Good on you Dad!!!
First off congratulations on finding something to share with your son. You can definitely have great times shooting and forge memories that last a lifetime.
My father started me in Archery when I was just 5 years old and I shot regular well into my 20's.
At Camp Flying Eagle while in the Boy Scouts I got my Archery merit badge and learned how to make my own arrows & bow strings for my bow.
I still have a Browning Wasp re-curve 45 lb. pull that I bought when I was 14. ( It was passed down to my Nephew, but he gave it back to me a few years ago when he got his Compound Bow.) With that bow I shot targets, hunted, and then learned how to bow fish with it. (Maybe go from targets to bow fishing first if you are unfamiliar with hunting. It would be a good first step to get your son into nature with the bow. It will also teach him about eating what you kill and to kill ONLY what you intend to eat when either fishing or hunting. Hunting can be learned later.)
A quick note on Bow Fishing. I enjoy Bow Fishing just as much as Hunting with my bow. It's a different technique and you have to calculate the fishes movement, depth of the water, and the refraction of light to hit your mark. We use to practice with milk jugs. We'd fill them with water so they would sink, tie them to a stake on the shore, and them toss them out into the river to shoot at.
I've even shot competitions with that little Browning against the guys using compound bows. To "me" a compound bow feels like cheating. No real strain to speak of so you have plenty of time to just "Point and Shoot" like with a rifle. (Too easy to hit my target.) Don't get me wrong, Archery is Archery in my book. I just prefer either a re-curve bow or a Long Bow.
I use to shoot Black Powder rifles as well, competitions and hunting. I got to hunt for most of the year by taking advantage of Primitive weapons season, Black Powder season, and Archery season. These were of course in addition to regular hunting season.
I use to take old spent 4:10 shotgun and 30/30 rifle shells and make "Blunt" tipped arrows for hunting small game like Rabbits & Squirrels. Here in Florida we use to take old gallon milk jugs and tie them off to Palmetto bushes to practice shooting through brush at game on the ground.
We would also take some of the Blunt tipped 30/30 arrows and drill a 1/16" hole through the side of the tip and one more about a 1/4" below the first one at 90* to it. Then we would use wire fishing leader to loop through the holes and when we were finished it looked like a Four Leafed Clover. We then put on what was called a "Flu Flu" fletching back then. (Large frayed fletching that limited how far the arrow could fly.) We used these arrows to hunt Mourning Doves and Quail. The wire lops would either break their neck or their wing to bring them down.
I like using the Bow and Black Powder rifles for hunting because you have to get pretty close to your game. Not too many shots can be taken at over 200 yards. Compared to modern rifles where you can take a shot across a valley.
With a re-curve bow you have to "Time" your shot as well because you will start to shake if you hold the draw for too long before releasing. (Unlike the compound Bows where you have TONS of time to hold your draw.)
We use to get hay bails to use as a back stop for practicing with paper targets. We also use to cut the bottom out of Coffee cans and use old shafts to push into the hay and then slide the cans over them. We tried doing the same with Soda cans but that was REALLY hard to shoot the arrows into without shaving the shafts as they entered.
Shooting "INTO" the tube so to speak really made you focus. You had to try to control your angle of entry so as to NOT scrape your arrow shafts up.
It has been about 15 years since I've gotten the bow out, but I just walked over to the door jam and I can still "Rotate" the elbow of my bow arm "Down" and out of the way of the string. My father taught me to do this so that I did not need to use a forearm guard like most Archers.
Ok, enough of my rambling and reminiscing here. LOL
I wish you and your son well in your new found activity Mike.
Oh, and thank you for bringing back the wonderful memories I have of shooting with my father.
P.S. If you want to learn how to hunt without killing anything, get a camera with a fixed 50mm lens. (It's the same as our naked eye for magnification.) Then go out into the woods and stalk animals to get as large/close a picture as possible. You have to use the same techniques to find, track, and get close enough for the picture. The only difference is you aren't killing the animal. The closer the picture, the better you were at stalking/hunting.
This can actually be very rewarding in itself. Keeping an album of "Hunting" pictures is something I did for a few years after I got out of the Marine Corps.
