Not for food-but for the whole male bonding, wildness
in nature, teaching my sons(nature-based) skills sort
of thing.

I'll try to be concise with this post request but I
have a tendency to ramble sometimes.

I really want to be a good father to my
sons(everywhere around me I see alot of families where
there is little or flawed connection and boys that
seem to either disconnect from masculinity or connect
to a
violent/boorish/unintelligent/misogynist/one-dimensional
or otherwise flawed masulinity)--but anyways thats a
side topic.

Alot of sources talk of hunting trips, or at the very
least something like fishing, as an important
opportunity or element of connecting in important ways. I basically agree in terms of the rough
idea of it, but obviously I don't think it needs to precisely
involve hunting .

Therefore I wonder if anyone has suggestions or can
direct to a source of suggestions for alternatives,
but in a similar vein of activity?

Why does hunting aways think you are bonding with your sons or teaching them something? :stinkeye:

Lets see, my son plays golf, baseball, football, and basketball every season that it is in. He has many trophies on his wall. He has never fished nor hunted ever a day in his life and is very bonded with his dad for this reason. He has no desire to do that, unless an important figure in his life shows him that !!

Now I know my son is in extreme sports, but loves it. He is involved with sport camps, other fathers that are coaches, me and his dad.

You can teach your kids about nature without hunting. You can take them camping and show them what nature is about and still bond. Even though we were all girls growing up in my family, my parents took us camping to learn. We never hunted to learn about nature.

If anything, I think that hunting teaches violence. I was pretty proud when my son got first place in golf camp. He was in the paper here. We put shelves in their room to place all their achievments on.

Sports is a rough idea and I do not understand that hunting makes you bond with boys.

Well I ramble too.:D

Some good suggestions were provided in the same-topic thread you started a few weeks ago:

http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=52240

You can bond with your sons without leaving your home. Reading stories together, teaching them a new game, watching a movie together are all forms of bonding.
If you want to teach them about nature, I second the camping idea. You don't teach a child about nature by showing them how to destroy it.
You also don't have to be good at something to bond with your kids. So what if you can't toss a baseball to save your life. Who cares if you've never played soccer and don't know have the rules? What matters is that YOU are taking time out of your day for THEM. I purposely changed it to generic "them" too because I think bonding with boys and bonding with girls doesn't necessarily have to be done differently.
I'm willing to bet you already bond with your kids in a million different ways everyday, you just don't realize it. :)
Mary

Go on a vision quest and have a sweat lodge.

Hunt with rubber bullets. I'll bet those animals won't be so careless again :lol:

volunteer with a local animal rescue group/sanctuary, that's a bond that your kids will always be proud to talk about....teach kindness/not cruelty

Glue stuff.


:p

My dad and I are planning to go out in the woods and look for mushrooms soon. I figure.. he hunts deer, so I'll hunt mushrooms. :p

Last year my dad was going out to look for mushrooms, and he was wearing camoflauge. Lol, I was like, "What, you're afraid you're gonna scare them away?"

You could go camping. It's like hunting, only everyone returns to their homes alive.

Actually, I wasn't going to post this, but then I changed my mind. Even if I weren't vegetarian, I could never hunt. When I was younger, my neighbors hunted all the time. We lived in a some-what undeveloped area (its changed a lot since then, like most everything else.) My parents (mami especially) are anti-gun, so I was never really exposed to that. The kids next door, however, saw it as part of their daily lives. One of their boys and a friend went deer hunting one winter. They both saw a large, wonderful deer. They both had a good shot at their deer. They both fired. Sadly, it was the same deer. They were across from one and other. One boy hit the deer. The other boy missed, hit my neighbor, and ended his life.
I'll never, ever forget my mother crying in the kitchen. I'll never forget my father and some other neighbors (not knowing it was too late) running into the woods when the friend came back and said there was an accident. I will never, ever be able to get the though of what was left of that family - racked with guilt and tragedy - holding each other in front of their home.
A lot of people blamed the family for "letting" this happen. He was too young. He shoudln't have had a gun without his dad there. He should have been in an orange vest. I can tell you for a fact that these parents were, in their hearts, good, well-meaning people. They honestly believed they were bonding with their sons. Teaching them responsibility - how to be able to provide their own food, live a less "commercial" life.
Instead, their family got ripped apart and changed forever.
They moved out of the house shortly after. I heard they gave up all their guns.

^ what a sad story. I work at a horse barn in summers, and I know this guy there who is all into hunting. He would show us pics of the deer that he's shot. :cry: He literally knows the date for each animal's season and whether it's rifle or bow-hunting season. Good lord. I love this kid, he's really nice, but his hunting is just...ugh.

You could go hiking/backpacking...or any wilderness activity like that...canoeing, kayaking, rock climbing, whitewater rafting...it gets you moving more than does sitting in a tree stand, freezing cold in the middle of the winter time. Much more fun as well.

well, my suggestion was going to be camping, too...hiking, nature walks, rock climbing...look at your local parks and rec center for programs and ideas...work on an old car/motor or something together...plant a garden...start collecting something that your both interested in...build something together...
good luck and have fun!

camping?

and not, watch TV in the RV camping either.

Actual tent in the woods, trailmix eatin, hiking, kayaking, campfires, camping for a weekend. Would be a great experience

Camping, rock climbing, and just walking through the woods talking about the beauty and power of nature. Go white water rafting, go kayaking. You can even look for deer and NOT kill them... and talk about hunting, and why it's not only unnecessary, but dangerous (for the reasons sarah just explained above.) But be careful of hunters... for obvious reasons.

Hunting in honesty is pretty boring. A lot of sitting around and doing nothing, and waiting. People think that's bonding because of course there's nothing to do but talk then. So long as you're talking on a normal basis, you don't need to hunt to build a bond with your kids in this fashion. But going out into nature and kayaking and white water rafting will definitely leave a positive impression on them.

Paintball.

Hunt people not animals.:D

camping?

and not, watch TV in the RV camping either.

Actual tent in the woods, trailmix eatin, hiking, kayaking, campfires, camping for a weekend. Would be a great experience

But why not bring a TV and watch Bambi?