It all depends on what are you planning to do with.  A 3D-program can be a lot of things. Do you want it for modelling, for rendering or landscaping. As tekmonk mentioned for the modelling start with a free program like wings3D, or animator. Moi is a good program for modelling, it has the same feel as Rhino, but more suited for mesh-handling, I haven't tried the latest release yet. I think blender is less suited for a beginner because of the interface, altough you can do amazing things with it.
Bryce isn't rubbish IMNSHO, it has a great tradition in making sceneries and a great renderer, it works well wit DAZ-studio but not so good with Poser.  Vue and Carrara are more suited for that, but you'll need to buy the import plugins if you don't have the top-end products which cost more tham $250,-

-How can you improve things when you don't make mistakes?