Make it a Double
February 16, 2009 by Tom Sorenson
My early years really sparked a passion for hunting and fishing.
For my family, hunting has been pumping through our veins for many years and accross several generations. It was no accident that I took an early interest in hunting myself – for many years I satisfied my craving by listening wide eyed as the stories were shared at every family gathering around the dinner table. My first memories of actually hunting myself were sneaking up on tweety birds with my BB gun as a youngster. I was the youngest of the boys in my family – two older brothers and a younger sister – and life on the farm was full of excitement. And tweety birds. I progressed from there to waking up early ever morning of my summer vacations to sit in the shed and wait for rabbits to feed out from a pile of wood located in the back pasture. This was my introduction to my first real hunting experience. I’d sit and wait for the quarry to show – and then with practiced patience, I’d wait for a good shot, and then squeze away at the bolt action open sight .22. More often than not, I hit what I was aiming at, and I’d come back to the house proudly holding a dead rabbit. From there I started upland game hunting, and by the time I was old enough to start big game hunting, I was a full fledged, veteran hunter. Or so I thought. But big game hunting was a whole different animal, and after three years of hunting big game, I’d still not had any success in bringing home meat for the pot.
 Another rabbit falls victim to my early passion.
 A young rooster from the early years.
During January of my 7th grade year in school, my family moved across the border from Oregon to Idaho. The following year, I began my hunting anew in Idaho. During deer season, I was skunked from ever seeing a buck. Then elk season rolled around and I found myself the proud owner of a spike only tag. Of course we saw no spikes, but lots of racked out bulls. The next year I was a freshman in high school, now. Pressured to go out for the football team, I resisted for one reason – football happens in the fall. Hunting season happens in the fall. I had my priorities! Deer season came as October showed it’s brilliant fall colors and I found myself headed up the Middle Fork of the Weiser River with my grandpa. This was going to be the year – I just knew it.
 Fall in Idaho is truly a beautiful thing.
The day started out just the way a perfect morning of hunting does – it was cold, clear, and calm. As we hiked up this narrow draw, the sun began to peak over the trees at our backs. The aspens where changing colors and the powerful aroma of the sage was a great thing to experience then as it is now. The morning was going quickly when I spotted a herd of deer feeding into a distant draw. I’ll never forget my anxiousness as I asked Grandpa if I could shoot from where we were. Looking back, I’d guess we were 600 yards away or more, and as I think about that, I’m amazed Grandpa could keep from laughing! Knowing the deer were likely looking for a place to bed, Grandpa decided we would simply hike through the draw below us and get above the deer and they’d likely bed in the draw they’d just fed into. A half hour later, we found ourselves overlooking said draw and not seeing anything. I’m sure I was testing my grandfather’s patience as I kept wanting to walk further into the draw. All of a sudden, I noticed a deer staring up at me and I slowly dropped to the ground. I turned back to Grandpa and pointed.
“Deer,” I hissed.
I brought my gun up and saw that it was a doe. Then I noticed something in the sagebrush just above the doe and looked at it through my scope. A buck! I’m sure you can remember the excitement running through you when you knew you were going to have a chance at your first kill – I can’t put it into words myself. I told Grandpa I’d spotted a buck and I was going to shoot. The buck was bedded down about 100 yards away – a chip shot. I steadied as much as my raging nerves would allow and pulled the trigger. Dust flew in front of the bedded buck and he jumped to his feet. Does were running all over the place and I frantically tried ramming another shell into the chamber, but in my excitement I’d managed to not fully eject my spent cartridge. My gun jammed! I had my one moment of clarity and turned to Grandpa who was already handing over his .348 that was shooting about a million and a half grain bullets – or something like that. It was known as a gun that packs quite a wallop but I was thinking that at the moment, I just knew I had to put that deer down! I grabbed his gun and now I was on my feet and dropped the deer at about 150 yards where he stood!
 My first buck (also my biggest buck to date) and a wonderful experience shared with my grandpa.
Celebration was short lived, however, as I handed the rifle back to Grandpa another buck came bolting out of the draw and I remember telling Grandpa, “He’s high – take him, Grandpa!”
Well, this is when I got my shooting lesson – Grandpa ups with the rifle as the deer was hitting full speed. The rifle just hit his shoulder when it went off and the buck went down not twenty yards from mine! What a special hunt and a great first buck experience.
 My grandpa’s buck – an old buck that had a huge body.
 Pre-photoshop days as our pictures together didn’t turn out. Grandma simply cut Grandpa out of his picture and put us in the same picture with tape.
Do you have a story to tell? If so, send us an email and be sure to attach pics if you have any.
I learned hunting pretty much the same way. I started on sparrows with a bb gun, the moved to rabbits and upland birds, and eventually got into big game when I was 20.
Great story Tom. It took me back to my first kill.
That is CRAZY. Sounds like duck hunting, with all that action. Very cool!
Sometimes I really envy you guys who started hunting at a early age. I feel I missed out on a lot of good hunting years but, none the less I am here now and having a blast.
Some of the best hunting of my life was stalking trophy grasshoppers with my bb gun. You know the big brown ones that fly and sound like rattlesnakes.
Arthur – I was fortunate to grow up in the boonies where there were plenty of opportunity to get outside!
NorCal – and we can trust you ARE going deer hunting this year, right?
Rick – I’m glad I grew up hunting/fishing…but the important thing is, like you said, that you are here and doing it now.
Cory – That’s hillarious! I did that one year with scorpions when we had a huge outbreak of them one year in the Owyhees. Of course, not very sporting as you turn over rocks and they just sit there. Somehow we managed to not get stung a single time…of course this was all done without any adults knowing what we were up to…wouldn’t want them to spoil all the fun!
Yes—-the days of stalking tweety’s with the bb gun. I wore the seals out of several air rifles. I was lucky in that I grew up in the country as well, and had a few hundred acres of creek bottom for a back yard. My dad was not a fan of me shooting at tweetys and lived by the motto you eat what you shoot, but he did bring me home a paper milk container of copperhead bb’s on almost a daily basis. It however is next to impossible for a 10 year old with a pellet rifle to just shoot at tin cans when you have cow pastures full of sparrows behind your house. All those pellets and bb’s sent down range did make me a deadly shot, and once I upgraded to rifles with some powder behind the bullet I found all that practice paid off. When you can lob a bb into a sparrow at 50 yards, hitting a deer with the .243 at a hundred seems all to easy…….
cory- I remember when I was too little for a bb gun hunting grasshoppers with my make believe gun, also known as a wiffle ball bat. I would stalk up and down our gravel driveway for hours on end with my bat at the ready and smack unsuspecting grasshoppers out there sunning themselves on the rocks. It was even more fun if you where able to hit them on the fly. Like you say those big honkers that buzzed and clicked when they took off where the true trophys, wall hangers!
Hey Tom – remember shooting water skippers with bb guns? Benji- how’d you hit them little hoppers when you couldn’t even hit my whiffle ball slider?
That, my friend, is exactally how I BECAME so good at hitting your wiffle ball slider!
Oh and some of those big hoppers where bigger than a wiffle ball, and they were mean too! It was akin to hunting grizzlies with a butter knife in the alaskan bush with a bloody front quarter of an elk strapped to your back. Dangerous stuff that hopper hunting.
I am just getting started here…you haven’t known terror until you are six years old out on a hot gravel road hunting grasshoppers with nothing but a wifflebat to defend yourself. When one of those buggers buzzes you and then lands on your arm with it’s clingy feet then starts spitting out it’s fake blood stuff that comes out of their mouth when they feel threatened….ugh, it still gives me the heebie jeebies!
If I see this right, there aught to be a trophy room somewhere that has sparrows, tweetys, rabbits, grasshoppers, flying rattlesnakes, scorpians, water skippers, and a wiffle ball. And in the gun cabinet bb guns with burned out seals, milk jug ammo cartons and wiffle bats. i gotta see this!!
I wanted to leave a comment but there is some serious hunting talk going on.
Makes me nervous.
Jody – are you feeling sorry for Sue yet? she had to put up with this kind of table talk for years – maybe she joined us to keep her sanity. I’m sure you are familiar with it at your home?!
Gary, I am very familiar with it. But I’ve learned to tune it out. Maybe I need to start paying more attention.
Robert – I wish the daily plinking with the .22 had remained with me, but alas if you watch last month’s video, you’ll see that I can lay absolutely no claim to being a good rifle shot these days.
Benji – Wow, you really got going there. I really don’t remember those grasshoppers being that dangerous – but I’m with you on the nasty goop they spit out of their mouth…that’s disgusting.
Todd – ah, yes. How could I forget the water skippers?!
Jody – oh yeah…serious hunting talk. That’s us!
I am a little late seeing this post, but it sure made me laugh. The “brother banter” reminds me of the conversations that break out everytime I get together with my brothers. I also liked the pre-photo shop picture. I just spent several days organizing all of the photos my family has taken over the last 30 years. Those old photos are just great, and it makes them more special when they are doctored a bit.
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