Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game What Kind of Hunter are you?

I'm getting a little up there in age as well. I'm 76. What kind of hunter am I ? The kind that enjoys a quality experience. Locally here that means Blue Grouse when the early seasons open. It can also mean Mountain Quail. Where I hunt, I rarely see another hunter. Blue Grouse are very hard to find, for instance. One of my most productive areas is 5 miles in, and about 2400 ft. up. Then you kick the meadows going out. Nobody hunts there.
My big game hunting these days is limited to deer. But not just any deer. I insist on hunting the 4 yr. old class buck with trophy anthers. I am also addicted to hunting deserts. The desert I hunt is radically different than the classic high desert where the Rocky Mountain Mule Deer roam. If you can't cover ground, either on foot or with a 4WD, and read sign, you are wasting your time hunting there. 6600 sq. miles of land and 5-6000 deer. You really need to find them first. E

Welll...time was I would have been one "Type", still hunter. Sitting in a tree or blind STILL drives me to distraction, even after 53 years of hunting whitetails. As many have mentioned, "when I was younger", I should say that as well. Still hunting for a mile or two was no problem as I knew every landowner or was related to them. As I got older and we bought our far I had good, generous neighbors who let me hunt as most of them didn't. Killed a lot of deer and hogs up close and personal sneakin' up on them. Compared to out west a mile or two isn't far, you can see game that far away. In the Ozarks, it ain't like that. A mile or two through corn flakes is a long darn way.

When we lived in Wyoming it was hard to get away from the way I'd hunted for 30 years so I hunted the canyons and draws, going slow. It worked there as well as several mulies and a couple elk attest.

These days I can sit in my pop up blind for almost an hour. After that I'm headed back to the house. I've killed plenty of game and would just as soon work with an old rifle and obscure cartridge. Besides, I've dressed and butchered about all the big game I care to. I'd just as soon hunt skwerls.

Lol i hear that sharps, second half the season i cant sit more than a couple hours before i get bored and grab a shotgun with some buckshot and start trying to jump shoot something

AN EMPHATIC YES
Florida to Alaska, and Africa
Small game to moose. Feathered critters included.
Traditional archery, muzzleloader, shotguns and rifles
Stuntshooter to big bores.
Spot and stalk, stand, calling, opportunistic, jump shooting,decoys, etc.

world hunter Africa/Europe/Russia/Mongolia/Alaska and the lower 48 mostly MT. in the Bitterroot, and the Bob Marshalls have a place there way up on 8 mile road out of Florence there I saddle up and go way up in mts and take along 2 pack mules I am a meat hunter only

I was a real hunter.
I would hunt anything in season,anywhere and like the OP, do whats necessary to get there.
Fur, fin and feather from sunrise to sunset, then hunt what roamed the night too, then repeat.
Only had a 30-06, .22lr, 12ga and a .357 pistola.
Owned upland and waterfowl dogs at the same time.
Nothing was safe and I ate wild game + fish for lunch and dinner.
Now, I've become the hunter that I used to frown upon or even despise, a workaholic no time to hunt hunter, that owns more guns + gear than I could ever use.
I still take opening week of deer season off from work, but it's not like the old days where I could roam the woods a free man.
Now, Too many city people ruining the woods with their tiny houses and posted signs on every tree.
Too many lyme filled blood sucking ticks out there too.
I'm trying to make up for my misdeeds by showing the ropes to the younger generations and that's getting me back into the woods more now, but I'm not half the hunter I was.
SJC

Track and sign.

I mostly spot and stalk.
I sometimes shoot game with a scoped rifle are distances up to about 500 meters, but my favorite way to kill my game is up close with iron sights ---and many times with a flintlock rifle or a stock revolver.

I am a western hunter. Mountains, desert, plains and coast. Still hunting and spot and stock!

I used to like to walk the woods and prairie but had little success. Then an old hunter told me to quit reading those hunting magazines because they didn't apply to down here. We hunt wary white tail and hogs which are both almost impossible to sneak up on. Also the brush is almost too thick to walk in and every step is a snap crackle and pop of breaking twigs and crackling dry leaves. So nowdays I'm usually in my ground blind. However, sometimes I'll sit on a bucket more or less in the open being totally camo'ed close to a game trail where they cross. I've killed both hogs and deer like that.

Alpine hunter. I like timberline for elk (~12,000 ft around here), higher for sheep. Steep climbing seems to be the quickest way to separate from hunters and elk seem to know that. Also, I prefer hauling meat downhill when possible.

I'm just a hunter. Some days I'm a big game hunter, some a bird hunter. There's days I'm a waterfowl hunter and others I'm a fur hunter. I'm just a hunter.

If it runs from me I'll hunt it, and as someone said, never stop learning. In my 20's a wise mentor hunter told me to learn to enjoy what the locality offered where I lived. That way you don't feel like you have to travel somewhere distant to enjoy a hunt.

So in Southern California I learned to hunt halibut and lobster and sea bass underwater. While living in British Columbia I loved hunting alpine critters, still hunting migrating mulies in snowy forest, rattling whitetails, and slipping through coastal wet forest for blacktails. Everywhere I've lived I've called predators.

Calling animals has been a delight and I've called about 35 kinds not counting any waterfowl. As I age, calling critters to me has kept me hunting better, without as much physical effort. I am coming full circle to enjoying the hunts for deer, grouse and calling cats as my favorites.

One other quirk: not sure why but I tend to get close to critters. I bow hunted a lot in my 20's, especially when calling, and to this day tend to get close to game, even when I have a scoped centerfire rifle in hand. Have called or stalked foxes, coyotes, moose, elk, black bear, grizzly, caribou, bobcat, lynx, mule deer, whitetail, cougar... (and probably some stuff I don't know about) inside of ten yards, a good number of those within touching/powder burn distance.

Amen brother

As you might have guessed from my location I'm definitely a, as you put it, a "North Woods" hunter.

That is what I was trying to get across, but you stated it much more succinctly and efficiently.

I;m a newly retired hunter that goes after meat for the freezer and spends more time helping family members fill their tags than I do mine.
Elk and antelope mostly. Deer as opportunity allows, so long as it doesn't interfere with getting elk. No interest in Africa or exotics but wouldn't mind going after moose in AK.

Lousy, much of the time ...

That. I used to chase quail all over Texas, now I hunt deer, catch pigs, shoot pigs, sometimes shoot an Aoudad.

I mostly like to be out in the woods.

One that does not like to sit still. Also one that is not very good, but enjoys lugging my carcass and gear through the mountains.