different opinions

[Woods Walker]

HEY NOW! But I have FUN at it!  To have any more fun than that, I'd have to get undressed.  That's for my monthly bath, which I take whether I need it or not.
 
I don't get many colds though...........

[Highlander Archery]

Aint that what its all about? The having fun.. not the bath thing thats just WTMI.

[EatDeer]

ORIGINAL: JPH

ORIGINAL: msbadger

To that I'll simply suggest that one should get out their dictionary..and look up the words civil...and passionate....then go back to the CB posts and read what he had to say again...Now as with that post... I'm also done giving my opinion on this matter....Thank you

I was judging this baised on what I read on this thread. Maybe that is one of the problems, we are dragging our baggage from one thread to another. Heck, I've even seen people drag in things that have been posted in other forums.

                                                                  I agree,this used to be a discussion forum where I enjoyed the company,and debateing. Ever sense, I posted that a certain method was veiwed as un-ethical in my opinion, a couple noob forum posters can't seem to get over the fact that I expressed my opinion.

[howhill1]

my intention of this thread was not to point fingers ,call anyone out , or start any arguments and i apoligize if thats the way it seemed. all im saying is we all come from different walks of life and see things in different ways but the one thing we all have in common is that we kill animals for sport as well as food and there are those out there that wish to stop us from doing that at any cost no matter how we do it. as i stated in my opening post im asd guilty as anyone. i used to despise gun hunters. the very thought of driving deer appalled me. however a few years back i began hunting the late pistol season here in IL. that trip has now become one of the higlights of my season every year. a group of us spends three days drivng deer from one patch of cover to the other, we put some much appreciated meat in the freezer, help to control the herd population, and have a ball doin it. ive come to the conclusion that if a method or weapon is legal and animals dont suffer then i have no problem with it.

[shadow]

TOO much time sitting in front of a screen anaylizing comments and posts....hunting season is coming, go fling some arrows or touch off a primer. Get outside.
I hope this does not offend.

[howhill1]

out at the property twice a week, fling a few arrows evry day lol...........

[shaman]

I guess I am just an old Fudd at heart.  So many of the Indisputable Truths that get bandied about online aren't, never were, and probably never will be.

If you check out Traditional American Wild Turkey Hunting by Ed McIlhenny (first published in 1914) you'll find out the preferred method of hunting turkeys was shooting them off the roost. The preferred weapon was a rifle.

Teddy Roosevelt eschewed hunting in raised stands over salt licks and perpetrated the myth that salt blocks will bring in deer during the Fall season.  The truth is that salt should be applied in March, and the big rush at the lick is over by August-- at least in my neighborhood.  By September, you may see deer, but they won't be using the lick. TR's experiences with salt and treestands comes from a summertime hunt in (IRC) July in Pennsylvania. However, folks today still try and copy what he was trying so hard to  ban, and the sale of salt blocks skyrockets the week before season starts.

Jack O'Connor used to shoot deer in the butt when he was hunting in heavy brush. This was called an "anchoring shot."  You then trailed them for a while until you could put in a coup d'grace.  Teddy Roosevelt did the same thing, and if memory serves me correctly TR once shot a doe 14 times, before reducing it to posession.    So much for 1-shot kills.

Let's not just throw rotten tomatos at  TR and J O'C.  Meschak Browning would try for whatever shot he could and was pleasantly surprised if the deer fell over dead.  Usually his hunting trips ended with him wrestling the deer until he could plunge his knife into its chest.  James Audubon drew all of his wonderful bird pictures from specimens he shot. That's why he usually got the position of the necks wrong-- birds necks become distorted and curve backwards when rigor mortis sets in.

The bottom line is that most of what we visualize  as ethical hunting behavior has little to do with historical tradition. Most of the great outdoor legends, were still alive, would be invited to leave the camp, if not arrested outright. Whatever we we practice as ethical today is but a shadow of what has come before.

It is mostly a matter of fashion. Our grandfathers would roll in their graves if they saw us shooting does. Shooting a deer without antlers used to be considered the ultimate sin. Never mind the fact that two generations earlier than that, hunters preferred doe to buck, due to the quality of the meat.

It took D&DH magazine about 15-20 years ago to put to rest the myth that bait piles are an unfair advantage.  Sure, they will bring in deer, but it tends to bring them in during the dead of night. D&DH was the first popular magazine to publish a study that showed that hunters were no more likely to shoot deer over bait as an unbaited site. Hunting over bait piles is not unethical, it's just generally not as productive as one might think.

Food plots?  Listen, when the white oak acorns are dropping in my neighborhood, you can sit all day over your food plot and never see a deer. I pity the guys who spend a couple grand every year on food plots only to have the deer mysteriously vanish in late October. Do not talk to me about food plots being an unfair advantage.

Now we have QDM stirring the water, and everyone is worried about buck-to-doe ratios.  The truth is that you will seldom get things skewed beyond a 1-3 ratio, and most deer hunters do not control enough acerage to effectively enforce a plan.  Then states start putting on antler restrictions, and the next thing you know, a 12 year old boy may wait years before he can bag his first shootable buck.  No wonder kids are staying home with their video games!

In a few years, the deer herd may get so far oversized in urban areas like mine, I predict that the state will promote running them off cliffs. Everyone will fall out on a chilly November afternoon to do their civic duty. Shiny aluminum baseball bats will be issued ,and the whole community will beat the bushes and gradually herd the deer to special  state-run cliff sites.  Then we will all spend the rest of the day finishing off the wounded and butchering the rest.  In places like Cincinnati, where the deer herds are so large and the professional football is so bad, I see this catching on rather quickly.  Paul Brown Stadium will be empty, but 100,000 people will join in to drive deer off the newly prepared cliff at Mount Pisgah. Reefer trucks will be lined up for miles.  As we bludgeon the stragglers, we'll talk dissmissively of the old days when folks tried to do this all piecemeal fashion with guns and bows, and we'll talk glowingly of how civilized we have become.

[Sailfish]

ORIGINAL: Woods Walker

Um......what was it we were talking about again?

 
 
I think it was "Ford is better than Chevy".

[gutpile]

Maybe we can use the old indian method of running animals off a cliff, I would like to know how many of you have ever hunted 10,000 acres in a day...The reason I ask I hear some say high Fenced hunting ain't hunting, well I invite any one of these nay sayers to walk 10,000 acres out in a day and tell me the animal has no escape chance...And I believe they are fine in the fact that I really don't know if I want to fly to Africa and spend all that money to kill plains game, when I can go to texas and do it there...A question, If you had an Island that was one acre and had many deer on it would you go hunt it, if there was several miles of open water in each direction the animal would have to swim to get away? Would it be Fair chase to kill a deer off the island...

[Sailfish]

Gut the answer (IMHO) is yes.
 
But really, a 1 acre island would support little wildlife.
 
Say a 100,000 acre island And I would say yes too.