Hopping on the #tbt bandwagon, welcome to the first “Throwback Thursday” post! This is a new mini-series within the blog, just like Must-Read Mondays. With the start of the new year, I decided to do a post that focuses on exactly how I got my start in the outdoors, as some of you may be wondering exactly how I grew to love hunting and fishing in general. Being an only child, and a female, one would expect my childhood to be filled with Barbies, plastic sparkly high heels, and lots of time spent in my mother’s makeup drawer. Wrong! While I did have a small handful of Barbies, they were only purchased to “help run” the doll-sized stable with horses that I obsessed over for years. I mean, as a 6 year old, how could I possibly be expected to run the entire barn operation on my own, right?

My dad has been a member of countless gun, dove, duck, and deer clubs over the years, along with the places he has owned himself, and I was always ready to tag along. Whether he was actually going hunting, or just riding to one of the properties to do a little work, you better believe I was super excited to spend some time outdoors: riding around on the four-wheeler, exploring the fields and woods nearby, finding as many “treasures” as possible (think old birds’ nests or regular super cool rocks), and everything in between. Odd? Perhaps. I am not ashamed to admit, I still go “treasure” hunting, much to the amusement of my friends and family. Before we got Dixie almost 10 years ago, and before I thought it wasn’t cool to hang out with parents while I was in middle/high school, I loved nothing more than joining my dad on his dove hunts and playing the part of bird dog. No retriever? No problem! I was too little to shoot, so it was my mission on each hunt to search for and pick up every dove my dad knocked down. Wearing my little camouflage t-shirt and what I am certain was the coolest straight-leg jeans/ boots combo ever, I ran all over the dove field like I owned it. In the winter, I would bundle up and hop on the back of the four-wheeler for some off-road exploring. I thought it was so cool seeing does grazing in the fields or sneaking through the woods to bed down for the evening. It still gives me a rush, even after 20+ years, and I know it will be the same after another 20. I think I was only 7 or 8 when I first learned how to use a climber on the big pines right in our backyard at home.

Like I mentioned before, I definitely went through the typical teen phase of thinking parents were old fogies and I undoubtedly had much cooler things going on. Ha! Right… But I at last grew out of that phase and started actively hunting again at the beginning of college, adding in more and more fishing over the years, and I have never looked back. There have been countless hunts, fishing outings, and skeet shoots in these past 7 years, and I know there will be many more to come!

Keep checking back for many more Throwback Thursdays!