Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Has B.C. score obsession ruined deer hunting?

I think the key word here is “obsession”.

I think it has more to do with the social media "influencer" types and tv shows.

Me, I enjoy the experience. The time in the woods. Observing what the animals do while I wait for a buck or doe to come by.

Not nearly as much as social media. If folks would just hunt without seeking everyone else's approval, the world would be a better place.

I trophy hunt for one reason, more time in the woods. Screw you if you don't like it.

I started hunting deer as a young boy in the 60 in Nevada and a short time later was hunting in Idaho and Utah too. So I know how the deer and elk herds were and I know what I see now.
Things are different today and in many ways.

To answer the OPs question I have to say "yes".

But there are other factors that all work together to cause hunting to be worse now then it was then. These factors all come together to cause the lack of heard size and horn size.

#1 is the fact that the game and fish departments are today morphed into organizations that have a #1 purpose, which is to perpetuate their own jobs and good pay. They may call themselves "Fish and Game". or "DNR" or any other name, but the game and the fish are the baits they use to entice sportsmen simply to enrich their coffers and to secure paychecks for the future, and the hunters and fishermen are what is managed, not the game and not the fish. The population of hunters is higher now, so the government wants to sell more and more tags despite the fact that habitat may have shrunk but a love of the money is more important to them then an abundant herd in any given habitat.

#2, When I was young there were many many privately owned lands all over the west that had land owners who didn't care if you went on their land to hunt or fish, and most would come help. Many hunters would pitch in and help the farmers and ranchers too, and that led to a lot of lasting friendships and is seems that generation of men and women who were in their 40s when I was 10 are dead and gone and have been replaces with men and women that see people as a source of money. So if they charge a man more then the cost of beef in a store, the meat hunters (which were about 99% of hunters in my youth) will simply not pay. So cultivation "big horns' and selling the game (against the law, but that what they do in effect) only to wealthy people has become the norm today.

#3 ."B.C.Scores" of racks is a way to turn the sport as a competition of man against man. Not a communing with nature and the joy of being in the wilderness, but spend $5000 to 20,0000 and the wealthy want to have something to show what they got for that money . Most as a justification to themselves for spending huge amounts of money on something as worthless as a set of horns, but no one will EVER convince them it was of little value for the amount of cash spent. They will wallow in self justification their whole lives, because admitting that 'it's only a set of horns" goes against their emotions and self deluded ideas to proves how mighty a hunter they are. "Mine is bigger then yours". But what they buy is an opportunity to hunt game held for the purpose of attracting those with money to the land owners, so the real "crop" is the hunters, not the game. They just don't know it.

We all fall for it now and then. I have. I have never killed a record "head" in the near 60 years I have hunted in 13 states and in 7 different countries, but I have killed some good sized game with large racks. I fell for the bait in the fact I have sold every single one that was larger then most to others that wanted them as "trophies" and when I was offered more money for the head than my whole hunt cost me (3 time's it was a LOT more then my whole hunt cost me) I simply sold them. I expect the ones that bought them will go one to brag about how they killed them, but I didn't care at the time. I got what I spent on the hunt and 2 times I bough new guns with the money. Once in the 80s, in Caldwell Idaho I was returning home with a large bull elk on my truck and a man going up to hunt saw me at a gas station and saw my elk. He offered me $1500 on the spot for the head. I thought he was kidding at first. I told him I had to get back to my job and would not be able to go again until the next year so I didn't really want to sell, but he made it clear he only wanted the head, not the body. So I caped it out and cut off the head and he gave me 15 $100 bills and we parted ways. I got all the meat and he got the horns -----but I got $1500 which was good money in the early 80s.

So I was not immune to the lure of cash. This explanation of my overview is just that, an explanation. Not an accusation.

But 3 things I listed above have caused hunting to degrade. Only one of them is "scoring" heads.

If I were to name one thing that was the main reason, all 3 of the ones I listed above above are hanging on 1 foundation. Greed! Love of money. even the bragging rights of todays hunters are more pronounced then they were in the 60s and 70s because today the money has excluded a lot of deer and elk from those that have no large amounts of money to throw away. I killed a mule deer in the early 70s that was 34" across, but I still didn't keep it as a "trophy" because it was my biggest rack to that date, but other men I know had bigger ones and I had use for the horns, so I used them up. I saw them as replaceable. Today such racks are not as replaceable and rareness is seen as value --- in terms of money most times.

Big herds of game are shot off to sell tags so the state governments can get money. They "manage" the herds enough to not kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but the game and the fish are NOT what the care about. They care about Money. That's why they sell tags in areas that have been over hunted.

Land owners want Money. So the lease out hunting rights or "manage' the hunts themselves to gouge hunters. Gone seem to be the days of hunters and land owners becoming friends all year long. Hunters (who are wealthy enough) want to kill "big heads" because if they don't they will see the experience for what it really is. A rip-off, for both the hunt and the meat.

So getting a "big head" gives them a false since of satisfaction about how they got taken for a lot of MONEY, but "it was worth it".

In the 50s and 60s the Christian ethic was still a factor in much of society. Greed and self importance are part of human nature, but from the start of the USA until the late 60s the Christian ethic was at least taught as a standard to try for. Those that openly rejected it's moralities were noted and distrusted.

In the late 60s it because stylish to reject the teachings of the Bible and try to legitimize greed and god-hating. Hunting is just one of thousands of things that have been hurt by that teaching.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

yes it has especially in montana