What tripped YOUR trigger?

I have often wondered if other hunters ever experienced revelatory moments that were a distinct catalyst in their decision to take up hunting. This is especially true of those who came to this decision largely per chance or after an largely isolated epiphany, one that arose without any clear influences. After some discussion with a new friend, author Tovar Cerulli, I spent time thinking about my own hunting and outdoor influences. Tovar has some excellent and well researched insights into ‘adult onset hunters’, many of these types of new hunters come to the activity without the benefit of a community to influence their choice. This parallels my experience, albeit in my youth.


I have always been passionate about being outside. I was drawn to angling at age 6 which I believe was the result of being entranced with all the bits in a tackle box I rooted out in my late grandfather’s garage. My family were certainly pro – outdoors but no-one in my immediate family was an angler, shooter or hunter. Both parents and my older brother were also very supportive of my often annoying compulsion to spend seemingly uncomfortable hours in or alongside water bodies with a rod in hand.

Dear Anas undulata, thanks for tripping my trigger!

The birth of my desire to shoot remains a fuzzy mystery to me. I was exposed to it a few times and always relished the opportunity to shoot and accept the responsibility to do so safely. By the onset of my teens I was fairly interested in it but by no means passionate, until the revelation happened…

My gang of normally-muddy buddies and I used to fish for carp in a small stream that ran through our local suburb. Late one afternoon while waiting

 for the carp to rise to our floating bread crusts and lazing on the grassy bank, I watched a pair of Yellow Billed Ducks coming in low over the stream, towards the nearby dam where they roosted. I was fixated on their flight. They passed low in front of me, close enough to see their eyes and every detail in their
  plumage. In that moment my entire being was focused on those birds; all I wanted was to close the distance between us. I clearly remember thinking “I wish I had a .410 so I could shoot a duck!” Despite my poor choice of gauge, a switch was flipped in me that radically altered my interests. I read Capstick’s influential Death in the Long Grass, I poured over James Mellon’s tour de force, African Hunter, in the local library and started devising ways to actually hunt. I was 13 and absorbed every piece of hunting related literature and every experience related to hunting that I could. A couple of years later my long suffering father realized I was serious about this stuff and organised a trip for us on a ranch we had holidayed on previously. He borrowed a Parker Hale sporterized No.1Mk3 Lee Enfield and an ancient box of PMP ammunition from a colleague. Undeterred from the minor half-moon I received from the scope, I soon after shot my first ‘real’ game animal – an impala ewe. I am forever grateful for that experience. Many years and many animals later I still find hunting to be revelatory and am happy for the revelations and passion. I have never hunted Yellow Bill Ducks, by the way!

So, what are your hunting roots? Did you ever have a revelatory moment that shook your foundations as an outdoor person and without warning made you proclaim ‘I want to hunt!’? What did your friends and family think? Go ahead and share it with us.

© Brian Joubert