re: What are your earliest memories of hunting/fishing?

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Squirrel hunting with my dad around age 5. I would walk behind him and try to step in his steps. He was quiet as a mouse. I sounded like a bull moose breaking every branch within 10 feet of me

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I never really realized how patient my dad is until I brought my nephews hunting and had to deal with that.

My dad is the one who sounds like a bull moose now (he's gone 50 or 60% deaf) but he's invited on every hunt I go on


Another vague early hunt memory. We had a couple of beagle when I was a kid and would hunt around Lake Beouf. I never was a shooter but I remember helping gut rabbits. It was cold as all hell one hunt and a warden stopped us. He told my dad to take the rabbits out of the ice chest (it was full of slush and rabbits) to count them. My dad told him I'm not digging in there but you can go ahead. The warden rolled his sleeves up and pulled all of them out then said yall have a nice day.

Maybe not my earliest, but one that was very memorable. Running yo-yo’s on Caddo Lake one weekend with my dad. We slept in the back of his S-10 at Cool Point landing with no camper shell in army surplus sleeping bags. He woke me up in the middle of the night to see if I wanted to go run the yo-yo’s and I told him I was too cold. So he said we’d wait till the morning. We went out at daylight and the white perch were frozen. This was before the days of the weather channel. We had no idea how cold it would get that night.

An old 410 break a part (first gun) I got for Christmas when I was 6 or 7 that I used to go squirrel hunting with my dad

Fishing in my uncles pond then going home to clean them and my mom frying them for supper

Following my daddy around in Cyprès de terre in Bordelonville in the early 80's before it became popular to hunt. Would sit on ridges and wait for the canard branchu to swim by and shot them.

I remember my dad dropped me off the four wheeler to walk to my stand and he headed off to his, I walked around a corner of the turn road next to the woods and a cotton field, and came face to face with a monster 8 point. I only had a muzzle loader as I was 8 years old and dad hadn’t bought me a rifle yet. Deer was facing me 20 yds away, didn’t move. I slowly raises the gun and shot. Missed point blank. Dad hears the shot and comes flying around the corner on the ATV, deer runs about 100 yards and stops broadside. My dad proceeds to shoot 3 times and misses every time. And he wasn’t one to miss, at all. We still don’t know how we missed, he obsessed for a week over sighting his rifle but it was dead on. Luckiest deer I’ve ever seen.

I was cursed that year, crippled 5 deer including 2 nice bucks that we never ever found. My dad still talks about “the year I crippled half the deer in yazoo county”

When I was 6 or 7, I would go squirrel hunting by myself with my single shot .410 behind our house.

There was a stump behind our house (we had 5 acres then), that I would go sit on and still hunt squirrels because I hadn't learned how to stalk yet. It always felt like I was deep in the woods, when in reality I was maybe 100 yards from the house.

It took almost all season for a squirrel to finally come hopping along and sit still enough for me to get a good shot. That little .410 didn't shoot very far and I wasn't a very good shot. But that day a squirrel hopped up on a stump about 20' away and I blasted him.

My Dad still has the picture of me holding that squirrel with a huge grin hanging in his closet. My fist kill on my own. Big moment in a little boys life.

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white Chevy caprice

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My dad pulled the boat with a white caprice. It had blue seats and smoked like a mother f*cker

Very young. Like 4 years old or something. I remember early fishing but that was just something I did practically every day. The thing that formed me was deer camp. That was where my dad, my uncles, cousins, friends would get together every weekend and spend both nights. There's no better place on earth for little boys than deer camp.

My father fished only one way. He'd stop on the side of the road and use a dip net to catch small crawfish for bait. We would set out 5 or so rods and just sit on the bank watching the tips. We mostly caught mud cat, but the goals were channel and gou.

His idea of hunting was walking through the woods and shooting whatever appeared. We ate a lot of grackle.