When was your FIRST Hunting Season?

[Rapier]

Interesting, I must be one of the very few on the board that started hunting and fishing without a license of any kind. I spent months at a time with my grandparents on lake Okeechobee, in FL. My grandfather ran a large pumping station on the lake, knew all of the game wardens, etc. I started shooting and hunting when 5 and fishing before I can remember. I started driving a tractor sitting in my grandfather's lap when 3. By the time I was 7 I was driving a WWII surplus Jeep and running a boat on the lake. We had no trees for squirrels and no deer, so we hunted rabbits and ducks.

My first actual hunting experience, besides rabbits, that I can recall, was duck hunting on the lake with my grandfather's 12gs single shot Stevens. That first duck hunt left me black and blue, but with a mess of ducks for supper. My grandmother could cook up a real good pot of duck and rice. That was about 51-52 during the winter. We always took just what we needed to eat for a meal and that was the end of any of our trips, fishing or hunting.

Speaking of the old Stevens, it had a hollow plastic stock and forearm, no recoil pad, it would mortally stomp the mud out of you. A box of high brass shells out of it, left you wanting to wait a while before you went out again. It is in my safe, not a safe queen, just a host of memories wrapped up in an old shotgun. But that 12ga is also what started me wing shooting with a 510 single shot Remington 22 LR as a kid, as an act of self preservation.
Ed