Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game When hunting became shooting

I enjoy long range shooting but would not classify myself as a long range hunter. I am a hunter which means I enjoy all forms and aspects but do feel the long range approach for me anyway takes away from my actual hunting skills to get close to the game on it's terms.

I have seen game wounded probably equally by every form and that all comes down to knowing your weapon, shot placement and when or when not to take the shot and then having the skill to take it.

It doesn't not bother me that may be another's cup of tea and if it means more game taken then our game managers need to take that into account. Personally, I do not believe there is anymore game being taken or at least the statistics are not there to prove it. Additionally any study to support the claim would be extremely hard to quantify i.e. threads like "holding dead on at 600 with the .270."

Hunting methods vary a lot due to terrain, and by tradition. I've done the spot & stalk thing in the west, sat on a spot & waited on dogs to drive deer to me in NC, and sat on stands in Texas. This year I'll be doing both the stands and spot & stalk.

Even if you hunt over feeders, a fair amount of preparation time is required - several 300 mile round trips during the year to tend them, repairing damage to equipment from livestock or wildlife, and other scouting & prep work. Sometimes your setup isn't exactly right, and the deer avoid your spot. Last, the big old trophy deer got big by not going to feeders, at least during shooting hours. So no, you're not "hunting" walking around for hours or days, but a significant investment of preparation time is still required - and a wall hanger is not guaranteed.

On a lease near Sonora, we saw several young bucks with gore marks about two feet apart on their sides. But no one ever saw the big bastard who put them there. The country tends to be noisy to walk through, and still hunting them is seldom profitable.

As far as other "types" of hunting - you can find fault with lots of other methods. Is it "hunting" if you're finding the deer with 15x German glass, instead of 7x?

I appreciate the skill & mechanical precision for extremely long-range shots, but I don't care to try it myself - not because it's not hunting, but because during the bullet's flight time, a puff of wind, a step by the animal, and you've pulled a Swampy and shot the deer in the ass.

So I don't care for dogs, nor the extra-long range stuff, but I don't much nitpick other people's methods. They all require some investment of effort in one way or another, and when your plan comes together, and you successfully execute the shot, it is satisfying.

I did.

Again, I will ask YOU. What is the challenge that bow hunting offers you that rifle hunting doesn't?

I guess hunting for nonnative species doesn't count. Are whitetails going to count in Iowa? They were exterminated and reintroduced. Ditto for elk in Arizona.

And then there are turkeys. Probably exterminated and then stocked like pigs and pheasants in a lot of the places they are super abundant now. So, do we get to count these local nonnatives?

Doesn't really matter does it?

Meanwhile I think I'm going to take up golf and use just a driver. This must be thread-responsive, no?

I like eggs

Hunting became shooting with smokeless powder. It doesn't take any more hunting skill to take an animal at 50 yards than 500. When shots have to be taken at around 15-20 yards, you need some skill as a hunter, or a lot of luck. Beyond that it is more shooting skill than hunting skills.

The guys who put in the time to develop the skills to make clean shots at 500 yards are more hunters than the guys who shoot deer over bait inside an enclosed, climate controlled shooting box at 50-100 yards.

We are all victims of our own experience, and this has a lot to do with how we see the long range shooting debate.

Those of us who see a lot of "average" shooters on a regular basis tend to be somewhat jaded when it comes to the low percentage shot sports, such as long range shooting and traditional bowhunting. We've simply seen too many guys mess it up. Had to chase down too many wounded animals.

Sure, with training the long bow and the 338 Lapua are effective means of taking game. But the average dude simply can't or isn't willing to take the time to learn what all is involved to master the weapon. And therein lies the rub....

These two paragraphs perfectly illustrate the ignorance on the whole subject of Hunting and Shooting that some have due to their own inability and lack of experience

First of all, it's blatantly obvious that you've never attempted any long range shooting whatsoever if you think "it doesn't take much to become efficient at long range's anymore". You're watching too many long range hunting shows.

Bows have been able to shoot well at ranges much longer than 100 yards for centuries and rifles have been shooting projectiles since the first World War with just as much punch as today. So people who raise their skill level to be able to operate a bow or a rifle to its N'th degree of its capability are the problem? WTF?











The difference is that they actually perfected the skill by hard work. By your standards, an ancient Roman warrior with his ancient equipment would be a scourge on game populations with his "unfair advantage"

In response to the OP. I guess I don't get as worked up about how other people legally hunt. I no longer like driving deer. So I don't do it. But I'm not going to bitch at my neighbors for doing it on their land. If someone wants to hunt with a longbow or a rifle that they can shoot sub MOA at 750 yards, it doesn't bother me. More power to both of them. They both have skills I don't possess.

Dude, if it was so tough, then why do they (BEST OF THE WEST) show someone each week that has never shot long range taking 1000 yrd shots on game? I've shot fire arms my whole life, and talked with many on the subject. It's not above anyone to do it.

I take it you've mastered it? Rest my case!

Seriously you have to ask?

This is not meant as a dig at anyone in particular, rather it is just my thoughts on the subject of this thread.

I find that the Internet, and even before that the world of BBSing, filled with some very common themes:

1) My way of hunting is correct. The rest of y'all are slobs.
2) It used to be much better. It sucks now.
3) Hunting should be like it was when. . .


I've been corresponding on board and forums about hunting since 1981. Let me fill you in on a few things:

1) It will never be like it used to be. Go read Phillip Tome or Mishak Browning's memoir, or Frederick Gerstacker. Pioneer hunters in virgin forests faced a whole different scenario. They had different methods and different motivations. The forests are gone for the most part. The game has changed. For most folks, hunting is now done in a sort-of zen garden of hunting. It reminds us of what wild and wilderness was.

If we have some inner demon that needs tending, we no longer start on the eastern tidewater and hunt our way to the Rockies trying to scratch the itch. Nowadays we book a hunt here and there or lease or buy a few acres and set up camp. We hunt until the demon is fed and then we hop a flight home.

2) Very little since the advent of modern hunting seasons and laws resembles what folks did back when the game and the hunters ran free. There used to be seemingly limitless supplies of game, and few hunters and methods were big on consumption and there was little interest in conservation. Turkeys were shot out of roosts and deer were picked off from raised stands over salt licks in mid-summer. The goal was meat and hides. Nowadays, the idea is to go out and get a small taste of it all, play at being a hunter, and do so with as little impact to the herd or to the environment.

3) Of the species that are hunted nowadays, most populations support enough hunting that you can do what you want to do and there is enough left for the other guy to do what he wants to do. This idea that my way is right, all other ways are anathema is getting nobody anywhere. If I want to hunt with a crossbow its okay. I'm probably not going to take your deer. If you want to shoot turkey over decoys on your ridge, that is not going to change my luck on my ridge. This is no longer a zero-sum game.

4) We have collectively gone soft on the game. This whole 1-shot 1 kill thing is a modern invention. Teddy Roosevelt once put a couple of dozen rounds into a doe, because he could never get a good shot on her and his first shot was in her rump. If you read between the lines of Jack O'Connor, you'll realize this whole brush-busting thing was about placing an anchoring shot into an animal so that you could get a blood trail going and hope for a finishing shot later. This is just a minor modification of Mishak Browning's methods from 100 years earlier; Browning never expected his flintlock to finish a deer on the first try. Rather, he hoped to get a ball in and then set his dog on the trail. If he got really lucky, he got to jump on the struggling animal and ride it for a bit, stabbing it with a big hunting knife. He would catch a bear in a trap and then let it out to do personal battle with it.

That's hunting. Of course what you do out to 1000 yards is hunting. What somebody else does out of an air-conditioned blind is hunting. What I do is hunting. Got it? It's all hunting.


5) What the Internet has shown us is how parochial we are. I've been called booger-eating moron for hunting with a 30-06. I've been called all kinds of names for cleaning my deer head-up. The hunting world is filled with intolerance. It used to be you could do what you did and no one outside your family or hunting camp knew. Now it is posted on Facebook, and everybody's little quirks are plastered up all over the place.

6) Hunting shows on TV are irrelevant to real hunting. It is entertainment. Real hunting on TV would be as boring and watching your arm hair grow. What's up there on the cable and the satellite is Kabuki. It's Big Time Wrestling and Roller Derby with antlers and guns.

BTW: I remember the thing with the C-clamp on Lassie. I must have been under 5, but I was long past being taken in. Just so you know, I had a dog that never managed the C-clamp trick, but he taught himself how to use the remote and would wake us up every morning at 4 watching Lassie. Later in the day, he'd switch over to PAX to watch Miracle Pets.

Seriously, you can't answer the question?

The way it was, but today the majority can't imagine the reality of it.

You must not bowhunt? I'll play your game.

The challenge is the same, the rewards are much greater.

So goes it with limitations on any weapons, or restrictions. That's part of this whole thread that people today will miss.

Sad really for those that don't know the difference.

Watched:

I've done it both ways-but with a compound-and understand the difference. I prefer a rifle.

If the challenge is the same, why are the rewards much greater?
There is a dead Deer-or something-on the ground. Makes little difference to the animal. If it makes you feel better? Ok congrats, but it doesn't necessarily make you any better of a hunter or a more appreciative hunter than one who does it another way.

Yall are a bunch of heartless bastids shooting those animals at less than 100 yards. Back off to at least 600 and givem a sporting chance.

I bowhunt.

As already asked, why are the rewards MUCH greater?


Typical bow hunter answers go something like this:

You have to get closer with a bow. (one can limited themselves to 25 yard shots with a rifle, assuming one has any self control)

There is more movement with a bow, so deer are more likely to spook (ok, I'll wave my arms around a bit before I shoot one with a rifle)

Shooting a bow is more difficult than a rifle (once one has mastered whatever weapon they are using, they have mastered it)

Of course the shooting part isn't a question of hunting, it's a question of shooting.

So again, what part of bow hunting offers you more challenge than a rifle?

Is that you don't have a clue where the arrow is going every time? Knowing that you will likely wound more deer with a bow, that makes it challenging?

Wounding/losing game = CHALLENGE?

You ignorant wretch. I swear, of the 10 most stupid people on the Campfire, you have to be 8 of them. You get shown how wrong you are and you come back with that pathetic change of direction.

You are a real letherstocking alright. If you had been around in the days you want to emulate so badly, some other real mountain man would have beat you to a pulp and left you for fly bait. It is just too bad there isn't such a thing as a time machine, as I bet at least 15,000 campfire members would come up with the money it would take to send you back to that time!

This thread isn't a rifle vs bow thread. If you think that you've missed the whole point and I can't help you. Its about proliferation of technology and how easier it is to shoot your game than say 30 years ago.

Most bow shots are inside 40 yrds, Most rifle are inside 200. There's a big difference between the two.

Today, bowhunters can and will shoot out to 100 yrds. That means that they are now capable of taking 300% more game than 30 years previous. More encounters today end up with dead animals.

Rifle hunters are taking game at 1000 yrds, where as a decade ago it would have been 500 yrds. So just by doing the math. It's twice as easy to kill as before.

More hunters are taking game at longer range. There will be a consequence for this. Shorter seasons, and less hunters will be allowed to take a limited resource. Most states have objectives for their game populations and try to keep them at or under that. There is no unlimited supply of game.

The same people that support all technology, will scream bloody murder if wolves and lions started having greater success taking game, they would be screaming mad, and rightfully so. If those predators start having impacts on the big game herds, what do you suppose the majority of sportsman would want to take place in regards to those predators?

There should be limits on everything. Whether man or beast.

I'm not talking hogs either.