Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Ethical or not? 1376 yard elk by a 12 year old

Actually you arse, I am married and I do have a family, furthermore I did this for fifteen years Professionally as my sole source of income and shot rabbits for the better part of three years before that to pay the bills.

So I [bleep] well do have a very good understanding about making ends meet from shooting.

But it is really nice of an amateurish loudmouth prick like you to judge.

JS, you obviously aren't very good at recognizing sarcasm. Go back to the original goofy post Tanner commented on and see what the first response to it was.

Someone brought up "disdain" in a post several pages back. I have disdain for the posts, not the posters who bad mouth folks who shoot at game a long way off. (The posters would probably be great around a real campfire.) If they don't like it don't open a long range hunting thread.

I am convinced most statistics are made up at the time of use. With that said, I am convinced 95% of hunters would never see an elk at even 700 yards in that setting. Also, I am convinced 75% of them would not have equipment to make the shot if they did see it. And of those who do have the equipment 90% of them sighted in their scope for 100 yards or 200 yards and don't have any idea how many minutes of angle to dial in to make a killing shot. How many of us have heard someone say something like, "My .300 magnum goes out about 200 yards before it goes up before it starts on its downward arc,"?

If they did see it at 700 yards and were going to shoot at it, they would think it was a mile and aim fifty feet over it.

For the sake of clarity:

I am NOT saying Berger should NOT advertise!

I suggest CHANGING to summin different!


Jerry

Well, speaking for myself, I'm not badmouthing anybody just because they shot at game a long way off. I guess I'm one of those who still thinks how it's done is important. And when I say "how it's done" I'm not talking about preferred hunting styles or a personal ethic on "how it should be done."

I'm talking about shot selection and taking a reasonable amount of care to place your shot on an animal as valuable as an elk.

Quaint, huh?

First, I've had it with the anti's and just about had it trying to polish my apple for the non-hunting public. Those non-hunters who know me by and large accept that I hunt. Will that change how they vote? Maybe, maybe not. You do your part, I'll do mine and perhaps we will win the race. Again maybe, maybe not.

I didn't say-and you may want to say I did, but I didn't-bullet manufacturers are to blame. Perhaps I could have been clearer, but meant to say Kingston perhaps should include them in his guilt by association thoughts.


Addition: Looking back, I already clarified it once previously.

If you didn't mean to say that, my apologies.

Hey, on this end it's nothing that requires an apology. Just messing around for the most part. You keep me on my toes when we go back and forth.

And you will probably appreciate this, since I know you are concerned about my continued existence riding a snowboard.

Yesterday was a beeeeg improvement and the young Shawn White wannabe who is coaching me-Kid is really cool-says "You're ready. Next time up we are going to the top." Now you have something to be concerned about.

I know. And just so you know, I didn't mean it.

X2^^^^

Smokepole's reading is exactly what I meant when using the phrase "guilt by association". Guilt by association, while illogical, is a pitfall humans too often fail to avoid.

How do you cook all them Kangaroos? WOW!

Great, now I fell better.

I stand by my contention that stunts, like the one documented in the video, are likely to draw criticism from the non-hunting public. The majority of posters in this thread have expressed concern about shooting at game animals from a 1/3 of a mile. The posts in this speak for themselves.

I grew up on a farm in North West Pennsylvania. From age 10, I hunted day in and day out. I knew every inch of our farm. I hunted woodchucks, deer, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, grouse, squirrels, and rabbits. Back then, and this wasn't eons ago, a kid could go out with a rifle or shotgun and hunt on their own. I loved being outside and still do. After graduate school, I met my wife in Boston and ended up settling among the conservative swamp yankees and cranberry growers of South Eastern Massachusetts. They are a small minority. During the first 10 years I lived here, there were times I literally felt like and alien or like I was in another country. Gun regulations are nonsensical, incoherent, conflicting and anything but commonsense. Hunters, even hunters who were born and bred here, are viewed with skepticism and too often disdain. What's scariest, is guys 10 years my senior, who were raised in MA, describe growing up hunting like I did. They tell of having lots of places to hunt, of duck hunting the marshes before school, and roaming the woods in search of small game after school.

Identifying Massachusetts as extreme in it's views on hunting, guns, and the management of wild lands is not novel. My fear is that what happened in Massachusetts will happen to the rest of the country. The people who want that future will appeal to the public citing videos like the one we've been discussing. My refusal to ignore them is not dramatic.

JSTUART,

My everyday work boots are steel toed slip-on boots that I order direct from Australia. I wear Rossi now, but wore steel toed Blundstone boots before that (they dropped the model I wore). At one time I thought they were made from Kangaroo hide, I'm not sure if they still are. Either way, I suppose your the guy I should thank for rounding up the kangaroos.

Ain't this what got Tom Horn hung? He got paraphrased " if I did shoot that kid....it was the best shot I ever took....and the dirtiest trick I ever pulled."

I have been reading this with too much dismay not to comment.

A different take: That was frankly a disgraceful and unethical use of a young kid. Dad pushes the kid into a performance in front of an adult entourage and a video camera that is shoved into his face. Many parts of that video were obviously reenactment. Are you really going to have the cameraman in front of a kid setting up a loaded rifle for a long-range shot? I hope not. But look at the performance, yeah, the kid is carrying the rifle on his pack, but Dad takes the rifle, sets it up, dials in the distance, works the bolt a-la-Palin, and pontificates through the whole performance. (I intentionally watched it without sound – actions alone speak loudly.) The kid reenacts working the bolt and pushing off the safety – no way someone was shooting video that close to his face and in his way when he was actually shooting (really?).

Did that kid look comfortable behind the stock? Not really. They must have cut it down, but he was still struggling to get things to fit, see out of the huge scope that dwarfed him, and get into a good shooting position. Was it ethical to have a kid who was that uncomfortable with his rifle and shooting position attempting a long-range shot like that? Not. Why does anyone think he had a clean miss the first shot? Poor rifle fit, poor shooting position, maybe can’t see well out of the scope because he is so far back from it, then you add stress from the performance pressure and adrenaline from the buildup to the shot! Maybe he is actually capable of long shots from the bench on a rest. Should his Dad have been translating that to him lobbing extreme shots at a bull elk, shooting from a field position?

The question has nothing to do with the kid’s decisions and behavior, and everything to do with the group of adults pushing and enabling this stunt show. What is the kid learning from the hype, decision making, and expectations placed upon him? It is a nice bull, but does the kid know enough yet to really appreciate that? To appreciate the animal he got, what it is, how it lived, what a gift it is?

On shooting game at ultra long ranges where there is time for many things to change and go wrong with a shot, aside from the merry little breezes between shooter and target, or the animal moving, I am in the camp of many other opinions already stated. For an inanimate target, go for it. For a living, breathing animal that feels pain and may suffer a lingering death from a bad shot that is not immediately and successfully followed up, I just can’t agree. From that distance you can’t get there quickly and do what you should to finish it. If you are going to hunt, hunt. Get close enough for a fail-safe shot (yeah, I know sometimes fail-safe shots can have problems, but less so at 100 yards or under than at over 1,000 yards), be prepared for a follow-up, if you lose sight of your animal, stay with it until you get it or you really do completely lose all sign. Put your all into it. Go look the next day if you need to. Hunt responsibly. Those really long range shots fall into a different category than truly hunting, they are shooting, sniping, call it what you will, at least to my ken. But then, for me, the thrill comes from getting as close as I can for a shot, then making a quickly deadly shot.

OK, you gave me a history lesson. One that mirrors the hunting times of some of us. However, you failed to give the entire story. Let me help.

Agree with it or not, you are looking at a change in how some want to hunt and that change has taken roots. I remember when bow hunting started to come on. First it was a few with Fred Bear recurves and very few they were. I know they hunted close range but that isn't the point. Why wounded Deer would be roaming the woods. Then compound bows came around and it was those bow hunters are taking advantage. Why any can draw one of them. Now we are at crossbows with scopes. An entire cottage industry grew up around the bow hunting craze.

Then I remember when the AR rifles sneaked in. They will never take hold right? They have no resemblence to the traditions you and I grew up with. Well, wrong again, and soon additional cottages popped up. Like them or not, they are here.

Now the LR craze has hit, and again like it or not, it is here to stay for the cottages are being built.

Lets throw ML's into the pot also. Started out with BP, open sights and flint or percussion caps. Where are we today? Smokeless powders, shotgun primer ignition and scopes with the ability to shoot at ranges unthought of when the ML craze hit.

Now who supplies the materials-money-to build these cottages? It certainly isn't the anti's, the non-committed hunting crowd or anyone else who doesn't hunt and votes. No sense in dragging it out any further in that is the rifle makers, ammo suppliers, optics makers. In effect it is us. They all want a piece of the pie, so if you have a biitch who should you be taking it to? This forum? Hell most agree with you; you are preaching to the choir. However, since it makes you feel good have at it. But don't fool yourself into thinking you are going to bring about any change. You want to save an Elk, then donate some cash to enroll an up and coming hunter who is into the LR game into a LR school. It will be time and money better spent and will probably save more than one in the long run.

Drugs and Mexico. If we were not snorting it, then it wouldn't be a problem.