Last day buck??

[JPH]

ORIGINAL: ranwin33

JPH
...but until it is law we have to be happy for them.

I have difficulty with this bit of logic.  Maybe for a new hunter or a hunter who has not been successful, but not for the hunter who has been doing it for awhile. 

To me this logic equates to saying, hey what the banks and mortgage companies were doing was legal, so let's be happy they helped wreck the economy.  Or hey, what the oil companies and speculators were doing was legal so let's be happy we were paying $4 a gallon for gas. 

Legal and right are two different things - and I don't have to be happy for them when what they are legally doing is not necessarily the right thing to do.

 
To begin with, I think we are closer on this topic than it would first appear. You and I deal with the same group of hunters surrounding our properties. I am no fan of the "brown is down" mentality and you know that.
 
What I am trying to say is that as long as a hunter stays on property he/she has permission to be on and hunts in a manner consistant with the game laws and landowner's directions then we should celebrate their efforts. Yes, that means being happy for them when the connect on any legal deer.
 
Who knows, maybe you can congatulate that hunter and offer to help them dress and drag their deer. Maybe you can share some stories or even show off some photos of the deer you have taken. Maybe they will ask how you have managed to shoot such nice bucks. Maybe you can tell them a little about aging deer and holding out. Maybe they will walk away thinking you are a decent guy and someone they may want to emulate. Maybe they can grow as hunters and still feel good about their experience. Either that or you can equate the deer they killed to ruining the economy and tell them to attend a seminar. Lots of ways to skin a cat.

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: JPH

To begin with, I think we are closer on this topic than it would first appear. You and I deal with the same group of hunters surrounding our properties. I am no fan of the "brown is down" mentality and you know that.

What I am trying to say is that as long as a hunter stays on property he/she has permission to be on and hunts in a manner consistant with the game laws and landowner's directions then we should celebrate their efforts. Yes, that means being happy for them when the connect on any legal deer.

Who knows, maybe you can congatulate that hunter and offer to help them dress and drag their deer. Maybe you can share some stories or even show off some photos of the deer you have taken. Maybe they will ask how you have managed to shoot such nice bucks. Maybe you can tell them a little about aging deer and holding out. Maybe they will walk away thinking you are a decent guy and someone they may want to emulate. Maybe they can grow as hunters and still feel good about their experience. Either that or you can equate the deer they killed to ruining the economy and tell them to attend a seminar. Lots of ways to skin a cat.

I know that we are pretty close as far as mindset on this topic.  And I will even go so far as to say I completely understand what you're saying and up until just recently would have agreed with you. 

But I've done a lot of thinking on it lately, and I have come to the conclusion, that for me anyway, if I am going to claim I support QDM methods and I support doing what is right for the herd, then I have to be willing to take a stand and say, "what you might be doing may be legal, but it isn't what is best, so I really can't get behind you doing it. I won't condem you for it, but I won't support you either, and if you ask me I will tell you my opinion." 

Like I said, I've been doing a lot of thinking about it and that is just the conclusion I have come to, and I have to be willing to stand behind my principles, even if it is not popular to do so.

[JPH]

Yeah we're cool Ranwin33. I know exactly where you are coming from.

We both want to be surrounded by conscientious and educated hunters who do the right thing. I guess it is just a question of what will actually work. I started out rather aggressively and as you know it did not exactly go well. Now I have lowered by expectations to simply ask my neighbors to FOLLOW THE FREAKING LAW! Once we can get that done, I hope we can move up to laying of legal yearlings.

I hope we both succeed in our goals and I also hope we can show our fellow pro-staffer a good time when he comes down for rifle season. Wink.

[OHhunter]

So IMHO, people shooting button bucks, spikes, fawns, etc. need to take another look at what they're doing.

What's wrong with shooting fawns?

I thought that a few fawns needed to be killed annually to keep the age classes distributed evenly. 

[spottedskunk]

should have kept my mouth shut and my typing fingers to my side lol........

[msbadger]

Ha ha ha ...spottedskunk...this is nothing!...When our opinions really hit the fan....just duck....it will blow over...lol[;)]

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: JPH

Yeah we're cool Ranwin33. I know exactly where you are coming from.

We both want to be surrounded by conscientious and educated hunters who do the right thing. I guess it is just a question of what will actually work. I started out rather aggressively and as you know it did not exactly go well. Now I have lowered by expectations to simply ask my neighbors to FOLLOW THE FREAKING LAW! Once we can get that done, I hope we can move up to laying of legal yearlings.

I hope we both succeed in our goals and I also hope we can show our fellow pro-staffer a good time when he comes down for rifle season. Wink.

I know where you stand on things, and love your quote about just having the expectation that some people should follow the law.  On the ground where we are, that certainly might be a pretty high expectation. 
 
But for our group here online, people I believe to be head and shoulders above a lot of the "locals" in our area, we should not be afraid to have standards beyond what is merely legal.  We should be setting examples, not lowering expectations.
 
And just to start another discussion - [:D] THANK GOD FOR APR'S[:D] - I really miss that thread. [:)]

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: OHhunter
What's wrong with shooting fawns?

I thought that a few fawns needed to be killed annually to keep the age classes distributed evenly. 

[:D] Well one or two I suppose. [:D]

[buckhunter21]

Man I'm gone for a day or two and this just explodes!  Anyways, I don't know what else I can say that hasn't already been said, but I agree with what JPH and Goose are stating here.  Everyone has their own idea of what a trophy is, and what they'd like to shoot.  If it's legal, and their happy with it and what it's doing for their property, more power to them.  Like was stated by JPH, if in the future this can educate them a little more to maybe manage more than shoot, then more power to them as well.  But, being educated doesn't nec. mean that they should manage for trophy bucks.  Being educated I guess can carry on a number of different forms of meanings.  Who's to say one guy is doing something right by managing for trophy's, while another guy shoots for meat and fills his tags every year with whatever he sees, and he's wrong?  I'd disagree. 
 
Also, I don't think we can compare this whole scenario to the mortgage industry.  How does predatory lending have anything to do with this?  Obviously what they were doing was wrong...More of a fact than an opinion I would say. 

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: buckhunter21
...
Also, I don't think we can compare this whole scenario to the mortgage industry.  How does predatory lending have anything to do with this?  Obviously what they were doing was wrong...More of a fact than an opinion I would say. 

The example was used to demonstrate that being legal does not equate to being the right thing to do.

Let me use another, more relevant example.  In Missouri I can get unlimited tags and shoot as many does as I please, legally.  But it being legal, doesn't make it right for me to then go out and shoot ten or twenty does knowing I would never eat all that meat and it would spoil in my freezer. It would not be right for me to do that even if I was willing to give all the meat to some needy charity. Because killing that many does in a relatively small area would damage the herd.  Additionally I would not expect to be congratulated for killing those ten or twenty does, given the poor conservation effort and waste they now represent. 

Shooting those 10 to 20 does may be legal, but it's not right, and that is what I mean about setting higher standards.  It may be legal to shoot a fawn, button buck, spike, etc. but that does not make it right, and those of us who are experienced hunters should be willing to hold ourselves to higher standards if we truly want to consider ourselves sportsmen.

That's just my take on it.