How bad do you want to hunt?

[dub]

I tell people that you can't make a dog hunt either they want to or don't. But how much depends on the dogs. The other day I had to get out of bed and did not want to. As I drug myself out of bed my wife if someone called and wanted to go hunting hogs could I get up then. Just the thought of it had me up and getting dressed. I started thinking about the first hunt. But then I remembered getting a gun that a hammer would hit a cap and a cork ball would fly out. I hunted bugs. Then I remember I would catch frogs and put them in my wagon but they would hop out. So I went inside and took all the sandwich bags. I caught the frogs put them in the baggies and then in the wagon so they could not hop out as easy and I could catch the again much easier when they did. My dad has pictures of the hold a rabbits ears as high as I could and the feet touching the ground. I apply hunting to everything I do. I have a passion for hunting that is just in my bones. I will hunt anything any place anytime. I forget about everything else. I guess it could be called an addiction. While I do love dogs and hunting with dogs but I love hunting more.

I guess what I am asking is is it a hobby or who you are?

[Brushbuster]

I was born to hunt!!  If I aint hunting, I'm in bed before 10, if I'm going hunting I can stay up all night!  When deer season rolls around, basically don't sleep!  My wife & kids are all out of the same mold, we are either hunting something or fishing somewhere!  Can't beat the outdoors for good family fun, & teaching values to the kids! 

[waylon-N.E. OK]

I go to crazy ends to hunt, in fact tonight I'm hauling 3 dogs to the river in the back seat of  92  cutless Ciearra cause my little toyota 4x4 truck needs a windshiled, I'll get stuck again in this car, end up walking miles to a place where we can catch a ride. I can't count the time, money and effort i've put into chasing a hog around this country, I've had some luck and lot's of long nights walking behind dogs or watching them road in front of a truck, my kids don't even ask any more " dad did you catch any hogs " now they just say " dad did you have fun "  I must or I wouldn't keep beating my head against a wall to chase these hogs.

But it beats sitting on the couch playing X-box  

[SCHitemHard]

i know what you mean, when i take my dogs out to the field to let them walk its almost instinct to let them off the lead and watch them work. sometimes i even catch myself stalking after them. feels only natural. or when im on a back road and i catch a glimspe of a field im just praying a deer or a pig runs into view

ive seen some old family videos of me when i was 7 and 8 and my pop would take a shoe box and draw a rabbit on it and he would put it on a lead and run it through the yard and i would chase it and shoot at it. real good times when i was young, it was so easy back then to just go out into the back yard with friends and take our hounds and let em out and be out there for 8 to 9 hours and come back in with a coon or a rabbit

[catchrcall]

Definately a part of who I am, and my oldest boy is showing the same signs already at age six.  We get him up for school at 7:00 during the weekdays and he's rubbing the sleep out of his eyes for a half hour.  I can tap him on the shoulder at 4:00 in the morning and ask him if he wants to go catch a hog and he'll be dressed before I make it out of his room.  If I tell him the night before sometimes he'll even sleep in his clothes, boots too if we'd let him. He even has the routine down.  I'll go start loading the pickup and Momma gets herself and the youngest ready, and Cason will show up at the pickup with me and ask which dogs to let out and go get them.   He'll check his stuff over (boots, plastic knife, coats, hats whatever) a hundred times before he goes to bed.  Deer season is the same way. 

[YELLOWBLACKMASK]

I went down to three dogs once when I shipped out to military. Closest I have ever been to being considered out of the game.  Just about went into depression. 

Point blank I have to dog hunt or my equilibrium is off. 

Definitely ain't a hobby here. Straight obsession.

[coyote hunter]

Weve hunted with dogs all my life   its in my blood  we used to spend every winter weekend morning chasing yotes with greyhounds   we kept our dogs behind the beer joint  after the hunt our dads would go have a few beers and we would be walking thru pastures with those dogs chasing whatever jumped up   i quit when i was 14 and moved to the city with my mom and stepdad   missed it everyday til i met my wife abd had kids   her brother took me hogdogging on my dads land and 6 months later i had a few dogs and moved my family back home to geronimo ok  where we have built back a pack of yote dogs and some critter cratchers that chase hogs for us too lol   but there was no way i was gonna bring my children up without putting some doghunting in their blood   now the whole family is addicted    for me its a way of life   for them its a lifelong lesson   definitely not a hobby   way of life is the words for it

[DangerZone]

I love the hunt, any type or game. It's definately not the kill, the stalk in close enough for a shot on a deer, to see a birddog on point,hear a coondog bay treed or the cur dogs baying a hog, watching a turkey strut in when you've been calling for 1.5 hour, or a yote sneaking in across any open field when your calling. I use to kill every time I got a shot but in the last 4-5 years I've let several bucks and turkey just walk on by. But forsure if I don't spend some time in the woods or out on the water fishing at least every month I get real hard to live with and my give a damn about everything and everyone else is gone.

[tnhillbilly]

Its definitely a way of life, obsession, addiction, or whatever you want to call it. Its all i think about 24-7. If I cant get out in the woods, I am very hard to live with.
    My wife tells me all the time, if i dont want to go somewhere or do something, I get the old,......if it was somethin to do with hunting you would.....LOL.
   Before I got married, I would quit or end up getting fired every year when hunting season rolled around. But now I have a wife and 4 kids that depend on me, so I work alot more than I hunt, but thanks to ETHD I can still hunt while im at work.
     I dont even want to know how much money I have spent on hunting alone over the last 20 yrs. It drives my dad insane, he thinks all i should do is work 24-7 and set at the house. LOL.  alot of people just dont understand, its not just a hobby, its who I am.

[bob]

Im from generations of hunters , we have pics of our family back in the 1800s , they look like pilgrims , all men in black ,one woman to cook , one of my favorates was a pic of a riverboat with deer strung out from top to bottom , deer hanging everywhere  its in my blood , I was adopted at 3 , my step dad was not a hunter , but I always was hunting something , I met my real dad when I was 17 , then I learnt about were all this drive had came from , they sent me to the store , I bought my favorite cookie and brought it home , come to find out it was my real dads favorite also  , thats weird , some people were meant to be hunter gathers & others cooks  LOL

[dub]

That is funny. My wife did the family research and found out I had long hunters on bith sides. Those were the guys that went out into the wild and hunted for long periods of time and then brought the food back. I think it was Jim Bowie or one of them a relative hunted with. I definatly think it is in the genes of many people.

[GOTBOAR]

My wife thinks huntin is a hobby. But i was raised huntin. If im not huntin im pretty pissy to be around. I just tell her that huntin is a way of life. Huntin IS life.... Its mans basic erg to kill and eat somethin. 

[firemedic]

Simply put.....I can't imagine life without it.

[coyote hunter]

Hey gotboar  u outta grandfield? Up by cookie town

[clinton]

I remember my granddad and his buddies all meeting at his house and drinking coffee be fore going out coon hunting, he passed away bfore i was old enough to go with him, and i had a buddie that invited me to go hunting with him behinde dogs, needless to say ive been busey walking behinde dogs and walking threw woods ever sience, so what im trying to say is it breed in to you

[J Carroll]

I hunt about anything that walks or flies. For the past 3 or 4 years, one of my main coon hunting buddies is a 72 year old man, that still hunts anywhere from 3 - 6 nights a week. He said one night walking to a tree, " Jeffro you don't have to be crazy to do this but it damn sure helps".
I think he may be right.

[GOTBOAR]

@coyote hunter
I live in Loveland north of Grandfield, but, yeah that be me....