Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting How to NOT hunt elk!!

This BS remind me of a trip i went on back in the 90's. A group of guys fired into a herd of elk across a deep ravine(approx. 400yds). I know there were at least 30 shot between the six of them, Yes..im serious. They were mostly shooting 7mm mags. Myself and another found the aftermath, there were blood trails everywhere. After the incident they grabbed up the animals, pulled camp, and hauled arse. I found a cow with a jaw shot off, one with foot shot off, an illegal bull,and several blood trails in the snow that i followed and jumped more wounded elk. I was so sick! Things like this really gives REAL hunters a bad name. Im starting to think it should be like some of the African safaris, if you shoot an animal and dont find it then you tag is used. But, i guess that wouldnt be fair to the times when folks make honest mistakes

one thing that has been overlooked. the cars that stopped to watch and haze the hunters eliminated the escape route for the elk. they had 4 ways out, two wer blocked by hunters and then the last two were a bunch of cars and people or a fence.

ethical.....prolly not the most given how it evolved, but I bet had there not been all the traffic stopped it would have gone down much different.

something that you guys in better elk states also have to consider, washingtons elk season only lasts about 80 hours for our rifle season, and maybe 250 for archery. you must chose one or the other. desperation is a factor in washingtons harvest....it sux, but F&W makes it so.

the true bummer is the F&W agent who beat on the hunters and never asked the folks who were harrassing the hunters (per WAC) to move along. then instead of making a comment like, "no comment" or "we have to resort to these types of hunts to control the damage done by these elk, sinc we do not have funding to allow for winter range or fencing". instead he blackend the eye of all washington tag holders for the actions of a few, even though the actions were legal. as long as ethics are not written there will be argument.
I personally would not have done what they did. I would have called the state patrol and asked that the traffic be moved along or sited.

It's amazing to me the way people will try to excuse what looks to me like plainly unethical behavior. Rather than blame the hunters for putting on a spectacle like this, now the people who pulled over to the side of the road are to blame, or the short season is to blame, or the F&W officer is to blame for allowing the public to witness the spectacle.

Let's face it, there are a lot of un-ethical slob hunters out there and an awful lot of the negative image the non-hunting public has of hunting is because of those slobs. I see plenty of evidence of the slobs almost every year in my neighborhood and on my land.

There are plenty of other hunters who manage to make do with the hours they have without resorting to this kind of nonsense, and they go pretty un-noticed by the public, so I don't think we should be making excuses for a debacle like this one. These guys have done a lot damage to the public image of the hunter.

so if you are on a stalk and another group pulls up do you adapt or give it up?
I am far from condoning what these fellows did, I just wish the fish and feathers officer had used the media spotlight to make the most of it.....which he did not. the blame lies solely on the hunters no doubt, but in wa we have a law that protects sportsmen in the commission of taking game. stoping your car on a highway to yell at hunters breaks more then one law here. had the cars not stopped and the people not been walking about....god only knows how it would have been.

also consider that these are "mangement hunts" designed to do exactly what they did...make the elk go away. if the general public saw what happens everytime an animal dies we would be forced to eat seaweed. the dept officer was there the whole time and could have stopped the hunt.....they do that often here. but the goal was to move those elk. I suppose the officer felt relieved tht the traffic had stopped to eliminate any wrecks......good for the traffic, not so much for the hunters.

I know this much, we don't have much funding to cater to habitat or fencing and those small farms get the heck tore out of them. the real loser in the whole deal is the land owner....imagine the calls he is getting.

I think its hard for any of us to decide who was right and wrong in instances like this. lets face it, if you have been hunting for any length of time i think there have been times where we get caught up in things that we wish we had not. I will admit that i have more than once and im usually the first to jump up and say something against situations like this. If any of us were with our hunting buddies in this situation would we have ran off or fired into them ourselves? I cant say if i would or would not have. I would like to think that i would have taken the time to weigh it it out and then decide but, i mean, really, who knows. I take pride in hunting and consider it something sacred and ethical. After some thought, i find it easy to place blame but without being there i cant say for sure. I do not like the fact that there were several animals wounded and so many shots fired. Thats where ethical comes into play. Clearly there were laws broken here and as already stated the hunters didnt break the laws. Im not excusing their actions and i hope they learned their lesson and maybe, just maybe, they will become better hunters because of it.

Just rumors I am sure, but rumors have it that Tom264 might have had potential thoughts about the general hunting of elk behind high fences!!

It's a shame that this is happening. Might have a Short Winnie too.

Ahhh...all in good fun...

These are the guys that give hunting a bad name. Hunting in almost any case is allowed for a reason, and is better for the species of animals than it is bad. Not enough people realize that, and incidents like this are the only ones that stick in peoples minds.