Its February and it’s that month that’s caught between the end of deer season and the beginning of turkey season.  While it’s the shortest month of the year sometimes it seems to crawl by as we eagerly await the thrill of a spring sunrise and an ol’ Tom gobbling off the roost.  However, it’s also a great month for small game hunting.  There’s nothing like spending a frosty winter morning listening to beagles trail a rabbit or walking behind a good birddog and shooting at a covey rise through the pines. 

Rabbit and quail hunting is actually where I got my start in hunting.  My Granddaddy was a big bird hunter and always had a good pointer ready for the hunt.  My Granddaddy’s farm backed up to the Oostanaula River in North Floyd County, GA.  My favorite Saturdays were spent working those river bottoms and field edges for quail.  My Dad loved to rabbit hunt and we always had a beagle or two.  We would get up early and go cut a load of firewood and then spend the rest of the day rabbit hunting.  My first game harvest came on a frosty morning as I walked along the edge of a pine thicket and a cow pasture.  I walked up on a briar patch that held a rabbit sunning in the warm sunshine.  I shot him.  I was so proud I killed that rabbit.  I did it, not my Daddy or Granddaddy, but I killed that rabbit. 

As my Daddy congratulated me he also began the process of teaching me a very important life lesson that I’m responsible for my actions.  I took the life of that rabbit, its not a game and there are no reset buttons.  I was responsible for cleaning that rabbit and preparing it for the table.  (Fortunately, my mom did the cooking!) And so began the legacy that my Dad and Granddad passed down to me through hunting.  There are many life skills that I now have that were developed from the life lessons taught to me while in the field hunting or on the bank fishing.  I am who I am as a husband, dad and now a granddad due to time spent with those two men.

I started Legacy Outdoor Ministries 18 years ago as my children were young and I began to see so many children even back then that didn’t have anyone to pass down the Legacy of the Outdoors to them.  Many didn’t have anyone to pass down the Legacy of Adulthood either. 

Proverbs 22:6 says to “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”  To train up a child takes hands on activity.  You can’t sit them in front of a screen and think its going to happen. You must choose to be there, engaged in their lives on a daily basis. 

February is a great month to get your child outside.  Go chase a rabbit or squirrel and along the way look for teachable moments to begin passing a legacy that your child can build a life from. 

In Christ,

Kyle Woodfin