What did you all do for fun growing up

[Danzn Bar]

Played a lot of sports as a kid...football and baseball...if wasn't for football I would have walk around a lot better the last few years.. but growing up in the city with a Dad that love the "country " was great.  It  was a lot of fun growing up in the city. but as a youngster I loved every opportunity I had with my dad to get into the "country" as we call it.  And do some rabbit and squirrel hunting ...There were hardly no deer in Kentucky when I was a kid.....so Dad and I didn't hunt them...but the best time I had was squirrel hunting. My dad would ask the farmer or land owner if we could squirrel hunt, and we would show up that Saturday morning, before sunrise, right where we said we would park car and leave the place cleaner than we found it.  We had a great time... Every Christmas weekend Dad & I would take time to make the rounds to all of our hunting and fishing places and deliver a box of candy or a cake that my mother would bake, thanking them for the opportunity to hunt or fish their property. Yea.. the cakes went to the best hunting/fishing places...    Those memories hang with me the most and forever......
Damn this post got to me....
Thanks DAD
DBar 

[BowEd]

bjrogg and OO....He was a bruiser.Old Ernie weighed close to 70#'s in hunting shape.A few knuckles on his back showing along with a few ribs showing.Back legs hard as concrete.They had to be thataway elsewise they could'nt handle the heat.I took on all comers with him.Bear dogs/PKC champions you name it of any breed.He was a thorough bred I tell ya.
Sorry if I sound exempletive about the hound but when campaigning hounds they become like family and are with you every night and day and get beat up by mean dogs and many other things in those hunts.
I let that beard grow for 14 years Clint and it was actually close to 14" long back then.Now it's all salt and peppered but mostly salt.

[Knoll]

Eric K. and I apparently had identical childhoods. Also, seems I got interested in girls at a young age.   

[bubby]

Eric K. and I had mostly identical childhoods. Also, seems I got interested in girls at a young age.   

The girls church camp being in the church across from the building we had scouts in, was the reason i was asked to leave the scouts . Yikes that really sounds bad all in a sentance🙃

[Knoll]

Cool post, Bill.

[sleek]

I used to gather corn cobs picked by the chickens, and chicken feathers. Insert fearhers by the quil into the  end of the cob, and you have a poor boys nerf football. Put a shapened stick in the other end, you have poor boy darts. 

[jaxenro]

For some reason a lot of my childhood is a blur. I do remember fishing with pipe bombs filled with gunpowder and set off with a car battery and also with a case of hand grenades someone's older brother brought back from Nam. Dropped out of school at 16 and started work full time so my growing up stopped early (or probably never finished). Before that we worked tobacco in the summers (Connecticut shade grown), learned how to drink things that weren't soda, and smoke things that weren't tobacco.

I actually got into real fishing and some hunting later in life.       

[Will Tell]

I was a natural born killer in my youth. By the age of 14 I could out hunt and out fish all my buddies and most adults. I didn't play team sports, spent most of my time fishing and hunting with my dog Skipper. Hunting became too easy with a gun so that's why I started hunting with a bow. I started fly fishing when I was 14 , that was 51 years ago. Weren't many fly fisherman in those days. Funny thing is there were no videos to teach you how to do things, we had to learn the hard way. Started Turkey hunting with a bow in the early 70's. Those were some good times.

[Marc St Louis]

My dad was an archery teacher at the military base where he worked and made bows and arrows as well so archery has always been a part of me.  Never had much interest in fishing but hunting on the other hand was a passion of mine, not as much anymore. 

I have to admit I kind of liked making things go boom as well.  Working at a motorcycle shop with access to acetylene torches sort of satisfied that need a bit.  Filling inflatable kids toys with the right mix and setting them off with a fuse produces impressive explosions and doing so just before dark is visually stunning.

Motorcycles were also in my blood for many of my younger years, making them go fast and racing them.  Kind of screwed up parts of my body doing that.

[osage outlaw]

I found some old pictures to post.  I think this is where I got my creativity for some of the stuff that I build.  My grandpa was always building stuff or working on projects.  I would walk to his house almost every day and help out.  This little barn is still standing.  I had our house built right next to it. 




I loved to go fishing




And yes, that is an awesome Alf shirt






I've been involved in deer hunting since before I was born.  My mom was tracking a deer with my Dad when she was very pregnant.  She took a bad fall on a hillside.  That was one month before I was born.




My first deer




I was a decent rabbit dog also.  My job was to jump on the brush piles and scare them out. 




I wish I still had this jacket

[bubby]

Those are some great pics Clint

[bjrogg]

Nice pictures Clint. It looks like your grandpa could see you were picking it up. You can tell by the way he's watching you.
Bjrogg

[Pat B]

My immediate family wasn't into outdoor stuff. My Dad was a Police Court Judge and wouldn't allow guns in our house, not even BB guns. Our neighbors across the street were outdoor folks and my Dad did let Mr. Waite teach us about guns, gun safety and boats and all that went along with them so I did have exposure to the outdoors. My Dad's sister, aunt Mary was a fisherwoman. She and a boyfriend would take my older brother and myself(when I came of age)saltwater fishing in Coastal SC so I got some great exposure that way.
 My Mom's side of the family were outdoors people but they lived in Pensacola Fla so we only saw them every July. They had a place on Pensacola Bay where we would stay and we fished, crabbed and went flounder constantly while we were there. My Grandpa was an avid deep sea fisherman and built his own inboard engine cabin boat(The Duchess, named for my Mom) and built all of his deep sea split bamboo rods. I wish I had more time to spend with him but unfortunately that wasn't the case.
 I didn't start hunting until I was 28 years old. That was the year my wife and I got married(1978) and moved to Bluffton SC. That Christmas Marcia gave me a TC Hawkins .50 cal. black powder gun and I killed my first 2 deer with it. In those days all my hunting buddies told me to get a "real" gun! Now they tell me to get a real bow.  I hunted and fished the coastal marshes with my good buddy, Richard for many years and still do at least once a year at his family property in Oglethorpe Co. GA and sometimes in Coastal SC.
 My wife and I have lived on our 25 ac here in the Mountains of SW North Carolina for the last 26 years. I have hunted here a few times but when you name the deer on your property it is hard to shoot them. 
 We both love living is the country and both love all the wildlife we have here plus the native wildflowers and other aspects of being outdoors.
 My first real bow was a 45# Shakespeare recurve I retrieved from a storage building that was going to be demolished. I shot whatever arrows I could find. I got into compounds shortly after($50 Bear Blacktail Hunter from a flea market) and killed my first archery deer with it. After a few years I bought a PSE Nova compound and killed a few more deer until I got tired of all the Geegaws that went along with that craze. I decided to switch to the light side(traditional) after killing my biggest archery deer at the crack of dawn. I was using a lighted pendulum sight(one of the geegaws) and when I came to full draw the light quit working so I leveled off and took the shot. My first instinctive kill.
 After that I bought a custom recurve and shot a big 8pt but never recovered it. The deer did recover and was marking it's scrapes 2 weeks later. I could identify him by an unusual hoof print. Not too long after that(about 1999) I bought a Treadway Longbow and killed my first trad deer, a doe that was standing 8' from my tree.
 It was about 1988 that I started getting interested in primitive archery. Not many folks built wood bows back then but with the help of books by Jay Massey, Paul Comstock, Jim Hamm, William Vonderhey and others the journey began. I do have to give credit to Primitive Archer Magazine and the great folks on this wonderful site for helping make my bent sticks the new "real" bows.
 

[BowEd]

As a kid on the farm and liking animals I think I was bit,bucked,butted,stung,stomped and generally beat up by every kind of animal in Iowa.Used to drive my mother nuts.On the other hand my Dad gave me free will to find out about things.Was fairly active I guess.A memory I have is once I was throwing a screw driver sticking it into 9" by 9" railroad sill of a building and the screw driver bounced straight back funny right back at me....lol.It went right through my ear and hung there.I screamed of course.My Dad was close by and came to see what was wrong.I can remember vividly what he said.Ohhhh son you got a screw driver through your ear.....lol.He carries me up to the house and my mother has a  heart attack[not literally].I think pop pulled it out and they took me to the doc.
I think my folks were surprised I stayed alive long enough to graduate high school.

[Pappy]

Great thread, I love reading this stuff, I must have been raised with Eric, he about covered it for me. 
Clint loved the pictures, you haven't grown much have ya.
 Pappy