Start’em Young
Feb 05 2009
My babies enjoying the Biloxi, MS beach before Travis was deployed with the Air Force to Afganistan.
Two years ago, I attended the ATA show the week before he was born and came home with his first bow. It was just a toy, but it was the start. I fondly remember starting his mom, Jana, and his uncle, Bo, in archery with toy bows not even 20 years ago. Toys only satisified them for a very short time. They both desired to have their own real bows.
Just this past fall, Jana was complaining to me that Laken didn’t think that she had anything to do except shoot his bow with him. Laken and his dad, Travis, had opened Laken’s Next Generation compound bow set. Travis, being a young father, flung an arrow at ZEBCO, the family’s Boykin puppy. Laken found that to be great fun. Jana soon convinced Laken that he needed to find a new target. Now he shoots lots of stuffed animals, toy trucks, toy tractors, and any other object that he deems a qualified target. Between his parents and grandparents, he owns the Next Generation Crossbow and Shotgun, both presents from 208 Christmas.
I have a ground blind that is waiting in a box for the family’s first hunting outing. I am sure that it will be a long time before Laken is quite enough and still enough for his parents to actually shoot something from the blind. But Jana has it coming, because I took her and her brother on many hunts in our family groundblind that would have been considered by many hunters to have been a waste of good hunting time. I believe that those hunts were very successful. We shared time together. We even occassionally saw a squirrel or chipmunk.
I want to share an article with you that I wrote several years ago.
We can assure that our Hunting Heritage will be perpetuated if we start’em young.
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