ZeroJunk
Member
I can shoot deer out my bathroom window. I am planting the place down in soy beans next year so it will just get worse. If not for trophy hunting there would be no hunting.
The only times I have seen that were in gun magazines where they have articles about someone going solo and then all you see is him packing out with the rack on his backpack and no sign of what happened to the meat. Especially true with sheep and goat hunters.
In fact there are very few people who are mentally tough enough and physically fit enough to do a high country sheep or goat hunt and when you make it a solo hunt that narrows the pack to the tiniest portion of hunters who have the outdoor skill, ability, mindset and fitness to pull it off.
That's probably the toughest hunting in the U.S.
It makes my physically sick even reading that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with hunting, quite the opposite as hunting is the last and purest link to food chain we still have left. When someone kills for just the sake of killing, without taking the responsibility to make use of the game to his or her best ability, it's not hunting anymore.
Varmints aside, there's no excuse. Even with them and some game management or safety-related secondary gain kills (wolf, lynx, raccoon dog, mink...) it's good ethics and good practise to use whatever you can, be it hide, using the carcass as bait (when legal) or anything else you can think of.
To give your friends a probably undeserved benefit of a doubt, can you please elaborate about the waste, please?
Could be, Art. I don't really know. All I can remember is what I've seen on nature TV shows and read here-and-there. I've no practical experience.Dunno, Mike. I've seen a fair number of videos of a pack of wolves working on what looks like a quite-healthy bull elk. Generally, circumstance: Deep snow, mostly, in the videos.
I've seen two really nice mule deer bucks, lion-killed. Bucks, generally being more solitary, are more easily sneaked up upon than a group of does and yearlings.
I'm not bashing anyone for what they do re: hunting, but I would like to learn more about the perspective of the sport hunter.
I'd call it what it is....criminal. I wouldn't hesitate to drop the dime on someone like that. Poachers masquerading as hunters are vile despicable human beings that only make it tougher for real hunters, both in terms of harvesting games, and also in the court of public approval. They serve no purpose, and I'd do what I could to rid my area of the typeMe, I'd call it closer to "weird".
No, thats not the case. By the time an animal has reached what most of us consider "trophy status" he has been breeding for a few years, spreading those "trophy" genes. A true trophy to many hunters is an old mature buck, one who is actually past his prime as far as fighting, breeding, etc go. These deer have little time left in the natural world regardless if shot or not. Even a buck cut down in his prime has already been breeding and spreading genes. How this would contribute to the weakening of the herd over time is beyond me. Too, if "non-trophy" animals are the only ones taken......if that is what you are implying should be done.....how do you ever begin to comprehend what that deer's potential is? How do you separate a 1.5 yr old buck that will someday score 170 B&C from a 1.5 yr old buck that will never begin to approach that size? A trophy buck isn't a trophy buck at birth...he looks like any other deer. Killing a trophy before he grows to trophy potential is still killing a trophy deer....but you have nothing to show for it in terms of a rack on the wall, and you'll never know it. Besides, if I'm going to eat the meat, which is central to this conversation, I want to eat healthy meat. By your view of things, I should be looking for a sickly animal of questionable quality to harvest, which again, just doesn't make sense to my way of thinking. If I'm going to kill a deer, I'm going to kill one that I am confident is healthy enough to consume, not a crippled diseased deer whose meat may or may not be even be safely edibleTherefore, the weak are weeded out... not the strong. Trophy hunting does the opposite... weeds out the strong leaving the weak to propagate the herds. Isn't it logical that this will weaken the species over time?
Trophy hunting does the opposite... weeds out the strong leaving the weak to propagate the herds. Isn't it logical that this will weaken the species over time?