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How to Keep Your Kids Interested in Hunting

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6a00d83451bb7069e201b8d18a9aee970c-600wiBy: Jason Christie

The biggest thing Iâve learned from hunting with three kids is to make it fun for them. With my first kid, we got in the stand before daylight and sat there until I was ready to go home. Now, Iâm on my third kid and I can look at them and can tell if theyâre having fun or not. If theyâre not having fun, we head home.

Itâs not even about killing something for them. There are days we can sit there for four hours and they are content⦠theyâre not bored, and are having a good time. However, there are also days that weâre out there for 45 minutes and theyâre tired.

Over time, Iâve learned not to push them to stay out longer than they want to be out there. I want them to enjoy hunting, and enjoy spending time with Dad in the woods. I do what they want to do.

Thatâs one good thing about me bow hunting â thatâs my time! At home, I donât have any interest in rifle or muzzleloader hunting, so that gives me time to take them and I donât feel like Iâm missing something. Nowadays, I feel like I have to kill a giant and itâs kind of taking the fun away from hunting smaller deer. What has brought that back for me, though, is hunting with my kids. There are days where they will happily shoot a 6-point and days that theyâll pass on 6-points. But theyâre like I used to be, where if Iâm in the mood to take a smaller deer, Iâll do it.

Itâs important to get your kids into hunting and the outdoors, but know when to call it a day, otherwise it will leave a bad taste in their mouth and they wonât enjoy it, or worse, not want to ever do it again.

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I agree it needs to be fun for them I have learned to ask my daughter what she wants to do seems to keep her more interested and if her plan works out she never lets me forget about it. I enjoy her success more than my own she has been blessed and has already harvested 7 of the big 10 for Arizona not bad for 14

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Sorry but i have to disagree in a big way, unless you like raising spoiled brats. While that might work for the short term, the point of raising kids is to get them ready for the long term and to be good adults. By making it all about them you are only adding to the self entitlement attitude and "all about me" attitude kids are having these days.

 

If they are gonna like hunting, its because its in their blood, not because it was made fun or not. Lets face it when they become adults and hunt on their own, we all know sometimes "fun" is the last thing it is. if they are used to it being roses and purple daisies, when it becomes thorns and bruises, they will lose interest.

 

Just force them to come with you, give them no choice in the matter, and it will become a way of life and they will either stick to it or not, but either way they will be better adults. That worked for my generation and many generations before, and there are more hunters now then ever. No one made it "fun" for me. The fun came when i finally got an animal. It made all the hard work worthwhile and i got the feeling of putting in hard work if you want a good reward. And hard work is definitely something this world needs more of.

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I think that's a good way to handle little kids, but at some point when they get older your kids need to be told, "Hey, you want to have fun every minute or do you want to be successful? Because success is usually the combination of a lot of effort and discomfort." I've ruined more than one hunt because I was worried about my kids and even other adults I was with not having fun. So to make sure everyone enjoyed themselve, I made decisions i wouldn't have made hunting on my own. The end result was that we went home empty handed, then I went out by myself and killed deer, and got to return home to the, "I wish we would've got one when I was there" kinda stuff. If I'd been a bigger hard-butt in the field, we may have harvested one together.

 

The way I look at it is, as a parent my job is not to raise kids that smile all the time, my job is to raise a successful adult that's able to take on the world and survive in it. That prime focus has to be kept whether hunting, working in the yard, or sending them off to school for the day.

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