(lightly taps golf ball) MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: That's it.

Oh darn.

ANGIE MILES: Donivan Cunningham has his sights set on becoming an aerospace engineer.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: That's a good one.

ANGIE MILES: When the 17 year old is not on the golf course.

DONIVAN CUNNINGHAM: I attend Smithfield High School.

I play golf on the varsity team and I have been playing golf since I was two years old.

I'm also in Beta club, the National Beta Club at my school and I have been an A/B Honor Student my entire elementary and high school career.

(church congregation singing) ANGIE MILES: You can also find Donovan singing in his high school choir, or at his church alongside his father.

And when Michael Cunningham isn't lifting his voice in praise, he may be serving in the church security ministry.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: And I look in here to make sure nobody's in here, nobody's done anything they shouldn't have.

ANGIE MILES: By almost any measure, Donivan and Mike Cunningham seem like pillars of the community.

(SCHOOL BOARD SPEAKER): Michael Cunningham from District 3.

ANGIE MILES: Mike serves on the Isle of Wight County School Board.

Along with his fraternity brothers, Mike helps provide food for those in need and he's a veteran of both the Army and the Marines.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: I had over 31 years in the military, but I started as a E-1, a private in the Marine Corps and retired from the US Army as a lieutenant colonel.

(duck call squawking) ANGIE MILES: This is one of the things the Cunninghams enjoy the most.

Like almost 300,000 Virginians and approximately 15 million Americans, Donivan and Mike are avid hunters.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: While in the military, even as a an officer, I ran ranges, rifle ranges and handgun ranges.

So I've been around firearms all my life.

DONIVAN CUNNINGHAM: I see a squirrel.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: You see one?

My great-grandfather, that's my mother's mother's father, got me into hunting.

My first firearm was a little 22 rifle single action.

My grandfather had it in his closet with a sock on it.

It was kind of funny, but he said, "Here son, but I'm going to teach you the safe way to hunt and and respect for wildlife also."

I am a certified NRA firearms instructor and recently completed the Stop the Bleed course.

I took my son through the Hunter Safety Course, oh probably five years ago.

And he passed that, he did a great job with it.

The instructor who was what we used to call game warden, they're the conservation police officers, he complimented Donivan for the great job he did.

But I won't hunt with anyone that's not ethical and safe, and I won't let my son do it either.

And he knows how to handle firearms safely.

He can see our orange hats, but that's okay.

ANGIE MILES: Tradition is the word that comes up most often when Mike Cunningham talks about hunting.

BILL MACILWAINE: Who wants to go find some birds?

ANGIE MILES: It's the same for Bill Macilwaine, who's a retired physician, bird hunter and trail guide.

BILL MACILWAINE: I am mostly an upland hunter, so that means I'm interested in hunting quail and grouse and woodcock primarily.

I love pointing dogs.

I've had many dogs over my hunting career.

Currently have three, two English pointers and a setter.

and I find that spending time in the woods with them is what's so special about hunting up on birds.

All right, let's hunt them up.

I have wonderful memories of time spent with my father in the woods.

He was a very busy medical practitioner, so we didn't get out very often.

But I can remember as a boy carrying the little gun, 410 gun that he had as a young man and he gave that to me.

And I have had my sons use that and hopefully down the road my grandsons may get a chance to do that.

Almost every rural household has a rifle and a shotgun at least.

And if you drive through these woods out here and in this rural area, you see hunters all the time.

It's a part of their lives.

And their children grow up learning how to handle a gun safely, how to respect a firearm and how to use it in the woods.

So it's a big part of rural America for sure.

You having a good time old boy?

There are lots of positives with hunting and there are lots of positive things that hunters do.

They support all kinds of conservation groups, Quail Unlimited, the Rough Grass Society, Ducks Unlimited, the Wildlife Foundation of Virginia.

And these hunters that support this give money and time and other resources to help develop habitat.

We are so lucky in Virginia, so fortunate to have massive tracts of hunting land, the George Washington National Forest which we're in right now being one.

And it's very special to have the opportunity to hunt here.

But the support of people to improve habitat, it improves more than just species that they're hunting.

It improves it for songbirds, all sorts of other wildlife and it keeps the forest young and active and regenerative and that helps bikers, hikers, campers and fishermen as well.

ANGIE MILES: Mike Cunningham is also a gun collector and a firearms enthusiast.

He clearly appreciates the design, the craftsmanship and the power of firearms and he's honed his knowledge and skills over many years.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: Same when I go to the range, and I got a target a hundred yards out and I can place a bullet within an inch of each from a hundred yards.

And when we were in the Marine Corps we used to shoot M16s out to 500 meters and we were hitting targets that were pretty small.

And not using, nowadays a lot of people use scopes and red dots, so we were just using iron sites.

It's just, it is amazing to take a rifle and to be able to shoot that far and hit the target.

I also reload ammunition, so I'll take the brass from whatever I've shot, take it home, clean it, resize it and reload it myself and then take it to the right.

There is a science, and it's a lot of math involved with it too, measuring how much powder, measuring the weight of the bullet, knowing the depth of the bullet you have to put in the casing, everything.

So it just intrigues me.

ANGIE MILES: Both Macilwaine and Cunningham emphasize that hunting gives more to wildlife and more to conservation than what it takes away.

And that constitutionally-protected gun ownership need not hinder solving the larger issue of gun violence in America.

When you hear about an atrocity like a mass shooting do you automatically feel a connection with your identity as a firearms enthusiast?

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: It's completely different.

Because there's something wrong with someone that can walk into a church or a theater, a school and just start shooting.

I have no idea, I don't have the answers, but I can't relate to that person because I cannot see going anywhere and hurting anyone.

But I believe in Second Amendment rights.

So I don't believe the answer is to take all the firearms away from everybody.

You hear assault weapons.

I don't have any assault weapons.

I have firearms.

They're tools.

So I can't relate to the things that these people are doing.

I mean, when you think about an assault weapon, an assault weapon can be a baseball bat, an assault weapon can be a hammer, an assault weapon can be a vehicle when people go out drunk and run through a crowd and just hurt people like that.

So it's hard for me to relate to what's going on and I don't have an answer on how to fix it.

I know we have to come up with some answers, but we all have to work together.

And it has to include people who love firearms too.

It can't just be the people who have never gone hunting.

They don't know the positive aspects of hunting.

They just, they don't know, they don't understand the gun culture.

ANGIE MILES: If you ask these outdoorsmen what might improve gun violence issues, they'll tell you it's more familiarity with guns.

If that's guided by caring, responsible adults and especially if it's family time.

BILL MACILWAINE: Any time spent one-on-one with a teenager by a parent, I think is special.

And at that time is spent in the woods teaching a youngster how to respect a firearm, how to use a firearm, what's the proper use and how to be an ethical and safe hunter, I think that's valuable time.

It's one-on-one time.

It's showing a youngster that you trust them, that you're giving them a level of responsibility.

And I think things like that could go a long way with respect to developing a healthy attitude about guns and a safe attitude.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: I grew up in Hopewell, Virginia.

Opening day of deer season, yes, you could bring a note to school saying that you were going to be out or you had been out because of deer hunting.

And the schools just said, okay that's an excused absence.

Hunting is tradition and I believe it needs to keep going as long as we have a United States, we need to have hunting.

And it brings families together in a safe environment.

You did good.

Families would go out camping together, hunting together, say on Saturday, go out and shoot cans and just do fun things together.

Just bring us all back instead of just the way it is now.

BILL MACILWAINE: Good job, dogs.