Ten Tips To Raising Outdoor Kids — For the Next Generation
Some news first: the Doumtsis clan is growing. My partner Alice and I are expecting our first child — a little girl — and it's had me thinking a lot lately about how Mum and Dad raised James and I in the outdoors from the age of four. Sitting down with Dad recently to reflect on it properly, we ended up putting together ten things we think actually mattered. If you're a parent wondering how to get your kids into the outdoors, this one's for you.
A Look Back
1. Make It About Adventure, Not Harvesting
The single biggest thing: early on, it has to be about the outdoors, not about killing something. Some of our best childhood memories weren't shooting pigs in New South Wales swamps — they were finding bird feathers on the ground and fighting over who got to keep them. Dad bought us photo albums, and we'd come home with half-broken feathers to paste in like a scrapbook. We did the same with skulls, rocks, and pretty much any trinket the bush handed us — bringing them home to show off at school, show-and-tell style. That curiosity about what else was out there is what turned into a lifelong love of hunting later — not the other way around.
2. Keep Trips Short and Positive
Two hours of fun beats six hours of mediocre, every time. End the day before things go sideways — before the kids get cold, hungry, or bored. Dad used to break long mountain climbs into five separate legs with a snack stop at each one, rather than one long grind from bottom to top. And if your kid ends up loving the fishing more than the hunting, or the photography more than the shooting — lean into that, and don't force it. I was far more interested in documenting our hunts with a camera than actually pulling a trigger as a kid, and Dad backed that instead of forcing the issue. It still brought me back to the outdoors, just via a different door.
3. Pack Snacks
This one's obvious but underrated. Fruit, jerky, salami, dried nuts, lollies, chocolate, marshmallows, a thermos of hot chocolate or soup to dip a sandwich into while you sit an ambush — food buys you an enormous amount of goodwill from a cold, wet kid. It doesn't matter how average the hunting is if there are marshmallows involved.
4. Start With Observation, Not Equipment
We hunted from age four but didn't get a bow until we were twelve. Long before any weapon, Dad taught us to read wind, move quietly, and identify tracks and scat — not just of the animals we hunted, but wombats, echidnas, native birds, everything. Learning to observe the whole ecosystem, not just the target species, builds genuinely well-rounded kids. By the time we actually wanted gear, we'd earned the mindset first — to the point that James and I would skip birthday-money Nintendo consoles in favour of binoculars.
5. Celebrate Effort Over Outcome
Missed shots, busted stalks, snapped twigs at exactly the wrong moment — all part of it. Dad was tough but fair: he'd praise the parts we did well (the quiet stalk, the patience) even after a miss, then turn it into the next lesson rather than dwelling on the failure. That constant, genuine effort is what needs rewarding — not just the animal on the ground.
6. Make Hunting Full Circle
This is the one I want to really carry forward. Hunting isn't just the shot — it's the early starts, the tracking, the family time, and afterward, the meat. Let your kids help butcher, package, and label. Get them involved in cooking it too, even just cleaning up afterward. Call it "Jono's deer" if that's your kid's name, and make dinner about their hunt. This is exactly how a child properly understands where food comes from, rather than discovering as a shocked twelve-year-old that a steak was once a living cow.
7. Let Them Carry Responsibility
Give them real jobs — carrying the binos, checking the wind puffer, deciding which direction to walk. Dad used to test James and me on the way back to the car: "which way's the car?" We'd point, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and he'd walk us back through our own trail using landmarks and sun position. It built genuine confidence and observation skills that had nothing to do with hunting itself.
8. Be a Role Model
Kids are a mirror. If you want them respectful, patient, and genuinely enthusiastic about the outdoors, that's exactly how you need to show up yourself — including letting them see the real emotional weight of taking an animal, not just the excitement. Grief, gratitude, a bit of sombreness after a marginal shot — kids need to see all of it to understand that ethical hunters aren't just blasé, gun-wielding stereotypes.
9. Teach Hardship, Safely
Cold mornings, long hikes, missed opportunities — controlled discomfort builds resilience in a way screens never will. From eight or nine years old, James and I were carrying our own share of the pack weight, holding water bottles, snacks, sitting motionless and silent through genuinely uncomfortable conditions. That grit carries forward for life — I remember footy training as a teenager, dreading a two-kilometre time trial that had other kids groaning, and it was nothing compared to walking ten kilometres in the rain with a full pack. That's the kind of transfer you're actually building.
10. Play the Long Game
Don't measure success by whether your kid gets their first deer by a certain age. Measure it by whether they're still choosing to hunt with you at eighteen, at thirty-five, and eventually taking their own kids out doing the same thing. That's the actual goal — not producing a hunter, but a self-reliant, respectful human who understands hardship and connects properly with where their food comes from.
What I Actually Remember
Looking back now, I don't remember a single animal Dad shot when we were kids. I remember playing in the mud instead of watching him stalk a mob of pigs, fighting with James over who caught a lizard first while Dad's whole stalk got blown by our squealing, and hours spent fishing a river without catching much of anything memorable. Those are the moments that stuck — not the antlers.
One thing Dad always encouraged that's stuck with me: getting us to tell the story ourselves once we were back at camp. Not just the hunting bit — whatever we'd actually found interesting that day, whether that was a good stalk or just a cool flower one of us picked. Learning to talk to the adults around the fire like that broke down a lot of nerves early, and it's a skill that's mattered well beyond hunting.
I'm not trying to raise a hunter. I'm hoping to raise a genuinely grounded kid who respects life in all its forms, understands hardship, and has a real connection to the natural world. If hunting is the vehicle that gets her there, that'll be more than enough for me.
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The Adventure Continues
Join the Twin Elements team as they head back into the Australian bush.
Want the full story behind this episode, in Ayden and James's own words? Listen here.
Prefer to see it play out on camera? Watch the next adventure on the Twin Elements YouTube channel.
