If you’re a mom or dad who hunts, you might look longingly back on the days when you reserved all your vacation time for hunting season and you had the freedom to leave for days on end to scout and hunt. Now that kids are in the picture—and I’m talking about those that are too young to safely handle a firearm, lack the stamina to walk more than a mile on their own, and are unable to remain still and quiet for an extended period of time—it’s not quite as simple to balance field and family time.
When both parents like to hunt, they either have to take turns hunting, duke it out, or arrange for babysitters. If only one parent hunts, hunting and family time must be carefully balanced if he or she hopes to remain in the other parent’s good graces. These days, there are more family functions (birthdays, weddings, T-ball games), less flexibility, and probably less money.
But let’s not be all negative here. Feeding the fam with the world’s best free-range meat, raising future hunters, and spending quality time with them in the great outdoors is downright amazing—making it happen simply requires a bit more organization. As hunting parents of two toddlers, my husband and I have found the following tactics to be helpful in our planning:
Bring the Kids When You Can
Sharing the tradition of hunting with wee ones is possible even when they are quite young. When my husband and I decided to take our one-year-old daughter along on an antelope hunting trip, we wondered if we would get any actual hunting in. We did (albeit slower), and I enjoyed a break from toting my breast pump. While we didn’t end up packing out an antelope that day, we did pack in the memories.
Obviously, bringing littles with you is not always practical. Case in point: we have two kiddos now—one that would need to be back-packed, one that would need to rest often—and letting them tag along would necessitate creative packing, keeping hiking to a minimum, and frequent potty breaks. Weather, safety of the area, and difficulty of the terrain all come into play, as well.
Although hunting with kids is not always feasible, there are many ways to still involve them in your hunting lifestyle. Consider including them in some of the following:
- Glassing/scouting
- Shed hunting
- Archery practice
- Organizing hunting gear
- Setting up trail cams
- Finding tracks
- Processing meat
All these activities provide great opportunities to learn and observe. Before you know it, they’ll be showing you where the tracks are and begging to help skin a deer.
Bribe the Babysitter
For the days when bringing the kids with you is just not practical (see above) and your significant other has to work or wants to hunt too, you’ll need someone to serve as kid-wrangler in your absence. Unless you are lucky enough to have family members who live close by and are always willing and available to watch the kiddos, find a trustworthy babysitter that
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- your kids are comfortable waking up to in the morning if you leave before they’re awake
- has reliable transportation
- is willing to arrive at the crack of dawn
- is flexible enough to stay late in the case that you harvest an animal and need extra time to pack it out
Even if you do have family that can watch your kids regularly or periodically, it’s good to have a backup to call on. Solid sitters that allow you to put meat in the freezer and get out there doing something you love are worth their weight in elk ivory, so pay them well. While you may not have to bribe them, you’ll definitely want to keep them around.
Budget
If you have a budget, it’s helpful to create a “Hunting” category. If you don’t have a budget, well, maybe it’s time to establish one. Each month, set aside what funds you can for hunting-related expenses such as the following:
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- Babysitters
- Licenses
- Hunting gear upgrades
- Ammo
- Gas
- Hotel rooms for out-of-town hunts
- Butcher fees, or butchering supplies if you process meat yourself
- Taxidermy fees
Hunting is a worthy investment, but allocate wisely. Expending food or vacation funds for a new shotgun will only hurt your case for hunting later on.
Break Out the Calendar
Surprises always come up (multiply that by ten when you have kids), but it’s still worthwhile to begin making hunting plans and setting goals early in the year. Start with a nice big calendar with room to write things down and note all the following:
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- “Must-attend” family functions
- When babysitters will be out of town
- Opening days for each species you plan to hunt
- Peaks of rut for elk and deer
- Dates you plan to hunt out of town/state
Once important dates are on paper, you can look at the big picture and fill in details as they come. Keep in mind that hunting days can also multi-task as family trips, date nights (my personal favorite), or kid-free breaks (another favorite for this stay-at-home mom).
Conclusion
Juggling work, schedules, and family obligations around time in the field is no easy feat, especially when the pressure is on to fill the freezer. But it can be done—and done well—with careful planning and prioritizing.
In both hunting and parenting, some seasons are harder than others. For those of us in the season of raising infants and toddlers, we’d do well to remember to embrace their littleness while it lasts. They’ll be big enough to hunt alongside us soon enough.