Similarly to SimpleSimon, I come from a background where not one single person shot game, stalked deer, or even put any real effort into catching fish. What's more, I mostly grew up in central London where you're unlikely to stumble into these activities or anyone who has any knowledge of them. Indeed when I originally really started to research how to start shooting (pre-Internet days), I bought a copy of John Humphrey's book "Learning to Shoot". It had an entire chapter devoted to how to enter the sport with few or no means. The problem was that all the advice was about befriending local farmers, offering to do some beating and so on, which weren't really avenues that were open to me around Earl's Court. So I remained stumped for many years. No money, no contacts, no shooting...
I'd actually taken my first steps onto the slippery slope when one summer in Alsace, just before I turned four, and against all expectations or odds, I caught a wild trout in the stream at the back. The trout may have died but I'm the one who remained hooked on pursuing and catching my own food. What I suspect is an innate instinct that draws me to that sort of thing was also supplemented by one particular children's book: Pierre Bear by Patricia Scarry, wife of the more famous Richard. You see, Pierre doesn't only catch fish for his supper:
He also hunts the Terrible Moose when his cupboard is bare:
In the years following that, I fished whenever possible, but that wasn't often, so I supplemented it by reading about fishing. And increasingly, about hunting too, in all its' forms. At one point, my aunt bought me a subscription to "Le Chasseur Francais" which I still subcribe to now. My theoretical knowledge of hunting was tremendous for a young man with almost no experience whatsoever of the real thing.
At university, I joined the Rifle & Pistol Club, just in time to do a bit of pistol shooting before John Major put a stop to that. But that had never been my goal anyway: I had always meant to convince the university rifle club to branch out into clay pigeon shooting so that I could start practising for when the real thing finally came along. I play the long game, you see. So during my university years, I had time to learn to shoot a rifle, a shotgun (I bought my own as soon as I could) and more importantly for the first time I made a couple of friends who shot game, one on his family's small farm, one in a formal driven way. And so for the first time, I had a chance to do some game shooting thanks to them. This was perhaps once or twice a year, but I was finally in the game.
Opportunities vanished again with the end of university, but a few years later I joined the Kent Wildfowlers and I was back out learning some proper hunting, albeit unsuccessfully mostly, although I had some success stalking woodcock and rabbits in the woods during those years. In turn, that became impractical but towards the end of my 'fowling career, I started out on the path to deerstalking, just as a logical continuation of my journey. It started out with joining the SD and BSRC at the recommendation of Scrumbag, a trip out with Sikamalc, an invitation from a member of the SD, followed and little by little I built up contacts, experience, and even shot some deer once in a while. But I can honestly say that all of my stalking has originated from this site.
I could have really used something like this back when I started though!