COURTESY DALTON FINDLEY and his brother, Cole, were named recipients of the Dallas Safari Club’s Colin Caruthers Youth Hunting Award.

STEVE KNIGHT/steve@texasalloutdoors.com

With few exceptions hunting is not an activity geared toward recognition. For most the time spent outdoors, the effort put into the shot and the occasional trophy whatever it may be, is all a hunter ever gets.

The exception to that rule comes from conservation organizations citing someone’s achievements hunting or for their promotion of conservation. Often, those are one in the same.

Included in that is the Dallas Safari Club’s Colin Caruthers Youth Hunting Award. It is given to young hunters based on a difficult criterion that includes hunting resume, scholastic effort and extracurricular activities other than hunting.

It is an award that is so difficult to qualify for it is not presented on an annual basis. It will, however, be award this year during the DSC convention Jan. 5-8 to Flint brothers, Dalton and Cole Findley. The two are making history by becoming the first sibling tandem to garner the award.

The sons of Allen and Michelle Findley, the boys started going hunting with their father as youngsters. They each achieved hunter status at the age of 7 when they were allowed to take their first white-tailed deer at the family hunting lease. That began a fast-tracked love affair with the outdoors that has taken the two on hunts from Mexico to Canada.

‘I would say for me it was,” said Dalton, 17, on his instant infatuation with hunting. “I have been going with my dad since forever. When I turned 7 he said you can go shoot your first buck and I have been hooked ever since.”

Cole, 15, had the same introduction. His first kill, “I shot a big old spike as my first deer.” There has been no looking back since.

Both have taken wild pigs and turkeys, mountain lions, nilgai, axis deer, blackbuck antelope and black bear.

When he was 11, Dalton and his dad went on a 14-day backpacking hunt in British Columbia where he took Stone sheep. He also has a grizzly bear.

“My Stone sheep is probably my most prized possession,” he said. It also ranks as his hardest hunt.

At 11, Cole went to Baja Mexico where he took a bighorn sheep. He has also taken a free-ranging aoudad in the Davis Mountains, something his brother has not done. He has had two shots at a grizzly bear, but came away unsuccessful.

“My favorite hunt was probably the desert bighorn,” Cole noted.

His hardest hunt was a mountain lion hunt in the snow, not because of the difficult shooting and retrieving his cat, but because of how hard it was to retrieve his father’s from the canyon floor.

Although the DSC award is being presented to the brothers, in the Findley family hunting is a family affair. While their dad often joins the hunt with a gun, mom is in the mix with a camera.

“Mom is a good shot with a camera,” Cole admitted.

“We are a hunting family so a lot of these hunts are our family vacation. A lot of these hunts, with the exception of the difficult grizzly and sheep hunts, my wife, Michelle, and I and the boys, we go together. That is our vacation instead of the beach trip,” Allen Findley explained.

He said as a family experience the trips are about more than just the final shot.

“We all enjoy the same thing. We enjoy being in nature whether we get the game or not. We are constantly in awe standing on top of the mountain literally at times forgetting why we are there,” Findley added.

The Findleys are students at The Brook Hill School. Dalton plays soccer and the violin. Cole plays football and “I try to do my best in school.” Both said the skills required to be a good hunter can be used in their school activities.

“I would say patience for sure. Like grizzly hunting, it is 90 percent mental and 10 percent all-out adrenalin rush. It is sitting up all day on the mountain glassing. That carries over to school. Some people don’t have patience for homework, but some days you have to sit there and grind it out, do the homework, study for a test and do good on it,” Dalton said.

To this point neither has been challenged about their hunting. If they are they are ready with an answer for their critics.

“I would say it is something I love to do and even in the Bible it says it is OK. I enjoy being outside and it is something I love to do,” Dalton said

“I just love being outside. I love hunting. God says to put food on the table, and that is what we do at the deer lease,” Cole echoed.

Both have an understanding about and are honored to earn the award, but it may have an even more special place in their father’s heart.

“I see a lot of attributes in both of them due to hunting. Conservation, recognizing God’s Earth and all the beauty out there. Aside from the animals there is a lot more to see out there. I’ve watch them grow into young men into this, and mature at it. I couldn’t be more proud of them,” Allen Findley said.

 

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