What defines a trophy hunt?

[shaman]

I suppose I have never been on a trophy deer hunt.  I've never gone hunting for a trophy animal. I have never paid anyone to help me find a trophy. Maybe that means I'm an under-achiever, or just a cheap-$$$. Maybe there is something missing in me.

I've got a lot of trophies. You saw the latest that just came back from the taxidermist, but just for gratuitous grins, here it is again:



Yep, that's a trophy all right, but I didn't mean to shoot him.  That is to say, I thought he was a lot smaller when I shot him-- the dark antlers made him hard to judge.  Imagine my surprise when I finally got down to him.  I would have been happy that morning with a lot less.

So shaman, why on Earth do you hunt?  Is it to fill the freezer?  Are you just strange?

Someone asked me one time if I had $10K to blow on a deer hunt, where would I go?  I told them I'd probably ask for the $10K, and more time to hunt right where I'm at.  Don't get me wrong. I love deer hunting to the point that if you Google "cervid serial killer" you will find me.  It is just that I enjoy hunting my deer on my place, and I get almost as much of a gas having an all-afternoon snort-fest with Madge, the scornful doe, as I did putting out the big guy's lights.

You have to understand Madge and me.  I think I killed her mother with a muzzleloader back in 2004, and then Moose aced her son back in 2005.  Madge was watching close by.  When her mom got it, Madge kept trying to wake her up, and she would not leave even after I came down from the stand. Madge has it in for us. She will spend an hour or more hiding in a cedar bush snorting at us up in a stand-- to the point where the other deer think she's an hysteric and go right on eating despite her protestations.  I had a shot at her during bow season in 2006, but I muffed it.  Since then she's been nothing but a pest. I wouldn't give her up for anything. She's a trophy all right.

Real tangible trophies?  Sorry.  Okay how about this one.  Up on my mantle is a 6 inch section of 2" diameter beech. It has a broadhead embedded in it, my broadhead.  One mid-November morning in 1996 I was hunting a creek bottom when the biggest buck I had ever seen came walking past.  I shot.  I was sure I'd hit him-- I even heard it, but he did not run away. Instead, he took issue with the little beech tree just to his side.  I got another arrow nocked up, but this time, he busted me and ran about 20 yards before stopping for a second look.  I shot, but it went low and passed under his belly.  Later, as I was reconstructing what happened, I found the arrow in the beech tree.  I've also blown up a sapling with a 12 GA slug-- exploded the trunk and durn near knocked it over on the deer.  Sorry, I don't have that one.  Sometimes, some seasons, that's as close as it gets. 

Oh well, I had fun.  Those sorts of things save me all the trouble of hauling the carcass out.  Trophies?  Yep, every one of them, and I got a lifetime of them too.

[HiddenHornsRanch]

There are many words as to what a trophy can be. True some people consider spending big bucks to hunt big bucks in a few day period, which I think is sometimes outrageous and stupid. To me a trophy deer is the one that took you one or two years to get. All the hours of scouting, and hanging standings, and precisely measuring a particular bucks every step. Then the rigurous planting of food plots, and hanging of lures, or scents, or decoys....and then comes the early morning you see the buck just outside the reach of your bow or gun, and continuous mornings where he just outwits you at your own game. Then comes that faithful moment when he gives you that chance, and those few seconds your heart races until finally you thank God and hold that hard earned buck in your hands. That to me is the best trophy you could ever work so hard to get.

[Robert Rowland]

My biggest trophy hunt was just watching a young 6 point buck protect his hot doe against a spike buck. The doe was bedded and the spike would circle around and try to get to her from every direction. The 6 point would always run him off, but not very far. I watched them for over 1-1/2 hours until the spike circled behind me and caught wind. (I was on the ground)
That was a trophy hunt.

[schlupis]

that is a great buck first time I have seen the photo