What I see some of y'all are missing is that the reason most of those hunting TV shows are getting made is that those hunters are being sponsored by the products that they are demoing in the field. I haven't watching too many in the last couple of years, but I don't think I have ever heard folks say you are doing it wrong if you don't use this product or that product, though often I have heard/seen it stated or implied that you are missing out of supposed huge advantages if you don't use said products.
What I found particularly interesting is how the tv hunter will proclaim a product to be amazing and super beneficial to hunter success and yet as soon as that hunter is no longer being sponsored by that brand, the hunter apparently no longer needs all that super beneficial help that was being provided by that brand/product. About 10 years ago, I was looking for new boots and was watching hunting vids and this deer hunter was talking about these great boots he just got from XYZ Brand. He talked about how comfortable they were in warm, cold, and wet weather. I watched a bunch of his videos and noticed he didn't always wear these great new boots. He often wore this other pair that had a noticeable stain on the left boot. Well, those were his preferred hunting boots. He was wearing them before he got sponsored by XYZ Brand boot company and when XYZ Brand stopped sponsoring him, he went back to his old, stained boots...which led me to believe that maybe XYZ Brand boots weren't really all that great, LOL. They certainly weren't better, in his unsponsored opinion, than the boots he had found previously.
So when you watch these shows. If a person gets sponsored with a given product and the sponsorship stops, but the sponsorship isn't replaced with a new product, see if the person continues to use the previously sponsored product or not. If so, maybe it is a decent product. If not, then maybe it really isn't all that great after all.
That is another thing that I have noticed about the shows. No respect for the game. You have a , so called , hunter sitting over a feeder. A deer comes in and he or she shoulders the rifle that is in a leadsled, or props the gun barrel on the window sill and yanks the trigger. Then when they reach the animal they act like they just won championship ball game, or possibly having a seizure. I'm sorry but that animal deserves more respect than that.
It is always interesting and sometimes amusing to learn people's values and how if you aren't hunting the way they think you should be hunting with the gear they think you should be hunting with, for the reasons they think you should be hunting, and behaving in a way that they think you should be hunting (or any subset or combination thereof), you aren't doing it right and you aren't really a hunter.
I think SHOOT1SAM may be right in that a lot of hunters are hunting in the manner described because they need all the help they can get. They may be inexperienced or have other physical issues.
Captcurt, I see where you use a rifle, scope, blind, chair and shooting sticks while sitting over a feeder as well. Does that make you a "so-called hunter" as well? I am not sure where you are drawing the line. Was it the lead sled? Was it the obvious inexperience (buck fever trigger yank or rested barrel)? Or, was it the post kill relief and excitement that disqualified the person from being a "real hunter?"
I will be honest with you. I can't don't like the whooping and hollering either. I usually find it annoying, but I can't see how that possible somehow demotes a person from consideration of being a hunter.