Do Progressives/Democrats here on DU hunt or have hunted in the past?

[HeartachesNhangovers]

67. I voted "Hunted all my life / Still do" . I'm a 62 year-old Latino conservative Democrat & lifelong city-slicker.

I grew up and lived until retirement on the California west coast. My family (from Mexico) has no hunting tradition. I started out fishing in the ocean as a kid, then started hunting deer/pigs/turkeys after I met some hunters at college (still on the CA coast) and continued that for decades, then retired to SW Washington, stopped hunting land animals and kept fish hunting.

I hunted mostly to socialize. Hunting involved getting up way before dawn, driving a long ways, hiking in the dark, sometimes sitting still for hours at a time, usually with no animal killed. Then there was the hassle and cost of researching rules & regs and hunting locations, buying licenses, tags, specialized clothing and boots, bows, arrows, rifles, optics, ammunition, and the need to practice almost daily for bow-hunting and regularly for firearm hunting. The big benefit, besides the camaraderie, was the exercise involved in hiking in and out of rugged terrain, which describes most of the public land in California. After moving to Washington I sold or gave away my bows and the handguns, rifles & shotguns that were designed for hunting.

Fishing is a lot less complicated and still gets me out in nature.