Looking Back

The upland bird seasons are drawing to a close this weekend, and I hope to get out at least a couple of more times. My year-and-a-half-old Brittany is showing promise, and I'd like to get him into a few more birds. The end of the season is a time to look back and remember the good days spent with good friends and good dogs. Opening day might have been my high point because it was just me and the young Brit. We had a four-bird limit in about two hours, and I was so proud of how he hunted. About a month later, I rested the Brit and took my 10-year-old Lab. The big black dog tore his ACL last fall, so he hadn't hunted in almost two years. After surgery and almost a year of rehab, he was raring to go. On this day, Creede hunted perfectly, and I took another limit of pheasants. I couldn't have been more pleased, and the dog appeared to feel the same way. There were plenty of not so good days when the pup ran too hard and bumped birds or got too far out, but I'll let those memories fade. I guess we all do that -- remember the good times and forget the not so good.

I can remember my first pheasant with absolute clarity, and it happened 40 years ago. It was my second season, and we'd hunted many days that season, as well as the year before. I remember snippets of previous hunts, but I mostly remember being excited and grateful to be included with my dad and his friends. But I have a perfect video image of my first pheasant. I don't think it will ever fade. What's weird is that I don't remember many other birds taken after that. I can remember specific conversations I had with Dad and Granddad while we rode to the field and I remember fun days hunting with high school friends but after that first one, I quit keeping track of birds in the bag.

It's Not About Birds In The Bag

I enjoyed a great quail hunt on Sunday, but the quail hunting isn't what this entry is about. I hunted near the town I grew up in with one of my best friends from high school. I only live 30 miles away, so Rex and I hunt together several times each year. We forged a close friendship hunting and fishing together through our teenage years. Growing up in a small southcentral Kansas town, we were rarely bored. We were always out enjoying the outdoors. Without hunting and fishing, we might have been doing less desirable things. I feel lucky to have had those opportunities.

On Sunday, Rex, I and another friend found four coveys and three of us killed seven or eight quail. Not a bag to brag about, but it was a beautiful afternoon, and it was fun to talk and watch the dogs. But the highlight was finding a elk antler dropped last year. There are few bull elk wandering the countryside, and one passed through this piece of sandhills last winter. A successful hunt is more about the people and land than it is about the game taken. What a day!

Introduction

Welcome to the Pass It On BLOG. Topics will be broad, although all will somehow be connected to the value of teaching our youngsters about the outdoors. The older I get, the more I appreciate the time my family spent together outdoors while I was growing up. I was a kid who was naturally drawn to be outside and from a very early age, I was obsessed with fishing. When I was old enough to read, Outdoor Life was my choice of publications. I became fascinated with hunting even though the first 10 years of my life were spent in the suburbs, and I never had a chance to hunt. My family moved to Greensburg, Kan. from Rockford, Ill. when I was 11, and I hunted pheasants with my father that first fall. I was hooked in the first minute of the first morning! I’ve been enjoying and learning about hunting and fishing most of my life, but I still reminisce about the early days of hunting with Dad and Granddad. I took those times for granted when I was young, although I enjoyed them immensely. I assumed everyone had those opportunities. But as I’ve worked with the Pass It On program for the past 10 years, I've learned that fewer youngsters are getting the same experiences I had. I’ve come to believe that the time my father and grandfather spent fishing and hunting with me were far more important than merely passing on the outdoor heritage. I believe the time they spent made me into the teenager I was and the adult I’m still working on. I believe they gave me an advantage over people who weren’t as fortunate. It’s not the hunting and fishing, although I think it’s an important element, but rather it’s the hours of one-on-one time they spent with me. The department’s Pass It On program is designed to recruit new hunters, and it was established to reverse the decline in the number of hunters. However, the real value of the program may be much more profound. I’ll be discussing that idea, as well as relating experiences I’ve had or been told about. Agree or disagree, I’d love to hear from you.