Hunting with a son

By Alan Dubberley
Alan is the deputy director for Wyoming Travel & Tourism. My writings are about my personal experiences in Wyoming. To say he is a little biased towards Wyoming is an understatement. Still, everyone can have the experiences told here. Just get out there and enjoy the Wyoming outdoors.

Wow… too much reflection in that last post. Sorry, but I am new at this and love writing about my experiences.

Like this one… have you ever taken a young boy hunting? Better yet… ever told him 3 days in advance that he will be going hunting with you on the upcoming Saturday? Last fall (2006) I took my 3 year old son on his first ever hunting trip. A proud moment as a father… extremely proud.

We went dove hunting near Wheatland, Wyoming with a fellow staff member and his buddy. My son talked about these two for months following that trip. They were his new life long friends.

The trip was relatively uneventful, other than poor shooting by my staff member (he knows who he is). But the doves were everywhere. It was incredible wing shooting. I haven’t had a dove hunt like that since living in Nebraska. The first bird that came by was definitely within range and I steadied my son so he could watch, took aim and dropped the bird with one shot. “You got him!” was the cry from my son, as though he never thought I would hit it. He was so excited and he gets this proud look on his face… until I say go pick him up. “No way,” he exclaims. He didn’t touch a bird all day.

Well, Sept. 1 is only two days away and my boy is again chomping at the bit (as am I). We won’t be able to go back to Wheatland, but have other spots that should hold plenty of birds.

Which they didn’t… my initial stop was a futile effort in public land hunting. It was a State Recreation Area with a nice lake, which was half empty due to irrigation needs. That wasn’t a big deal, but where I wanted to hunt ended up being private land. Who knew?

So my son and I spent the next 4 hours driving around southeast Wyoming looking for doves… much more time, and fuel, than the normal hunter would spend looking for doves. But it was a hot afternoon and beat sitting around the tube watching something we both had seen hundreds of times.

So in our travels, we passed a spot that seemed covered in doves. After the second pass, I decided I needed to find out who owned it and see if we could hunt it. Come to find out, it is a bird farm and the membership dues are $1000 annually. But the owner just happened to come up the fence row where I was talking to a couple hunters trying to find out who owned the place so we could get permission.

The owner said we could, I think he actually gave my son permission, and he left. I asked the hunters I had been talking to and it turns out one of them was the ranch foreman on the place for the past 30 plus years. He said it was very unusual to get permission on the place. I took it as a God moment and thanked Him for me and my boy.

Now, not every day do you drive over 100 miles, some of that on the same roads more than once, only to end up closer to your starting point than you originally planned on a $1000/year bird farm shooting doves. I am nothing if not determined.

To be able to hunt and fish with my son is one of the most important things in my life. I hunted with my dad, and it remains some of the most important and vivid memories we had together. Hunting gives us time together, doing something we both love. This time is irreplaceable, I cherish it always.