Lessons Of Boyhood

Eli Saslow: Chanse Mullinix arrived home from fourth grade on the school bus, carrying a Cherry Coke and a plastic bag of his classmates' handmade valentines. He shouted goodbye to the bus driver – "See ya!" — and ran down the sidewalk, because a youth football coach had recommended once that he run everywhere. He climbed the steps to a two-story townhouse — the only home he had ever known, and the place he sometimes referred to as a "great gun museum."

He dropped his camouflage coat into a pile of hunting gear at the entryway and fired an imaginary bullet with his finger at a buck mounted on the living room wall. "Bang!" he said. There were replica guns on the floor, video-game guns on TV, Nerf guns in the basement and five generations of family guns locked upstairs in a closet-size safe. On display in the kitchen were dozens of framed photos of the seminal moments in Chanse's nine years of life.

First hunting trip, age 4. "It was cold and I was a little scared," he said.

First gun, age 6. "Santa gave me a .22. I get in good with Santa by leaving cookies for him and carrots for the reindeer. You can't forget the reindeer."

First buck, age 8. "A clean hit, and then we were following the blood trail."