For decades at work, church or just walking down the sidewalk, I’ve endured doting old grandparents flashing pictures of their slobbering little grandkids.
I swore I’d never be like that. No one cares about your grandkid. Get over it. He or she is nothing special. At least that's what I thought.
And then, I just had one. Well, I guess I didn’t actually have one. My daughter played a small part in having him.
My daughters have always been the apples of my eye, but now that a grandkid is here, the oldest and her husband have been demoted. Their only use now is to be modes of transportation to get the grandkid over to see me.
So enough about all of that. Kids nowadays live in a wicked world. There’s all kinds of electronic gizmos to draw them away from hunting, fishing and camping (with Grandpa, of course).
When I was a kid in the winter months, we’d go duck hunting every morning before school. We’d slide into school at the last second with duck feathers stuck on us.
In junior high, they called me "Gloves" because my hands were brown from running trap lines and sticking my hands in freezing cold water. In PE, it looked like I had a pair of gloves on. Now? Gee, all the boys' hands are as soft as a newborn pig's hiney because they play on computers all day and their moms rub their hands with Vaseline so they don’t get chapped and cracked.
So I knew I had to formulate a plan fast to overcome all of this negativity. I went to the drawing room. As a kid, mom and dad got us kids a BB gun when we were 6 years old, a pellet gun when we were 9, a shotgun when we were 10 and a .22 when we were 12.
But, drastic times call for drastic measures, so we had to jumpstart his training. I figured at the ripe old age of 5 months he should be ready to get his first gun.
But what should it be? There are literally hundreds of BB guns on the market now. After much research and soul searching, I figured I’d go with my gut feeling and the advice of the famous movie “A Christmas Story” and get him the famous Daisy “Red Ryder."
I assured his nervous mom and dad that he was old enough. Now all I have to do is figure how he can go ground squirrel hunting with me. He’s not even strong enough yet to hold a baby bottle. Oh well, minor detail.
And not to be one that pushes the limit or anything, but he for sure needed a new hat. All he currently has are the weird stocking hats the kids wear who act like they’re some cross between a yuppie mountain man skier and John Denver. That’ll never cut it on my grandkid, so I ran to my local outdoor store and bought him a Daniel Boone coon skin hat. It may have fake fur but it does have a real coon tail. Pretty neat huh?
Now all I have to do is convince his mom that it’s safe to let me take him to the mountains. She has too many images in her mind as a kid of moose chasing her on the 4-wheeler, slamming into a deadfall while floating the river, camping in blizzards and storms blowing in and nearly swamping us while out fishing. But she’s in trouble. I know my rights. I have grandpa visitation rights.
At the risk of adding a little seriousness to the article I must say something. I believe F&G has done a grave disservice to kids and the hunting community in general by making kids wait until they’re 12 to get a hunting license. By the age of 12, they’re already into way too many other things. I once heard it said that the Catholics said to give them a child until he is 12 and they will have them for life. There’s a lot of truth to that statement.
I started shooting a shotgun at 7 and couldn’t even reach the trigger. I had to hold the stock under my arm and dad would only let me load one shell. I carried a rifle deer hunting at 9 or 10. Do you think this might have something to do with me loving the outdoors or becoming an Outdoor Writer?
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
