I’ll never forget when a good friend of mine, when I was in my early teens, told me that I should play more sports instead of going hunting. He said that I’d have my whole life to hunt when I got older.

When you think about that, there is some sense to it. Most people never get accepted to play college sports and it’s extremely rare to become a professional athlete. The most sports we play are definitely in our younger days.

However, despite being told that, I followed my heart and spent more time hunting during my youth than pursuing any other hobby. To this day, I’m 39 years old and I have no regrets spending most of my childhood and teenage days in the woods.

Many hunters dream of when they retire and have the utmost amount of time to hunt. There’s no doubt that when you retire, you’ll likely have more free time, but what many underestimate is what kind of physical condition you’ll be in when you retire. We have to keep in mind that hunting is indeed a physical sport — more so in our area than many other places in the world. The mountainous terrain we have in this part of Pennsylvania takes a lot of physical strength and endurance that many hunters have lost by the time they achieve retirement age.

In Pennsylvania, if a hunter started out at age 12, they will likely see 60 to 70 hunting seasons, if they are lucky. Out of those 60 to 70 hunting seasons, 40 to 50 of them will be minimal due to work and family. Outside of retirement, you will probably only see six to eight hunting seasons in your life when you will have exceptional physical health and the freedom outside of work and family. Those days are from 12 to 18 years old. In my opinion, the best few years of hunting in life can be from 16 to 18 years old. At the age of 16, youth hunters are allowed to hunt without an adult in Pennsylvania. The challenge for hunters younger than 16 is that a lot of times they don’t have a family member or mentor available to take them hunting as much as they would like. This is where being at least 16 years old allows one to go hunting more often because they don’t have to rely on the availability of an adult hunter. In my lifetime, the most I ever hunted was during my late teens.

I know a lot of passionate hunters around my age nowadays who get out maybe a handful of times every season due to work and family commitments.

The prime age for hunters is between 20 and 30 years old, when our bodies are most healthy and our minds are fully educated in the sport of hunting — at least for those who started hunting in their early teens. This is also a time in life when most of us are extremely busy in the workplace. Then, very likely in our late 20s and 30s, we start to build families. Between being married, working full-time jobs and raising children, hunting can easily get pushed off to the side due to bigger and more important priorities.

So when you think of the best time to enjoy hunting the most, it’s likely when you are a child and a teenager.

I love basketball and football, but I never joined a team because I always loved hunting more. Had I participated in those sports at an early age, I would have missed out on many great days of hunting, which I know I would have regretted. On the other hand, I’m not saying that children and youth should choose hunting over other sports. My point is, when you tell a child that they should hold off on hunting so they don’t miss out on the chance to play sports, it’s important to consider what they have their hearts geared into. Because, if they are like me, and hunting is their true love for a hobby, they will miss out on some of the best hunting of their lives if they don’t do it at an early age.