KINGSLEY, Iowa | Kara Koehn didn't get into hunting until she met her husband Jeffrey.
"I said I couldn't live in a house with any dead things hanging on the wall," she said.
Kara's view changed after they married. Preserved deer, turkey, geese and pheasant are mounted on the walls of the family's home near Kingsley. Son Hunter, 13, is named after Jeffrey's favorite pastime.
Hunter began accompanying his mom and dad on hunting trips into the rolling fields surrounding their home at age 2. The Koehns have 40 acres of land that years ago was farmed. It is now in the Conservation Reserve Program which allows habitat for wildlife such as pheasant and deer. Even 16-month-old daughter Jaycee went pheasant hunting last year. They tried taking her deer hunting, but Jeffrey said it didn't work so well.
"I've hunted with my dad out here since I was 5, 6, 7 years old," Jeffrey said. "When we do hunt on other people's ground, either I've combined it or cut hay there and know the area. We don't wander too far from the home territory."
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The Koehns hunt geese at a pond a mile and a half south of their home and travel to Brown's Lake during duck season. On a trip to Wyoming with Hunter, Jeffrey shot and killed an antelope.
"It's a lot easier," Jeffrey said of hunting antelope versus hunting deer. "We walked down the sidewalk in the town we stayed in and they're eating tulips and petunias right out of the flower pots."
Hunter said he enjoys hunting pheasant and deer the most. He said his parents taught him to treat every gun as if it's loaded and to never point a gun at a person.
"I started off shooting a small single-shot .22 just to target, to teach me the basics of gun safety," he said.
When he turned 12 and could hunt with a gun, it wasn't Hunter, but his mom who bagged her first deer after accidentally dropping Jeffrey's gun at 5:30 a.m. and breaking its scope.
"It was a rush," said Kara, who shot a nine-point buck.
The key to making hunting enjoyable for kids, Jeffrey said, is keeping their minds off the cold and keeping them occupied.
"The first duck hunt I took (Hunter) on it was cold and it was wet," he said. "He did pretty good. The ducks came in early so we weren't out there too terribly long."
Hunter recalled an nearly morning hunt at Brown's Lake. After setting up camp in the early morning hours, Hunter was about to retire for nap, when ducks and geese started flying overhead.
"I couldn't take a nap because there would always be birds over the top of us," he said.
First-time hunters, Jeffrey said, should go with someone who's experienced to a place where they're bound to find wildlife.
"You don't want to take a kid fishing where they're not going to catch fish. You want to go out with somebody who knows what they're doing that's maybe got a dog if you're going to go after birds," he said.
