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For me personally, I was born into a hunting family. However, my oldest brother almost never hunts now, but my other 2 brothers are pretty committed. However, I have dived deeper than any of them and seem to have a stronger drive than they do. I have always attributed much of that to being the youngest and having to try harder to be their equal, but I also think my personality lends itself to that, and I was born with that more intense desire to hunt.

I was also exposed to fishing quite a bit as a kid, and while I enjoy fishing, my passion for it doesn't even come close to my passion for the hunt. My wife just shakes her head, because it doesn't matter if it's elk or gophers, I am just driven to hunt. I know there are others on here like that as well. My good buddies the Pauls boys and I are cut from the same cloth, and when we swap stories about our youth it cracks me up how similar we are. I also know that Idyllwild has mentioned that he wasn't raised hunting, but when he was exposed to it there was no looking back. It seems to me that our raising definitely plays a part, but there seems, that for many of us here in the BS, there are many commonalities in our personalities that drive us to hunt, like an invisible force. It's like it's the fiber and genetic makeup of who I am. I have often thought how nice it would be not to be so driven to hunt as I would have money for so many other things, but it seems as if you were to separate me from hunting it would be like separating my soul and body.

So what are all your thoughts? Are we born with a hunting drive like a pointer dog? Or is it mostly just what we have been exposed to? I think both play a major part, but I also think that with many of us it is more genetic and God given than others.

Nature vs Nurture has been debated forever and we ain’t gonna settle it here...

And opinion polls won’t help.

If you love it, enjoy it. That part needs no further analysis...

The responders would exaggerate how big their commitment is. :^)

My brother enjoys it but mostly just goes to hang out with me and my kids. My son likes it and most of my hunting time is used on trying to get him into critters. My daughter could take it or leave it. She is doing her online Hunter Ed during shut down and although hunting isn't a big deal to her she is actually a natural. Quiet in the woods, good situational awareness, clever (could be trouble) and focused on task.

25% with lots of training and commitment

My father was a fisherman and had me in the outdoors since I can't remember. I love fishing too, but have had the hunting urge since I was old enough to make my own little bows and arrows.

There’s something about The Pursuit that we all have. And when are men NOT competing with each other?? Why do you think there’s the fixation with Bigger & More??? More points, more inches, more species, more tags filled.

I think some hunters just crave the Hunt, and some hunt mostly to have a way to succeed in competing with other men. The line can be pretty blurry sometimes, and a lot (if not most or all) of us will shift from one camp to the next over the years. Stages of a Hunter and all that....

Makes me wonder, though.... Would we still be as driven to do this if taking a 450” Elk carried all the social prestige of buying a #5 can of Folgers instead of a smaller can?

I don’t know - you listen to the orders at a Starbucks, and you’d think it was a competitive event. Maybe it is?

Maybe we just can’t help ourselves....

I lived in a small Iowa town so opportunity was there as well. So Id say it's a little of both but would definitely have to lean toward Nature. The same applies to most things we are passionate about vs forced into.

I remember reading Andre Agassi's biography years ago and remember how it opens:"I hate tennis."

Raised by an over-bearing father and pushed into the game he became great but hated it over time.

The book "Grit" by Angela Duckworth is excellent regarding topics like this.

"The difference has nothing to do with skill or refined ethics. One is not generally superior to the other. The difference may be in the molecular dots and dashes of genetic code. It may have to do with the bending of character in the tender years of childhood. Whatever the case, the result is the same.

An outfitter friend of mine had a client with time and money enough to put a lot of heads on the walls of his spacious trophy room. One day, the client called my friend and said he needed to sell his trophies. He’d gotten himself a new wife who disapproved of hunting. It was a long time before I came around to understanding that man. My first reaction was glib. Get another wife. Then I wondered how a man marries a woman without knowing she’s going to hassle him for hunting. And if he does know her inclination, why bother with her at all?

Fact is, my thinking was wrong. I expect the man did what was right for him. I hope he simply cared more for the woman than he did for hunting. I hope he was the sort of man who just went hunting. Because he and his new wife have hard times coming if he is a Hunter.

Except for those hampered by ill health or advanced age, people who “used to hunt” invariably turn out to be people who went hunting. They will tell you how they quit when they went to college or moved to the city. They make it sound reasonable as if reason counted for anything. To a Hunter, these explanations sound rather strange. As in, “yes, I used to breathe a lot, but it’s really too much trouble when you live in Chicago”. For the Hunter, you see, does not go as a matter of convenience. He goes because he must. And even if you sentence him to pavement for an indeterminate period, he remains a Hunter. He will only cease to be a Hunter when he ceases being.

At the end of his life, my father was sick for a long time. We both knew he was never going to get better. And two weeks before he died, we talked about a new gun he wanted, the shooting he would do with it. He was a Hunter.

Ask a man who goes hunting what he is and he will probably give you his occupation....fry cook, podiatrist, engineer. Likely he thinks of himself as being that job. The Hunter will ordinarily make the same kind of response. He is lying. He will state his occupation to satisfy social convention, but he knows full well that the thing he does to earn money is not what he is.

There is no certain way to predict whether a person will be a Hunter, or one who goes hunting, or one with utterly no desire to hunt. A friend of mine whose family traditions are deeply rooted in hunting, has a son who was introduced properly, encouraged, and given every opportunity to become a Hunter. The son is a fine young man in all respects, but you could not make him show up to deer camp with a club.

Another man of my acquaintance was born to a family of aristocratic, city dwelling intellectuals. He never spent a day in the field until he was grown and had a family of his own. Despite the odds against it, he’s a Hunter to the bone. Pushing a youngster in either direction is useless.

I knew parts of this year’s ago. Yet the whole thing came clear only within the last month, as I read a quote from an outdoor magazine. The quote consisted of a single sentence, reportedly spoken from Sitting Bull. Which is about as strong and straight as words can be. “WHEN THERE ARE NO MORE BUFFALO, WE WILL HUNT MICE, FOR WE ARE HUNTERS AND WANT OUR FREEDOM.”

A non-hunter might get tangled up in the plight of the buffalo and the injustices visited upon the Sioux. The Hunter will not. This is not a statement of sorrow or regret. Instead, it is an eloquently simple observation on the nature of Hunters, and that hunting is natural. It also contains the absolute justification for hunting when basic survival is no longer at issue.

The modern Hunter routinely leaves the comforts of home, travels great distances, spends considerable amounts of money and endures physical hardship. These hunts are done with no assurance of success. Indeed the Hunter often knows in advance the odds are heavily against him.

Hunters have not yet been reduced to hunting mice, precisely because they saw that wildlife required assistance over a century ago. Hunters have a perfectly legitimate claim to the animals they pursue, a claim far more compelling than the perverted foolishness of the “animal rights” movement.

Hunting is more than recreation, more than a wildlife management tool, more than an ancient occupation. Some are Hunters and want their freedom."

As noted, I wasn't introduced to hunting, but was to fishing.

My Eureka! moment came because my passion was long distance backpacking/hiking and I took up archery just for the hell of it. The first time I saw a deer in the wild after shooting my first arrow, I immediately knew I was a hunter and always had been - I'd just never gone hunting.

Oh and don't hate on me for this, it was explained to me by an old friend that has been a bowhunter for over sixty years.

I can't "not hunt".

But once I learned and understood what they were doing hunting on those TV shows I knew right then and there that, THAT'S what I wanted to do and be. As soon as I could be outside on my own that's all I did was "play" hunter. I was in the woods and fields all the time. When I was 12 I started trapping.

I also had a younger brother who was raised right along with me who was a polar opposite of me as far as the outdoors went. I guess I got the gene but he didn't.

My father in his wisdom was well aware of this and when I was 13 he had a very good friend of his who was a classic all around outdoorsman take me under wing. He taught me the ways of the woods and all about weapons, guns and bows.

I was very fortunate to have this man as my mentor, but had I not I still would have pursued a hunting/fishing/outdoor life. I guess when you're programmed for it you have no choice!

Seems that people who don't obsess over bowhunting give it up pretty quick. Crazy how many guys only put in for it to have higher odds at a tag, but don't even own a bow before they draw. Then throw in the towel when they realize it's an amazing sufferfest.

I didn't start bowhunting until I turned 18, but I always wanted to hunt just never got to take hunters education. I like to think it's better that way because I pretty much had to figure out most of it on my own. The struggle made me obsess even more. I give up a lot of stuff in life to be able to hunt as much as I can. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Totally agree. I grew up in suburban Orange County, CA. When I was a kid, I found the notion of sport hunting to be distasteful. There were no hunters in my family and had very little exposure to hunters in my early years (other than a weird mormon family who lived across the cul de sac).

Retrospectively, as a kid I hunted whatever I could whenever I could - mostly lizards, toads, frogs, and snakes. Was always out exploring when I could.

It wasn't until I was in college that I associated that drive with sport hunting and have been hooked ever since.

There is something beautiful about cultivating an instinct that manifests in us as kids into a productive pursuit in adulthood.

Today they'd be closed down by PETA protesters.

I’m just very thankful that I grew up where I did, with the parents I have. I grew up with public land at the edge of the yard, and some very tolerant neighbors. And my parents let me run wild from an early age. It was only 30 years ago, but letting an 8-10 year old boy wander alone on thousands of acres of Corps of Engineers land would probably get you hotlined today :)

Thankful too that 30 years ago, you could still find and read books for kids with an outdoors, and hunting and trapping theme. Jim Kjelgaard and others, wrote outdoor themed books that really fired my imagination.

Then discovering Peter Capsticks books while still 12 or 13 years old, really did me in as well.

So here I am years later, and still have the motivation and passion to hunt and to fish. DNA?, I guess. Born to be a hunter? I guess

Was I born with it? I guess so and it still rages on. my best, Paul

I have a difficult time imagining what would have filled the part of my life that hunting has occupied since I was single digits.....

Not necessarily proud of it now, but the trophy room of my memories includes almost anything that moved. Tweety birds, chipmunks, squirrels, barn swallows on the wing.....hell, we even visited construction sites and spent HOURS hunting mice! One kid would be at the ready with his stik bow while the other kid turned over a piece of plywood and started flinging as the mice tried to escape. I can still feel how exciting that was as an 8 or 9 year old kid.

Archery, added to the hunting experience, may have put me at the fringes of society, but it is a fringe that I will never regret, as again, the options would likely have resulted in an ugly end for me.

Dirt, woods, fields, creeks, rivers, mountains, valleys and pursuing the creatures that occupy them with my bow. Gods personal gift to me for my own salvation. I believe that.

Nature for me, no doubt.

For example, I could care less about soccer, rugby or cricket. However, American youth are very much into soccer because they are being raised in that environment. As Americans, I do not believe that they get as fired up about rugby or cricket like a South African or Australian would be. Likewise they probably care less about American baseball.

We even made our own slingshots and hunted squirrels with them.

I get anxiety if it’s a fall afternoon and I’m not chasing pheasants or sitting in a deer stand.

I’ve got a couple nephews though that I think have “it”. One killed a tom last spring with me and the other hopefully will do the same here in a couple weeks. They love looking at my mounts and it’s all they talk about. Hopefully my son will be the same.

You might compare me to dry tinder. All I needed was a spark. The fire (which includes fishing) has burned for all the decades of my life. I'm not a specialist....meaning exclusively passionate about hunting. I have a strong passion for both lifestyles and I'm extremely grateful it went that way for me.

I suppose my dna, my upbringing, our lifestyle and some personality traits all lined up to enable this. I recall being 18 years old and figuring out ways to get out of dates so I could hunt or fish. I had to do well in school so I could go hunting or fishing. I had to work hard so the work got done...and I could then hunt. I had to work as a boy so I had money to buys guns, bows, lures and such. So in my case I'd say the love of hunting and fishing was maybe 85% by nature and 15% by exposure. Think spark and tinder.

This is the very reason I hunt elk alone. I have partners in camp and we have a great time for sure but when I’m in predatory mode I don’t want to be influenced by another human in any way. That means being distracted and slipping out of the zone.

I often think about the periods in time when men hunted because they had to. From early caveman to native Americans to hunters like Jim Bridger. I think that some of that still naturally lives in some of us.

In our DNA.

Bill

K`

My dad was a bird hunter and took me out hunting as a kid. That was the only spark I needed. Hunting big & small game was just a natural progression of my inner desires.