It's amazing to me the way people will try to excuse what looks to me like plainly unethical behavior. Rather than blame the hunters for putting on a spectacle like this, now the people who pulled over to the side of the road are to blame, or the short season is to blame, or the F&W officer is to blame for allowing the public to witness the spectacle.
Let's face it, there are a lot of un-ethical slob hunters out there and an awful lot of the negative image the non-hunting public has of hunting is because of those slobs. I see plenty of evidence of the slobs almost every year in my neighborhood and on my land.
There are plenty of other hunters who manage to make do with the hours they have without resorting to this kind of nonsense, and they go pretty un-noticed by the public, so I don't think we should be making excuses for a debacle like this one. These guys have done a lot damage to the public image of the hunter.
so if you are on a stalk and another group pulls up do you adapt or give it up?
I am far from condoning what these fellows did, I just wish the fish and feathers officer had used the media spotlight to make the most of it.....which he did not. the blame lies solely on the hunters no doubt, but in wa we have a law that protects sportsmen in the commission of taking game. stoping your car on a highway to yell at hunters breaks more then one law here. had the cars not stopped and the people not been walking about....god only knows how it would have been.
also consider that these are "mangement hunts" designed to do exactly what they did...make the elk go away. if the general public saw what happens everytime an animal dies we would be forced to eat seaweed. the dept officer was there the whole time and could have stopped the hunt.....they do that often here. but the goal was to move those elk. I suppose the officer felt relieved tht the traffic had stopped to eliminate any wrecks......good for the traffic, not so much for the hunters.
I know this much, we don't have much funding to cater to habitat or fencing and those small farms get the heck tore out of them. the real loser in the whole deal is the land owner....imagine the calls he is getting.
