ggeilman: I suggest you be more persistent with your work mates and get them to take you out hunting or teach you about hunting in one way or another. For example, if they hunt deer, maybe you could ask them to call you when they need to field dress a deer so you can watch and learn; have them call you when they are going to skin, quarter, and butcher a deer so you can learn. If you have this moducum of knowledge, you can serve yourself in hunting -- just find some land to hunt on. One possibility is to go up to Wyoming to hunt Pronghorn Antelope -- there is a lot of public land or you can pay a small "trespass fee" to hunt on private land. The success rate is very high. The hunt is not very physically challenging. I suggest this, because I know some folks in Texas are very proud of the quality of their deer hunting on their lands and like to charge upwards of $1,500/gun to share this hunting with the unlanded. Alternatively, get them to take you duck hunting or squirrel hunting. That may be a simple way to get started. But above all, be persistent and try to start small. When you get some help, be very appreciative and try to return the favor in some way. Once you know just a little about hunting you can try to find your own places to hunt by asking land owners. Most won't want to do this for free, may already have the hunting leased out, but there are some prospects if you dig into it. Offer to do some work on their ranch maybe. For example, I hunt up in Oklahoma. They had a very bad ice storm in mid-December and lots of trees got busted down. I bet someone who went out to farmers and offered to help clean up their busted down trees -- sawing down limbs, moving and stacking sawed up wood -- could have made some hunting arrangements. Life is too short to keep postponing your start into the great hobby of hunting.
