My Great Day
So today was the day to bring my son into the next stage of boyhood and take him up to Martinsville Sportsman's Club and take him fishing and shooting for the very first time. Mom was uncertain about the whole thing ("He's only eight"), but we had a great time.
1. Getting Out To Nature
So the club is great and back onto land that is nicely tucked away and hidden on the side of a wooded hill. We both love trees:
2. First Time Fishing
Anyways, I have to admit I had not fished since I was a kid and was not sure how well it was going to go. But we were loaded up with the basics (thanks to MC Sports) and off to the pond we carried our gear:
The boy loved the poles and the gear, I was a bit worried about all the algea in the pond:
As it turns out, the fish were biting within minutes and while I was fighting with the boy's pole a fish ran off with my bobber and nearly my pole. That and it was two feet long (or maybe less) as the picture can attest:
We did throw another fish back and managed to only hook the boy's shoe once. He was not squeemish in the least when we gutted the fish either. I was worried because he had named the fish ("fishey") but he was adamant that fishey had to die because we had promised his mother a fish dinner (or at least a few mouthfulls).
A small disaster was avoided when we left to get ice to keep our mighty catch cool while we went to the range to shoot.
3. Shooting Time
Now, the range was the part that concerned my wife the most. Her father shoots, and has since before her birth, but he never took her to the range. Her mother has shot once, but is otherwise not very gun friendly. So my wife has no measure for when gun training begins. So, today was day 1 and my goal was to teach him why guns are dangerous before getting him plinking with my childhood daisy pelletgun.
I chose the often suggested "lesson #1" approach to getting the boy's attention and making a mark in his mind. The idea is basically to take a couple of watermelons and show what a firearm will do to them and then correlate the results to him, his cat, his family, etc.
So to the watermelons:
And the shotgun I brought is my mossy 590:
And here is the video link to how it went:
Lesson 1 Video (13 mb Quicktime)
So, he got the point.
Time to cleanup the mess and head over to the pistol range to plink some bottles!
At the pistol range I setup a couple of bottles, went over range and safety rules along with commands, showed him how to load up the pistol and off we went. He missed alot, but we kept at it. I really wanted him to have a success on his first trip, but we were up against a time limit (had to meet another board member for a FTF transaction later in the afternoon).
But we kept at it and had success:
Pellet Gun Video (13 mb Quicktime)
And he felt the success too:
Well it was time to cleanup our mess and "police the bottles" (no brass with a pelletgun is nice). The boy gave a thumbs-up that we were good to go:
4. More Father/Son Time
And off to the FTF meet we ran. We actually arrived early and ate a nice pizza lunch at a truckstop followed by video games and other fun. The FTF went great and on the way home I got to reflect on what a great day we had.
He had a great time too. You could see it on his face:
Maybe I will even get the hat back some day!
What a great day. One to remember.
So today was the day to bring my son into the next stage of boyhood and take him up to Martinsville Sportsman's Club and take him fishing and shooting for the very first time. Mom was uncertain about the whole thing ("He's only eight"), but we had a great time.
1. Getting Out To Nature
So the club is great and back onto land that is nicely tucked away and hidden on the side of a wooded hill. We both love trees:
2. First Time Fishing
Anyways, I have to admit I had not fished since I was a kid and was not sure how well it was going to go. But we were loaded up with the basics (thanks to MC Sports) and off to the pond we carried our gear:
The boy loved the poles and the gear, I was a bit worried about all the algea in the pond:
As it turns out, the fish were biting within minutes and while I was fighting with the boy's pole a fish ran off with my bobber and nearly my pole. That and it was two feet long (or maybe less) as the picture can attest:
We did throw another fish back and managed to only hook the boy's shoe once. He was not squeemish in the least when we gutted the fish either. I was worried because he had named the fish ("fishey") but he was adamant that fishey had to die because we had promised his mother a fish dinner (or at least a few mouthfulls).
A small disaster was avoided when we left to get ice to keep our mighty catch cool while we went to the range to shoot.
3. Shooting Time
Now, the range was the part that concerned my wife the most. Her father shoots, and has since before her birth, but he never took her to the range. Her mother has shot once, but is otherwise not very gun friendly. So my wife has no measure for when gun training begins. So, today was day 1 and my goal was to teach him why guns are dangerous before getting him plinking with my childhood daisy pelletgun.
I chose the often suggested "lesson #1" approach to getting the boy's attention and making a mark in his mind. The idea is basically to take a couple of watermelons and show what a firearm will do to them and then correlate the results to him, his cat, his family, etc.
So to the watermelons:
And the shotgun I brought is my mossy 590:
And here is the video link to how it went:
Lesson 1 Video (13 mb Quicktime)
So, he got the point.
Time to cleanup the mess and head over to the pistol range to plink some bottles!
At the pistol range I setup a couple of bottles, went over range and safety rules along with commands, showed him how to load up the pistol and off we went. He missed alot, but we kept at it. I really wanted him to have a success on his first trip, but we were up against a time limit (had to meet another board member for a FTF transaction later in the afternoon).
But we kept at it and had success:
Pellet Gun Video (13 mb Quicktime)
And he felt the success too:
Well it was time to cleanup our mess and "police the bottles" (no brass with a pelletgun is nice). The boy gave a thumbs-up that we were good to go:
4. More Father/Son Time
And off to the FTF meet we ran. We actually arrived early and ate a nice pizza lunch at a truckstop followed by video games and other fun. The FTF went great and on the way home I got to reflect on what a great day we had.
He had a great time too. You could see it on his face:
Maybe I will even get the hat back some day!
What a great day. One to remember.
Always good to see passing shooting on to kids.
ffftt:
