There were a lot of comments underneath our post Nevada Bans Hunting with TrackingPoint, Large Calibers Because it “Isn’t Sporting”. TTAG reader Blake had this to say about that: 
Nature has given us all the tools we need to catch them as well, my proof being we’re still around despite not having access to certain technologies for the bulk of our existence.
Saying there’s sport to scouting an area with automatic cameras, planting a food plot or placing a feeder, wearing the latest camo with scent blocker, sitting in a blind, and shooting an animal from hundreds of yards away that has no chance to know you’re there…. Gimme a break.
Banning something for it being “unsporting” is laughable because there’s no sport in the activity to begin with. Hunting has transformed into nothing more than an excuse to make the modern “man” feel like a man and if he’s lucky he can get a trophy to brag about and show off to all the other modern “men” to prove it.
Are there plenty of skillful hunters left? I’m sure, but not near enough to convince me to have any respect for it anymore. I’ve hunted enough to know it’s too damn easy, and boring, now a days.
True story?
Gator hunting sure as hell ain’t.
Blake nailed it. I won’t go into gory details of my hunting experiences on the Internet, ala Cali-Zim, but let’s just say it’s pathetically easy.
Processing the deer is a whole lot more effort.
Well, bless your starchy white heart, Potato. Whatever would we do without you to tell us how it is?
Yes, matt. Don’t go into details. How exciting is it to stalk a synagogue at 01.30 and spray paint swastika’s on it while wearing a face mask?
I was thinking maybe he’s that guy that was caught smearing shit swastikas in that public restroom not too long ago.
Easy? Depends on where you are and who you are. I’ve hunted in the desert southwest, tracking the antelope for miles on foot – and packing every ounce of water and food I needed for the day, and the trip back to camp. I’ve hunted trough rough brush and hill country with the same effort. Never did any “tree stand” things and it seems silly to me, but probably makes sense in other places.
A “sport?” I don’t know. Never did understand the “sport” thing very well. That’s not why I went hunting. I hunted for healthy food, and to benefit the herds themselves.
I’m too old and disabled to hunt anymore, but it is a tradition and exercise in self ownership and responsibility that I treasure. Teach your children to hunt, respectfully and well.
Yea, I agree that the challenge can vary by location. I’ve done most of my hunting out in the desert, and taken very few animals back with me. Lower population density makes a big difference. I’ve spent a week out there, glassing all day and not seen any bucks (and only a handful of does).
What gets us out in central Texas is there’s no real large swaths of public land out here to hunt on. So you pay to use a private plot of land (a “deer lease”), unless you own it, and if it’s small you’ve got limited options to set up a blind and make sure you aren’t endangering the neighbors. When you can’t stalk properly, you settle for a feeder. I’ve never hunted myself, but this is the state of things as I’ve been able to find out here. If anybody in north Texas can lead me to better options, I’m all ears.
Short Answer: No
Long Answer: Nooooooooo
Longer Answer: Hunting is what you make of it. After years and years of sitting at a feeder and shooting deer, I’ve started to get out and into their environment. Nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to sitting against a tree with the light fading while a salty old doe stares at you from fifteen yards away. JWT goes hunting with a flintlock. Tons of people bow hunt. Lots more have gotten into long range hunting. If it has gotten boring for you, make the conscious decision to challenge yourself.
“Hunting is what you make of it.”
That’s my answer as well. If hunting has become boring, then I’ll postulate that there is an associated lack of effort and imagination being exercised.
In my area, deer are a problem, and cannot be hunted due to crowded conditions/safety, even with bows. I have wondered for years (I am not a hunter), why there is not a knife season, with no license required, if you can walk up to a deer and cut its throat, why should you not be allowed to, safety is not an issue in anyone’s imagination? Again, in my area I have seen a man who could not get his car to his garage due to 30-40 deer munching flowerbeds bordering his driveway, and would not move even when he sounded the horn.
Maybe spears, battle axes and swords….
All of this and more!
As I noted the other day, my hunting weapons of choice are my muzzleloader and my bows: to put me at a deliberate disadvantage. If hunting is too easy for you, don’t quit – challenge yourself. There’s no rule that says you have to wear camo, wear buckskins. You don’t need a scoped rifle, grab a flintlock. You don’t need spray-on scent blockerd, smear yourself with cow poop.
Then there’s this: don’t fall into the same thinking as our common enemies, the anti-gunners/ anti-hunters. The thinking that goes like this,
“I don’t want to have to hunt my own food/ defend myself/ work hard to become successful, therefore YOU should not be allowed to.”
When we start getting into each other’s faces saying “you aren’t a real sportsman” , “you don’t need a gun like that”, or “you’re all nuts, I quit” your playing right along with those who would love nothing more than to dictate to us how we should all live.
Still on the theme, “You get out of hunting what you put into it.”
A lot of folks find it fun to apply tools and techniques toward a specific goal. So go fancy, go primitive, use old gear, use new gear, or switch between, whatever floats your boat. And if you are only hunting to stock up your freezer, then use whatever method gets your freezer full quickest and cheapest.
Bloving: you are not at a disadvantage with flintlocks and bows, only less advantage than modern firearms. A disadvantage is tying one hand behind your back while trying to take an animal with only your other hand and legs. Maybe a pointed stick.
Well, I do keep having a recurring daydream of leaping from a tree branch onto the back of a full-grown Texas feral hog and bashing in its skull with my CRKT Woods Chogan tomahawk (I’ve sworn an oath to never set foot into the woods without it), but then I look in the mirror and see the gray in the beard, the ache in the lower lumbar, knees ain’t what they once were… y’all OFWGs know how it is.
Now if you’ll excuse me – I’m gonna practice my longbow a bit before the sun goes down.
Point of order…
If the State can outlaw/ban certain pieces of hunting equipment because it makes the taking of meat “unsporting”, just how sporting is it to walk up to the counter at Kroger’s and throw a couple of pounds of beef in the cart?
Sounds like an intro to a movie-make of “The Hounds of Zaroff” – Connell, 1-19-24
I believe I understand the OP’s premise. What is being proposed?
I bow hunted for 20 years because the season was longer and during nicer weather. I switched to rifle hunting about 10 years ago.
Never seen a tree stand, nor a food plot.
I’ve never thought of it as a sport. Most times its darned hard work. I didn’t track my hikes till a few years ago. Farthest hump so far has been 16 miles. Didn’t even see an elk.
I take off later today for a chance at a central Oregon mule deer. My freezer is really low on free range protein.
Hunting is never boring. I enjoy the outdoors, seeing nature up close and personal, and the camaraderie of a good evening after a day of hard work.
it can be. is what he says true? partly. there are alot of immature men out there who only do things to impress other immature men. hunting is no different. we all seek acceptance from somewhere. a lot of guys use hunting as their escape so your boredom is their vacation. boredom is the vacation from the constant demands of family life. some people don’t need time to them selves. most of us do.
I have heard groups of hunters discuss their “hunting trips” as packing everything up and meeting at the hunting camp, unloading and setting up camp, then lighting the campfire and settling in to swap war stories and get drunk. Next morning, search for more firewood, plan dinner, and so forth until afternoon, then settling in to swap war stories and get drunk. Next morning, break camp, pack cars, say good byes and head for the house. A break from routine, escape from boredom, no one with a bit of intention to harvest anything, but still sounds like a valid vacation hurting no one.
The Second Week of Deer Camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLnmA653f94
REFRAIN
It’s the second week of deer camp
And all the guys are here
We drink, play cards and shoot the bull
But never shoot no deer
The only time we leave the camp
Is when we go for beer
The second week of deer camp
Is the greatest time of year
I’ve never used trail cameras or feeding or scent blocking or camo and the woods around here aren’t conducive to “hundreds of yards” shots.
Hike a bunch to find sign. Haul in a stand if you want or sit still and quiet for a really long time keeping the wind in mind. Shoot within 75 yards. Haul it out.
Trophy? Who gives me a trophy? Is it in there with the meat or something?
I guess if I had a lot of money, toys and my own land or a lease or something I could make hunting all cushy, easy and boring but I’m just poor fool who hikes around public woods in a flannel jacket with a 336 in .35 Rem.
There are two rebuttals to the POV presented:
First: the experience argument.
To some hunters, like the author of that article based on the arguments he uses, hunting is just about the kill and anything that speeds that up while minimizing effort and boring time experiencing nature is better.
On the other hand, some of us hunt and fish primarily to immerse ourselves in nature and connect with our primeval selves. I don’t even keep most of my fish any more (and slot fish when I do); being out on the lake or in the river with the wild life and natural beauty is an enveloping, deep, and rich experience in of itself.
When I bird hunt, I enjoy the natural beauty, the cycles of the sun and weather, the symbiotic teamwork with the dogs, and the challenge of wing shooting. I am not interested in robotically harvesting duck, quail, and pheasant.
Second, and just as important, wildlife management.
Not everyone everyone with a license, tag, or on a hunt gets their bag limit and that is built in to numbers of tags, areas & populations of game open to hunting, and the length of seasons.
The easier we make it to bag game, the shorter seasons will have to be made, the fewer tags will be offered, the more expensive the tags & licenses, and the more areas will have to be closed to hunting: all to keep healthy populations of game.
Maybe the best solution is to allow those enhancements but for hunters using them: shorten the seasons, reduce areas open to them, reduce tags given for them as a method of take, and reduce bag limit with them. We already do this for bow versus firearms hunting. That way the hunter still hunts and game populations are kept healthy.
I honestly dont enjoy hunting all that much, being cold and tired isnt the most fun feeling in the world. But if there is another way to bring home 100+lbs of delicious, free range meat for literally pennies per pound then I’m all ears.
Pennies per pound?
I’d like to see your analysis.
By the time you pay for your license and tag, gun, ammo, clothing and god-knows-what other gear, I just don’t see hunting as a pursuit borne of economics.
^ This!
In my neck of the woods my venison costs me about $2 per pound if I process it myself. If I pay someone else to process it, now it jumps up to $4 per pound. And both numbers assume that I harvest a LOT of deer with a single firearm purchase. Of course that isn’t the case since I purchased two rifles, one shotgun, one muzzleloader, one handgun, one compound bow, and one crossbow (about $3,300 total not including ammunition) which so far have yielded a harvest of about 10 deer (about 400 pounds of meat).
And I probably have another $300 in clothes and another $200 in who knows what. So, I have spent something like $3,800 on equipment which has yielded, thus far, about 400 pounds of meat. That alone equates to $9.50 per pound. Add in the price of the hunting licenses and I am well over $10 per pound. And if I pay someone to butcher it, now I am up to $12 per pound. Of course that number would come down a lot if I had only purchased one device (rifle, shotgun, or bow) for all of my hunting.
On the plus side, that price per pound is for PURE meat with no bones and zero gristle/fat … and it is the most “organic” that you can get.
Pennies per pound for my deer meat. You don’t need all that shit.
I have manged to break even every year on my hunting expenditures: I bought a mossberg 500 and hunted in hand me down clothes the first. Bought a decent set of clothes the second- and a cheap crossbow the third- good boots and a nicer scope on the fourth.
40-50lbs if organic free range meat per deer at 5-10 $/lb adds up quick And I’ve been lucky enough to have harvested 2 deer a few of those years.
The big obstacle to breaking even is fuel cost of you have to travel. I’m pretty fortunate to car pool or hunt close to home so it’s a non issue- but entirely do able. Especially if you are prudent about your gear purchases and divide that cost over multiple years.
I buy woods clothes at thrift stores. A set of wool trousers, less than 2 dollars. 5 bucks for a wool sweater. A swiss gear back pack for 5 bucks. Only thing I buy new for the woods is foot gear. My shotguns are mossberg and beretta. Mossbergs I bought new and paid less than 250 apiece for them. Beretta I swapped an sks for that cost me a whole lot less than a beretta would have.
I travel a minimum of 2-3 hours to public hunting lands. But there’s always at least 3 of us going so the cost is spread. And the places I hunt in CA I can camp for free so long as I don’t build a fire. Camping gear is the easiest to get at thrift stores and yard sales.
Hunting doesn’t have to be high cost. Even buying a used 4runner to hunt in was less than 5 grand and it’s given me 2-3 seasons of use for a one time buy.
“scouting an area with automatic cameras, planting a food plot or placing a feeder, wearing the latest camo with scent blocker, sitting in a blind, and shooting an animal from hundreds of yards away that has no chance to know you’re there….”
Yes, that sounds boring. I don’t call that hunting, I call that harvesting, which is fine if you just want to fill your freezer.
Hunting, as I define it, is 90% hiking through the woods with a bow or a rifle, stalking through brush, looking for sign and glassing your surroundings; 1% shooting, and 9% cleaning and butchering. That’s assuming you get something, which is not my metric for successful hunting.
A good day of hunting is any day you take your rifle on a walk through the woods and don’t leave anything injured.
This. Truly WILD animals, in their environment, allowed to be wild, are very tough to outsmart. All of their senses, save one (on a good day) are superior to mine. I bought land in the country and convinced my wife to move out there because I love hunting and nature and very much enjoy spending time in the woods. I harvest only enough to keep my freezer full and to try to outsmart the biggest, baddest, oldest buck in the area every season. Sometimes I’m successful at that, sometimes I’m not. Earlier this week, my arrow found a magnificent one, so now I will spend the bulk of the rest of the season watching and trying to teach my son and grandson some of what i’ve learned, just as my father and grandfather taught me. The time in the woods watching nature does wonders for my temperament and i feel brings me closer to God. IMO, one cannot watch the woods come alive each morning and not believe in intelligent design. That’s not boring, not even close. Hunting is like sex, if it’s boring you’re not doing it right.
Wouldn’t the biggest, baddest, oldest buck also be the toughest, gamey-est buck out there? (Not being a hunter, I’ve always wondered. I assume that younger would be sweeter and more tender.)
Good question. Yes, generally. He ends up as jerky, mostly, though the backstrap is still wonderfully tender and tasty. Nothing’s gamey if you marinate and cook it right, to my tastes, anyway. The tastiest meat comes from younger does i take to keep the balance in check and numbers healthy.
thanks
Buying packaged chicken at the store isn’t sporting either.
Hunting for food doesn’t have to be sporting, but it should be as humane as possible.
Turkey hunting certainly is. I call in land fishing. Like several other posters I am not a fan of stand hunting with modern rifles. It’s really game harvesting.
The fun part of hunting is being out in the woods identifying locations to find game and tracking them down. Whether you come home with something is beside the point.
We can tell who the metro’s are on this site.
Guess I’m so metro, I don’t even know *what* a metro is!
Metrosexuals. Guys that are a little gender confused.
Hunting can be boring if you set-up in a blind, sit all day (from before sunrise until after sunset), and don’t see anything.
Hunting can be very exciting otherwise!
1. Nobody is forcing you to use trail cameras, plant food plots, build a blind, or use scent blockers. If those things make it too easy and boring for you, try doing without. Your argument is like skiing exclusively on the bunny hill and then complaining that skiing is too easy.
2. Why let the way other people hunt determine your level of respect for hunting? I drive a car with a manual transmission. Most people drive automatics. The fact that 95% of people on the road have a slushbox doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of driving or my manual transmission. Neither does it diminish my respect for somebody who can really drive and hustle a car around a track.
3. If you think there is no sport in hunting, refer to point 1. Like any activity, you only get out of hunting what you put into it. You referenced our ancestors surviving for centuries and being successful hunters. Well, guess what? They didn’t have all those modern tools. So try it their way. Take your weapon of choice and some basic survival gear, go scout for your game, and then find a place to shoot from other than a blind. Then come tell me how it’s too easy and the animals had no idea you were there.
It seems I’ve got my 15 minutes of quasi-Internet fame lol.
Excellent rebuttal by the way.
In response to your second point, I let it affect my respect for hunting for a simple reason. Those people are the driving force behind much of the regulations surrounding hunting. It’s no different than gun rights really, it’s like saying “no one needs more than 10 rounds in magazine” because you’ve shot bolt-actions all your life. Those same people would criticize the way I would like to hunt because it differs from their opinion. For the record, I have NO problem with someone hunting however they choose. Want to use a gun that fires itself? Want to use a full-auto? Grenades? A tank? Go right ahead, but don’t climb up on a pedestal and claim it takes skill.
Point 3, it’s not legal in many areas to hunt the way I would prefer. I would LOVE to stalk and spear hunt deer…..illegal in my state. Can I do it anyway? Of course, but the fun and challenge isn’t worth the risk should I be “caught” doing something that shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.
The gist of my gripe (and that’s what it was) is that hunting isn’t the highly skilled “art” it’s claimed to be anymore. Can it go back to that? Yes, and I would love to see that day. I get the appeal, it’s a way of reconnecting to a primal part of ourselves we’re often denied in the modern world. So why taint and ruin that aspect with modern gear? There aren’t many that would starve now-a-days if they didn’t reach tag limit.
I see your point, but respectfully, I wonder if you’ve ever hunted- rifle or bow?
Take a deer or similar with a bow and you’ll see truly how challenging hunting with a spear would be. Nevermind the evidence that suggests our ancestors hunted in packs to funnel game into a trap. Not exactly sporting in your opinion, I would imagine.
The other thing to consider which you touched on, but didn’t quite connect with: modern regulations actually make hunting much more difficult. Less game, less open season, less hunting hours-all make it more challenging. Not only do you need to track or ambush the animal but you have two weeks to do it, a small plot to do it on- and by the way you only have between 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the official sunrise/sunset to do it. often you can see it but not shoot it.
I understand your point. I do. But short of the “Gucci” hunters on private 250 acre farms with feeders and heated, elevated blinds (not that there is anything wrong with that) the Everyman hunters of the world do it much differently.
Fair enough. I have actually, but never with a bow. The best memories I have of my grandfather involve deer and turkey hunting with him. Not so much the hunting aspect, but being outdoors and firearms were literally the only things we had to connect on.
Yes, some of our ancestors methods wouldn’t fit my idea of sporting, but there’s a key difference. They hunted for survival, not securing a kill had the very real consequences of you, your child, or your tribe starving. There are some that do hunt the majority of their meat today, but the grocery store is a valid option in the majority of cases. If your life actually depended on it and you had a magical bullet which locked on to the nearest deer in a 10 mile radius and killed if you’d be a fool not to fire it. By that same token, despite it taking no skill I’d be okay with it as the ends justify the means.
Yes, regulation makes hunting more tedious, but it doesn’t make the act itself more difficult/skillful. I understand the utility of game cams, I truly do. Most people are free-time poor, a device which allows them to collect the intel they need while working a job or multiple jobs to provide for themselves, family, etc will thus appeal.
I will say perhaps my ire is aimed more at the “Gucci” hunters you mention, but that mentality has to small degrees trickled down into the masses. The idea of a successful hunter has become too results focused, i.e. who took the biggest deer, best rack, longest beard, etc etc and it’s been used to justify an “ends justify the means” mentality. It’s hard to say I do it because it lets me connect with nature (the real appeal of hunting for most is imagine) while taking every technological shortcut to actually avoid connecting with it.
I guess saying that hunting has lost its purity is the gist of my problem with it. Of course what makes it pure is open to interpretation, this just happens to be my interpretation of it.
AHHHHHGH!!! Ohmygawd, ohmygawd, ohmygawd IT’S BLAKE!!! The real one!!! Will you sign my tomahawk please?!
…
Time’s up. Your just a nobody with a smartphone like the rest of us again.
It was fun while it lasted
“Are there plenty of skillful hunters left? I’m sure, but not near enough to convince me to have any respect for it anymore. I’ve hunted enough to know it’s too damn easy, and boring, now a days.”
Some estimates say that there are as many as 13 to 14 million hunters in America. Perhaps the author of this statement should explain how he is familiar with a substantial number of them.
Simple explanation, I never claimed to know all of them. 14 million out of 300 million isn’t that much. The ones I do know however are vastly outnumbered by the latter, where I live it’s damn near heresy to speak ill of hunting. It’s not a huge sample size, but I bet it’s a fairly consistent sample given the explosion of the market for hunting goods and wares.
I’m not a big time hunter or anything like that, take a couple of deer per year, gun season only. The land we hunt isn’t all that big, so most of the time, once you’ve actually tracked an animal, etc, you very well could be trespassing.
Sitting in the tree stand is the way I do it. As other posters have stated, it’s nice just being out in nature. I just enjoy getting the free organic, free-range etc meat that lasts for a long time. Definitely more harvest than hunt, but the area is awash with deer for the taking. It would be a lot of fun to do some of the more primitive hunting, but I just don’t have the patience, time or desire to put into it, right now anyway.
I’m under no illusion that I am some manly man out there killing saber toothed felines with a stick and a rock. I don’t really keep trophies, just give the dogs the antlers to chew on, that’s about it. I do feel pretty proud when I manage to call a tom in close though.
Hunting is a great way to spend a couple of days:-
– In the great outdoors, connecting with nature
– Doing something that people have been doing since the dawn of time
– Away from the house and all the chores, lawn mowing, painting, the ‘honey do’ list
– To forget about work, the phone is switched off!
– Get away from screaming kids and annoyed wife. Yes, I love them but it’s nice to get away from time to time!! 🙂
– The chance to literally bring home the bacon should not be underestimated!
– It can be hard work and the opportunity for some exercise. Last time I went hunting (in Michigan), I bagged a 10 point Whitetail buck. Getting him out of the woods was not easy…..
Whether you call the above excitement or not is up to you. I just think that the times spent hiking in the wilderness with just your thoughts (and a .308!) for company should be treasured and appreciated for what they are.
I live in the suburbs, and I see deer and turkeys all the time on my street. I’ve thought about sticking an arrow in them (or some kind of subsonic suppressed something, if I had one), but I don’t think the city or state government would like that.
Depends on the type. I find stand hunting relatively boring (though can be enjoyable to just be out in nature) but I love hunting that requires hiking and stalking.
Well, you have to be pretty careful these days where you hunt. Like this guy, for instance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/man-charged-with-animal-cruelty-for-shooting-a-deer-in-northwest-washington/2016/09/29/d9261d7a-8640-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html
Five charges and I’ll bet they didn’t even let him keep the buck, which must have been a beaut with 14 points and weighing about 250 pounds.
There is a reason we have all these new high tech aids to hunters. (sent blockers, insulated cammo, high tech rifles higher tech scopes etc.) They work. If I can use an ATV i’m not walking anywhere. If I could afford a heated ground blind I’d have one. My sol purpose for chasing deer is they taste good. I will use any method that will not run afoul of the law to put venison on my grill. What you may call lazy, to easy, Not fair chase ( what ever that is) or what ever, I call efficient use of my time and equipment. If I want to get out and “enjoy nature” I’ll leave my rifle at home and take my family hiking, camping or what ever. If you don’t like high tech hunting, don’t do it. Me, I will use what ever I please so long as it isn’t a crime to do so.
I think similarly. My hunting opportunities here in SE PA are limited due to both available time and locations, so when I do hunt I want to maximize my chance of success by any legal means I can afford. The concept of “fair chase” is clearly an arbitrary one, and groups like P&Y have changed their rules to suit changing times. Even with the newer tech, I still don’t find it boring to get out into the woods or fields regardless of having any success. For me, it’s nice just getting out into nature for a little while. I suppose I’m more of a “harvester” than a “hunter”, and I’m fine with that. Honestly, it’s been the “hardcore” hunter Fudds fighting the hardest against things like xbows and semiautos here in PA, so I don’t care much about their opinions.
As many have said, it’s what you make of it. Most of what I do throughout the year I would not consider hunting, but more like very aggressive shopping. To feed my family the way we all want to be fed, I need to put about 1,000lbs of game in the freezer (600sqft walk-in). That means the vast, vast majority of my hunts are with an AR, suppressed, and I focus on taking as many of the heaviest animals I can as fast as I can. Most of the deer I shoot are actually cull hunts for private game ranches. I’ve taken as many as 11 does and spikes in a day like this.
Oh, and pigs…that’s usually just eradication. I’ll full butcher a few a year now, but the other 100 or so I just cut out the loins and sometimes the hams and leave the rest. I’ll kill them any way I can. And I’ve used everything from just a bowie knife to an AI in .338, suppressed with NV from 400 yards away.
But, there are a couple of hunts a year that are really hunts. Spot and stalk for a particular animal. Not a species, not a gender, one individual animal. Most of those are with a flintlock rifle, and the vast majority of them I come out without the animal. That’s a very different thing, and the trophy that I may put on the wall or the floor from those hunts are cherished reminders and conversation pieces of those hunts.
A 600 sq.ft walk-in freezer?
The electric bill for just that would make me cry…
Grid tied solar with a battery backup. I don’t think monthly bill has ever been above $20. I own a dairy.
Sure there are still skilled hunters. Last story of one I heard popularized he was widely ostracized and his wife lost a potentially lucrative sponsorship deal for having had the privilege of videoing him standing face to face with a bear and killing it with a stick.
“I’ve hunted enough to know it’s too damn easy, and boring, now a days.”
Says the imposter who has never hunted for anything aside from Lady Gaga tickets.
It’s the Call of Duty/lazy millenial effect. Who wants to hump through the woods for hours and haul a deer back when you can just take out hogs from a helicopter with full auto goodies? Who wants to wait around at a bench rest competition when the tactical magic of 3 gun awaits? To each his own, but the generational bias is undeniable. Hell I’m 24, and I get weird looks for buying beat up Mausers.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t young people who want to get into hunting. The problem we tend to face is a severe lack of experienced folks to show us the ropes. It’s sad how often I find “Grandpa’s hunting stuff” at yard sales now.
It’s not just the lack of experienced people to teach. It’s also the cost and the investment of time.
These days most young people don’t know a lot about hunting and they figure that they need a bunch of expensive stuff, which in some respects is true depending on the type of hunting you’re planning on doing. They self-select themselves out of the market.
I don’t hunt much anymore because I don’t have the time to be serious about it. That said, this weekend I’m going out to my friend’s land because they’re having some problems with a pack of aggressive coy-dogs and those suckers need to get dead.
I look at the kit I’m taking and it’s damn expensive by the standards of most people just a bit younger than me. I’m gonna take a few different ballistic options but I’m for sure taking my cheapo Mossy ATR100 in .243 Win. That’s a ~$300 gun with a ~$400 scope on it. Add in the range finder, ghillie, boots, coyote calls, pack, tent, binocs, food, tools and all the other stuff I carry and you’re talking at least $2500 worth of gear. Most younger folks just don’t have $2500 in disposable income to drop on hunting and hunting isn’t really the kind of thing that you set your sights on as a future hobby and acquire the gear over time just to get into the activity.
Truth: but let’s be real outside of the rifle of you enjoy time outside- and work on your own vehicle you have all that already except the ghillie- which you can imitate easily for free
Range finder isn’t a necessity. Nobody used to buy all this gear at once- a little creativity can get you through the start up years and teach a lot
A roll of burlap from a garden supply store goes a long way to a ghillie or a blind.
Really I’d say it depends. It will depend on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, location, your preferred method and what your buddies do.
I grew up in an area where deer hunting was nearly always done from a blind. The reasons were the local culture in which alcoholism was common and tourist hunters who saw deer season as a two week “man camping” trip in which booze played significantly more than a bit part. The latter group were the bigger problem.
That’s not to say that a lot of people there were unserious about hunting, in many cases families that didn’t fill all their tags didn’t have food later in the year, but you simply didn’t wander around in the woods during hunting season unless you wanted to get shot. “Deer camp” for the drunks and the tourists was two weeks of frat party in the woods and those idiots would get wasted and shoot at anything that moved. Hell, they’d shoot things that didn’t move. Every Fall we had PSA’s on the radio telling folks not to get loaded and shoot electrical transformers and every year people would do it.
That’s a situation where you’re going to use a blind because walking around looking for your quarry is pretty damn dangerous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb9yhhflmvY
You hunt and fish because you enjoy it. It gets you out with nature and allows you to enjoy the great outdoors. Hunting can also be sporting if you do it the old fashioned way like my father and grandfather. If you hunt deep in the mountains with a single shot shotgun with 00 buckshot, the deer have a more than even chance of surviving your feeble attempt at hunting.
Blake is a dipshit whose hunting experience is probably limited to watching a few hunting shows.
In the real world most big game animals are heavily pressured and pretty weary of any human presence.
Ah, there it is! The exact attitude I have my problem with, wondered how long it would take to rear its head….
You disagree with me, I disagree with you, so I just be the dipshit right? Tickles me how people who get their ideals bruised are sooo quick to turns around and crap on the opinions of others. Great discourse. I’m sure if we argue a bit more one of us will change the others mind….
Heavily pressured? Thought one of the perks of hunting was keeping populations in check? Must not be too heavily pressured if their population need to be controlled. I’ll pass on the hunting shows, only thing that could be more boring is watching another person with sponsorships “hunt” on tv in an attempt to sell me things.
I totally agree. The difference between one man’s poaching and another man’s hunting is “feelings.”
They want to hunt and want other people to hunt in exactly the manner they choose. Oh no – no trackingpoint they say. Oh no – you are a terrible person if you use a spear. Trackingpoint makes it too easy they say – but don’t recognize that a rifle, a scope, and 400 yards between them may be too easy? Baiting is bad – they say, but then they also say they want to put the deer down as quickly and humanely as possible. Imagine putting some opiates in the salt lick and the deer licks it and passes out, then the hunter (poacher, whatever) with his tag comes over and pops it in the brain. Then imagine a true sportsman, the manly hunter, stalking his deer across 2000 acres, then shooting his deer 200 yards off just moments before it sprints and having it squealing, bleeding, and running. He’s dead by the time the hunter arrives. But which was more humane? The baiter or the hunter? The sportsman cares more about the experience of his sport than the humane death of the deer. Anything outside his perspective not moral and unsportsmanlike. It’s an ongoing comic book for me.
You’re taking comic books way to seriously, it’s making you bitter and angry. Or are you bitter and angry cause others don’t read your words, comic book worthy tho they are, and go that’s so deep, so profound that my life is altered?
Instead they just go phfffft. Frustrating, ain’t it.
I’m going to interpret your lack of refutation as acknowledgement of my conclusion.
You can interpret in your right hand and shit in your left and see which one gets full first.
You’re just all miffed cause folks dare to disagree with you.
To the question “why do you hunt?”
Best answer I ever heard was, “It’s in our DNA.”
It is such an instinctive thing. To go out and kill something and drag it home is a visceral experience, at least for some people. And since we have long since eradicated the predator species, we need to manage the prey species somehow, lest they come flying through my windshield some night on I-90.
So, even though I don’t hunt, I respect those who do. And I don’t care much how you do it, as long as it’s humane for the prey and safe for the humans. And if you call it a “sport,” I’ll chuckle a little under my breath but I’ll try not to be too obvious about it.
I lose respect for TTAG every time they stoop so low as to use click bait titles to their posts. This is click bait. Besides what a completely inane question.
Looks like you took the bait.
I’m sure RF thanks you for the clicks.
Yep! He both clicked and commented!
Haven’t been hunting in over 40years. Not my thing but if you want to have every advantage have at it. Especially if you feed your family… opinions are like azzwholes-gray boy/midnight goof/ladder boy…
Rent free…
People who say that hunting is boring have never played golf.
Come hunt on public land in Colorado during second rifle season and tell me it’s easy.
Knuckleheads abound, the elk are down on private land, due to the pressure of archery, muzzle loading and first rifle season, everything is stompy and those that are left are like ghosts laughing at everything.
>>True story?
Doubt so.
Definition of “sport” is highly subjective, and there will be no agreement what is “sport” and what is not. It is like arguing rangefinding gear, or utility of 2500+ yard record shots done with Cheytac rigs.
There are people who enjoy (and can afford) helicopter hunts, and there are people who dispatch rats with air pistol (optics? take that off, be a man!). There are countless schools of thoughts, points of view, prejudices. Some of us probably met that old-school jent who abhorrs synthetic parts on a hunting weapon, or anything “non-classic”. I did, being severely reprimanded after showing up for crow control with cheap pump 🙂
In the end, if a person can spend pretty penny on a gear, good for him. If he enjoys some high-tech equipment that brings him close to Predator from all those movies – well, it is his money, not mine. As long as wildlife is preserved. There, I said it: wildlife. Us car-equipped urbanites preaching wildlife is the bullshit of the century.
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