2019 Resolution: Dump Anti-Social Media Trolls

Deer hunting is supposed to be about fun, family and stress-free time spent outdoors. Let’s make a unified pact to get back to those values in 2019 … and beyond.

If you’re one of the few deer hunters who isn’t glued to a smartphone, laptop or computer screen for at least part of your free time, consider yourself excused from this rant. Also consider yourself lucky if you’re not influenced by how modern technology has infiltrated our ranks. This has been brewing in my mind for years, and I believe it’s time to address the elephant-sized buck in the room.

Social media is ruining our deer hunting culture.

It’s a bold statement, for sure, and a topic that cannot be done justice in less than 500 words. But if you’ve paid any attention to social media these past few deer seasons, I’m sure you will have noticed how negativity and instant gratification have replaced simplistic joy and what once required a year’s worth of work.

It’s almost impossible to know where to begin to dissect the problem, but trophy adulation is good enough. Our deer hunting society has placed such an emphasis on antler scores and, more recently, a buck’s age, that we’ve become numb to what once was a simple appreciation of nature’s calcium crown.

Antler worship will never go away, but it can be put into better perspective when we realize record-class trophies by and large are almost always reserved for the privileged elite. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s stop, already, with the euphemisms. It’s bad enough that we have to categorize a 10-pointer as typical. It’s even worse that we’ve let such trite adjectives such as mature, grower and cull find homes in our deer hunting vocabularies. I long for the days when a hunter could proudly proclaim he bagged an 8-pointer and was met with one or two patented replies,  such as “Sweet!” — or better yet, “Congrats!”

If you’ve been on social media for even 15 minutes this fall, you surely know what I’m talking about. Today it seems everyone’s a critic or, worse, a barstool biologist. Instead of salutations, too many folks seem bent on diminishing someone else’s joy.

“Pfft, that’s not a mature buck,” someone might comment.

“You killed what would have been a good grower for next year,” someone else will reply.

“Not bad for a cull buck,” yet a third person might add.

Of course, it gets way worse for the folks who share photos of large bucks. One cannot post a big-buck photo anymore without being accused of lying about it, shooting it within a high-fence preserve, or doctoring the image to make it look larger than reality.

The simple work-around here is to keep your joys to yourself and never share anything on social media. I’m sure that tactic works, but what a sad state of affairs. Whatever happened to goodwill, good vibes and blood-brother fellowship?

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