Should Parents Take their Children Hunting?

The guns in the house thread got me to wondering...
Should parents take their elementary school aged children hunting with them, showing them how to aim and fire a riffle? THAT I'm not as comfortable with. Ted Nugent types who will give their eleven year old son a riffle for his birthday.

Ted Nugent is clinically ate up with dumbass. That said I was taught to hunt well before I was 10. As a little kid I just went along to learn skills. Walking quietly, know the habits of the game you hunted, knowing where everybody else was at. Graduated to carrying an unloaded gun, saftety was taught throughout and was not even labeled as a lesson. It was presented as the common sense of why and how you do things. Finally moved in to firing the guns and eventually hunting on my own. As a kid I loved it. Quiet time, honing skills, putting food on the table. It was a common Rite-of-Passage for my generation of country kids. Mom Dad and I would often hunt together...it was a time not of bloodlust for some dumb rabbit to eat. More it was us as a family being together doing something to sustain ourselves. Learned a lot about how to get along with people like that...it required communication and trust. Helped in building those skills.

We also gardened together where I learned to use tractors and break dirt. Spend a lot of woods time hunting walnuts, hickory and pecan nuts...morel mushrooms. It was time in nature and we practiced leaving a small footprint, respecting it for helping us. I encourage folks to hunt with their kids not for the gun aspect but for the time together and the contact with nature. Don't like guns, leave 'em at home and get a camera or sketchpad.

Yeah really, like if you're out in the country or the woods, you're not going to take your kid out and show him where dinner's coming from? Or not going to show them how it's done right so they don't just pick up a shotgun when they're older and maybe kill somebody because they were being an idiot because they were never taught the proper way to do it?

Depends what age the kid is.

I don't see why not, but I wouldn't force the kid to hunt if he doesn't want to.

I dunno, I guess if you live in the deep country.....(Kanye shrug)

I don't judge a family that hunts with their children. Children have to take the hunter safety course before they are allowed in the woods. However, I would not ever want my son to hunt. I have let him sit in a tree stand with a bow hunter before and he did not enjoy that, so lucky for me, I don't think he will ever have a desire to hunt.