By Kamryn Brock
We live in a world where a dad hopes and prays that his son will love to hunt and be outdoors just like his ole man so they will always have at least one thing in common. In my case, I am a mom hoping and praying for the same thing between my son and me. My dad and PawPaw took me dog hunting for the first time when I was three months old, and I have been hunting ever since. So, I guess you could say that I am following in my dad’s shoes when it comes to raising my little boy in the woods.
I found out I was pregnant in January 2019. Not only was I going to be a first-time mom, but I was going to be a boy mom at that. I was so thrilled I was finally going to experience the parent side of hunting. That sounds stupid, right? Why would it be a different experience as a parent? Honestly, until you live it, you can't truly appreciate it; but I'll try to explain it. If you go hunting every chance you get because you absolutely love to hunt and you love the thrill you get from it then, you know there is no better feeling than the shakes you get when a buck walks in sight of your stand or a flock of green heads is locked up, coming into the pond. Take that feeling and multiply it by ten - that is what it's like hunting as a parent.
Don’t get me wrong, you have to learn a whole new aspect of patience when hunting with a child. Children do not like to sit still, nor do they know how to be quiet for that matter. Anybody who has ever been hunting knows those are vital. From experience, if you decide to take your 2-year-old son to sit in a shooting house with you, do not plan on killing anything or maybe even seeing anything for that matter. But as a parent, you treasure every single minute of it because the excitement in your child’s eyes when they see a raccoon or maybe even just a bird makes you realize that hunting isn’t just about killing something to put food on the table; it's about the time you get to spend with whomever you are hunting with.
When you become a parent, it isn’t about sending pictures to your buddies to show off what you killed. It's hurrying home so your child can be in the pictures with you because you want the world to see both. Hunting has never been “just hunting” for me and my family, but now that I have a little boy to share these memories with; hunting will never be the same.
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