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

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.

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!

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.

I wouldnt be sad if they banned bows,crosswbows, muzzleloaders etc. They all contribute to huge amounts of wounded game and they typicaly have choice seasons dedicated to these stunts. And yea I have bow hunted, and currently crossbow hunt. Never lost an animal i shot yet, but know many that have.

If there are animals that can take the pressure then I'm fine with the technology, but very few will be able to. Do we go limited entry for everything just because people want to use this technology?

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.

TR was considered a slob hunter by the hands at his place in Medora. A terrible shot. But hey, he signed their paychecks, and wrote the books....so he can be remembered however he wishes.

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?

Sorry, to follow your logic the FIRST thing banned would be modern firearm hunting as they WOUND and LOOSE a LOT more numbers wise. Pretty easy to figure that out.

Those that know anything about archery know there are very few non found fatal wounds out there.

Those that know anything about archery know there are very few non found fatal wounds out there.

If one were to believe this crap posted above, it would follow that hunter success rates would double or triple. It isn't the case in Oregon, the first harvest data I could locate. The success rate has steadily declined from a high of 61% in the late '50's to 24% recorded in 2011.

For rifle hunters in order to keep success rates lower, season lengths have been shortened in much of the western United States, from the good old days.

I'm going to 100% disagree with ya there.
Darn near every year, there is a big bull elk killed localy with an old broadhead removed during butchering. An uncle of mine killed a bull in the Breaks with two healed over broadheads in it's shoulder.

Something like 20-25% of our compound archery hunters over a 13 year period, and over 50% of the traditional bow hunters required follow-up. These are antelope shot from a blind, usually under 25 yards. Many were gut shot, and may have died after a day or so.....but are often eaten by coyotes after that amount of time, so ya gotta get to them before dark.

Bows can certainly be effective, often killing well. Sometimes a femoral artery shot will drop an animal quickly.
But when things go wrong, you can be in for a helluva long tracking job, often ending up with a mangled carcass found two days later by looking for circling buzzards.

...
Those that know anything about archery know there are very few non found fatal wounds out there.

My hunting buddy has arrowed several deer but recovered none. He has shot some and elk, too, and recovered them all.

Sample of one, admittedly.

If everyone was forced to use bows I suspect slob hunters would still be slob hunters, those that don't practice with their rifles would not practice with their bows, poor shots would remain poor shots and large numbers of animals would still be lost.