As a child

When I got started hunting, my excitement at just being in the outdoors couldn't be matched. Just the sight of wildlife, squirrels, raccoons, hawks, and deer would make my heart race. At that time I was still young, maybe 10 years old, every sighting was a new adventure. To be out so far you couldn't hear any cars or anything modern. I could imagine myself following the footsteps of Louis and Clarke,Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett. As I grew older my excitement wavered. No longer did my heart race as smaller animals went by me. It had to be deer to get much of a reaction. Then I became a "Dad". I would go hunting. When I came home from hunting. My children would rush to my truck and ask many questions about what I saw,not what I killed. I then started looking for different animals, when I hunted, so I could have something to tell them. They didn't care if it was a deer, squirrel. raccoon, or just a bird. It all was exciting to them. My son,who is 8 years old, and I were hunting together recently. We hadn't seen anything all morning. So we decided to move slowly through the woods to see if we could jump anything up. I was totally focused on trying to spot deer. My son was looking for whatever he could find. As a child will, he noticed things, many of which I hadn't even seen. I had walked under a tree, not even noticing 3 baby raccoons sitting on the limbs of the tree. One of which was only about 2 feet above me. He still gets excited when he remembers that story. One more thing we should try to do as a child would, is to show a little respect around wildlife. I decided to have some fun with the one just above my head by shaking it out of the tree. It was just a baby so I wasn't worried about getting hurt. I shook the limb. The raccoon lost its grip and fell. Only to catch on a limb lower down which had a broke limb laying on it. That broke limb fell right into my face and left me with knot on my head. My little boy respected the animal enough to stay away from it . Not me, if I had done as a child I wouldn't have gotten a headache.