What/when was your first big game animal?

[nmtaxi]

Mine was an antelope. I was 11 years old, had just passed hunter education class, so my dad bought my brother and I antelope landowner permits for an area around Clayton. A mere 11 shots later, I had my first animal...

My son's first hunt was for turkey when he was 10. He passed hunter education just a month before punching his first tag on this jake....

 

[luckless]

A tiny 3x4 muley on a ranch outside of Santa Rosa, NM. Due to growing up overseas, I lived and breathed hunting, but had never actually hunted anything but doves and turkeys (unsuccessfully on the latter). As a young man, newly married, my father-in-law got me re-energized on hunting and took me out on land-owner carcass tags. Missed a nice 4x4 15 minutes into my first morning. Hunted another whole season before dropping my first buck (all alone on top of a mesa)...

DC

 

[leftturnabq]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-17-11 AT 07:49AM (MST)[p]Got my Hunter's Education when I was 9. Didn't get my first deer until I was 16: went to Utah and killed a spike with my first rifle, a .338 Win Mag...shot it in the neck as it was facing me with a 200 grain bullet at 200 yard and damn near decapitated it.

Had to debone it to pack it out across a nasty canyon...in my school backpack!!

 

[muleybeast]

My first was a monster frog taken at Wall Lake with my CO2 pellet gun I had just gotten for my 8th birthday. My dad spanked my behind for that, we weren't supposed to be shooting anything alive. My first real big game animal was a little 3 point muley in the Guadalupe mtns, when I turned 13. great memories...

 

[nmtaxi]

Great stories guys. No pics? Or am I the only one with guts enough to post a picture looking like I had Beiber-fever.