Mine was in 1992. I had just graduated high school, and I had gone with my girlfriend (and unknown to me at the time future wife) to her Aunt and Uncle's house for the evening. It got late and we decided to stay the night with them. Her cousin who was younger (and is now a Game Warden) invited me to accompany him and a couple buddies the following morning "hog hunting" with his dog.
At that point in my life it took a whole bunch of excitement to get me fired up about getting up early, but without much fuss I was up the next morning and ready to see what this was all about. Poured a little coffee down my throat, and we were off. These guys hunted with two dogs and no catch dogs...just rifles. (hence how I learned to hunt and hunted for many years). We walked around the woods for about an hour with not much going on. Then we heard a bark, and the excitement of the hunt filled the air. I was standing there looking back and forth, trying to figure out what was happening and all the while getting pretty worked up and not really even knowing why. We took off running in that direction. When we got fairly close, a sort of stealth mode replaced the all-out run. We eased into place, and a shot was fired that took down the prey.
Although I wasn't the one who fired the shot, I was just as proud of our kill. That's the day I became a hog-dog junkie! (and I will never forget that was also the day I discovered I was TERRIBLY allergic to Poision Ivy
)
The rest is history...
