As this hunting season begins I have been thinking of some of my favorite stories from hunting as a kid. I started hunting at 9 months old riding in a car seat going after grouse. Every year my dad cut firewood in the fall and over the years I became pretty good at pointing them out as he drove. At that time I didn’t get to go along on any other hunts but I was always a part of cleaning the animals and listening to the tales of the hunt, with their varying levels of truth as all hunting stories have.

I got my PAL when I was 14 and began hunting on my own soon after. As the years went on the hunting experiences continued to get better to the point some are absolutely unbelievable. I can’t tell you those ones-the truth is actually worse than the stories.

As I got older there were numerous duck hunts where my dad and I would travel to hunt and would sleep in the back of the truck. One year a weasel climbed on my head while hunting but I wouldn’t dare move to scare it away because there were ducks in front of us. I even remember missing the ever-important dances at school because it was the opening of duck or grouse season that day.

The year I turned 14 I got to go to deer camp for the first time. That hunt really begins with the letter my dad sent to all my teachers explaining that I would be attending a “family reunion” for the first week of November. It was a very unique and slightly misleading explanation but I truly did go see my uncle and cousin so this was sort of true, as most hunting stories are. To this day deer season trumps all. It is written in the calendar at work that “we do not book things in deer season” and the general public is told that it is a “seasonal slow down” which is again, a slight exaggeration of the truth.

When I was 11 I began working at a hunting and fishing lodge. One afternoon when I was 14 I went for a truck ride. As fate would have it, that afternoon I met up with the other boy that worked at that lodge and his family from Southern Ontario. I spent the weekend with them hunting grouse and that hunting trip was likely my most important ever. If it weren’t for that hunt there wouldn’t be three little hunters who are just about to start making memories of their own.

I am a whole generation older this year because in just a few weeks my oldest son will have his first deer hunt. The older family I spent my first years with is no longer hunting so a family reunion will not be the excuse I tell his school. But I now have many years of excuse perfection under my belt so, following tradition, I am sure I can come up with an appropriately accurate hunting story.