As my dad and I walked through the woods with my son a couple of weeks ago trying to get my son his first deer, we reminisced as to when I started hunting.

My dad had stopped big game hunting before I was born, but when I was 8 years old or so he gave me a single shot, 20 gauge and had me practice trap shooting while he hunted pheasants in Colorado. I even got to walk along and take care of the dogs.

We couldn’t remember exactly, but I think my first real hunting (besides possibly taking out a squirrel in a tree with a pellet gun, although I never found the squirrel) was dove hunting in Texas. My first prize was a dove I shot off a wire that my dad had to fish out of a canal ditch after shooting a water moccasin in the way.

When we moved back to Colorado there developed a routine, a once yearly pheasant hunt. Still, I was hooked. The feel of being outdoors, so focused on one task and with others all enjoying the same activity, the same thrill of the chase.

Since then my hunting has waned and then waxed, to where now it’s a September to February activity (blame waterfowl hunting) as opposed to a once a year thrill. I couldn’t imagine a season without hunting.

That’s why it’s so incredible to see a group of volunteers, now 15 years in, ensuring that people who may have thought their years of hunting were finished when they became disabled, can still get out there.

Our story last week on one of the latest group of hunters to get this experience really hit home just how incredible of an experience these local people are happy to provide.

Since I got into big game hunting about six years ago I’ve been wandering the national forest around our family’s old cabin near Douglas and often run into people from all over the country who made a special trip to Wyoming to hunt mule deer or elk. It’s easy to take for granted the incredible place we live when seeing 300 elk may be as easy as driving up to Wapiti, but it’s a bucket list place for many hunters.

And it’s easy for me to take for granted how easily I can go hunting, steal off to a waterfowl spot in the Big Horn Basin or be part of a three generation deer hunt.

How cool that so many people around here are so willing to help those who can’t take anything for granted.