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

Hardly.

Shouldn't you be snow boarding?

Well, OK, maybe I have messed a few comments and someone has already said part of what I said. Perhaps I elaborated more. Either way, LR is a trend I don't particularly care for, but the specific venue it was presented in at the start of this thread was especially distressful to contemplate. On so many levels.

Weak, but today I did buy my first snowboard rather then renting each time, so guess I was in a round about kind of way. Thanks for asking.

I wish my kid could shoot like that, wouldn"t you?

Given a choice I would rather Her be a great hunter vs a great shooter. Now since she didn't take to hunting, I spend our time together in other ways. Thus part of my new interest in snowboarding.

Anyway, I don't find much of a rush in the extreme LR game, but it is here and some believe in the the old Roman way of disagreeing with the message.

Missed the entire animal on the first shot.

Should be all that needs saying.

The kid with his gear and crew would outshoot me every day of the week all year long, but I like to hunt more than I like to take pokes at game.

Lotta guys will justify this. Lots of them can shoot too. Dont make it right. Hunting isnt sniping.

Also dont really care that much. If it werent a slow night I wouldnt have posted.

Yep.

Then again, I would it even more if he were a hunter.

What is definition of hunter?

Why not have your kids know how to hunt and shoot well. Mine are good at both. Doesn't have to be one or the other. Put them both together and they are lethal.

If you need a lesson on why this is more shooting than hunting, then you wont get it.

Not calling for anything to be banned or outlawed, but the shooter and crew get no atta boy IMo.

For all I care, they could keep at it, I could give a [bleep] what some other guy is doing.

But if you cant get closer than 1400 yards, maybe you need to work on the craft a little. And if you didnt try, then you are shooting more than hunting.

While it may not be legal anywhere, I venture that a careful 22 long rifle poke at 50 yards is a more ethical deal than is the shot(s) in question.

Maybe you could show us where it is written the idea of closer is hunting while farther is not. Perhaps we could find some bow hunters who would tell us using a firearm is a stunt and not showing the proper respect for the game.

Not to be critical - unless I'm very mistaken, that has already been discussed w/in this context.

Jerry

Someone who hunts like I do.

I'm more interested in hearing how close I need to be before I'm actually hunting.

Do I have to have different rifles to do these two things? Or can I still use the same gun, it just totally changes at X yards?

Ringman,

Actually, that very concept was discussed long before laser rangefinders appeared. You may or may not have heard of a little book entitled MEDITATIONS ON HUNTING written by a Spanish hunter and philosopher named Jose Ortega y Gasset in the 1930's. It's most famous for this comment: "One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted."

But Ortega y Gasset also wrestles with technology, partly because he acknowledged that by the 20th century hunting wasn't essential to physical existence of most humans. Instead it had become a more ritualized activity, even though many of us also value and eat game meat.

Here's another short quote from the section on modern hunting technology, which obviously wasn't as advanced in the 1930's as the 21st century. One of Ortega y Gasset's main points is that once we bypass an animal's natural survival instincts with our technology, then we're not hunting but just killing: “The confrontation between man and animal has a precise boundary beyond which hunting ceases to be hunting, just at the point where man lets loose his immense technical superiority—that is, rational superiority—over the animal.”

Some hunters would counter that any technology more complex than bonking an animal over the head with a rock bypasses the animal's survival instincts, so in order to be ethical we should be restricted to hunting with hand-held rocks, because even a club is "rational superiority."

But that's not the point, precisely because non-survival hunting is more of a ritual with nature than a basic physical need. Ortega y Gasset is saying that while we don't need to kill an elk in order to keep from starving, we still need to interact with an elk's survival instincts in order to be hunters rather than mere killers.

The question of what's ethical (and not just in hunting) has been debated by humans for thousands of years, and goes far beyond the typical Campfire debates, which tend not to be debates but pronouncements, such as:

"My hunting method is legal, so it's ethical."
"What does what some dead Spaniard wrote have to do with today?"
"Is too."
"Is not."

Probably the most practical observation in this entire thread is we need to teach kids to shoot well so they can kill cleanly. However, I'd sure want any of my kids to be capable of hitting a bull elk more than 50% of the time.

It would have been impressive if he'd shot it at 50 yards with a borrowed 30-06 and Corlokts.

And by himself...


There's long range shooting and there's hunting. No such thing as long range hunting in my book because I don't see it as fair chase.


But hey, some guys think jacking off is the same as getting laid....