Originally Posted by Blackheart
Originally Posted by shaman
Originally Posted by smitty_bs
Finn Aagaard, Bob Milek, John Wooters, Jim Carmichael, Rick Jamison, Clay Harvey, Ed Matunas, and Bob Hagel to name a few.
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I'm glad someone else had the stones to mention Clay Harvey first. They'll pelt you instead of me.

Yes, a lot of his stuff was apocryphal. Yes, he generated a lot of personal bad blood on here. However, I kept a copy of The Hunter's Rifle next to the bed for over a decade. A lot of the rifles he touted are now on my rack, and I have to agree with him. The Hunter's Rifle did a great job of slicing up the myriad of what was out there at the time and giving a framework for what to chose when.

Yes, he stole ideas. Yes, he stole rifles. Yes, he claimed experience where he did not have it. However, before I found this place, I used The Hunter's Rifle quite a bit as a primary reference and it did not fail me.

So far, there is not a name mentioned I would dispute.

John Wooters is problematic in my mind, but then all the men on Rushmore are as well. He was a great writer, no doubt about that. However, he championed the idea of culling to improve trophy quality. This led to a generation of men wandering about the woods shooting gimpy-looking bucks and thinking they were doing the world a favor.





Wooters started the whole QDM trophy hunting craze that is ruining the sport of deer hunting. Driving up prices through outrageous lease fee's and pricing many out of the sport is nothing to be proud of. Also encouraged the whole "raise your very own trophy" bullshyt that has everyone feeding deer, planting food plots, putting game cams everywhere etc. etc. until most folks have turned into deer farmers rather than deer hunters. The man should be dug up and kicked in the ass.


I like to think that even Wootters would believe it's been taken too far. He had some ground breaking ideas for his time and there's a lot of value there, but people have pushed his ideas to the point that they don't sound just real fun anymore. Part of the fun of hunting to me is the anticipation of not knowing what's going to happen. finding a track that looks like a big deer and try to figure out a pattern and stand site, etc . I refuse to use a game camera, as if I know a certain deer is going to be using a certain trail between 5 and 6 pm sitting up waiting on him doesn't sound just real fun.

Last edited by Kellywk; 03/16/20.