bother her and as much as I asked the old man would not let me get a air rifle.
I used get books out of the library on all things hunting and read one on falconing , so managed to get a hawk out of a nest and hand raise , that was a disaster , the guy asked me one day what I was doing with all the mice I regularly brought of him and when I told him I was feeding to my pet hawk the shit hit the fan and the Hawk was gone hahaha.
Similarly I got a ferret for shoving down rabbit holes , that got out one day and killed the neighbours cat ......not good ferret had to go hahaha.
No guns allowed so I got a recurve bow and joined the local Bowhunting club at 12 and shot everything that moved every night after school and all weekend that’s what we did .
When I turned 16 a bloke I knew joined the NZDA and thought I should join up , after a few months I got my FAL and I have never gone back to my bow , met some lifelong friends through that club and the rest is history .