Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Type of Hunter are You

Thanks Bob. I find it best to keep things simple and expectations low, especially with the company I keep....

No deer, elk yet for me. Mostly hog hunting. The first couple of times I really wanted (and got) some nice, big boars with good cutters. Got one on the wall...so that is done with.

Nowadays I go after nice, plump sows. Much better eating, in general. Just love those hams and sausages!

I should have responded to the OPs question I guess instead of just poking at Sharpsman....I am a meat hunter, but aspire to only eat doe meat or alternatively buck meat that was aged on the hoof. Any 5 plus year old buck is a throphy in my mind regardless of antler size. I get to be a little selective on the bucks I take because of our long seasons and abundance of does. That said I hold no ill will toward any dink hunter so long as they abide by our liberal bag limits.

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Nice touch,peckerhead!

semi trophy hunter on one piece of property. Brown its down on another piece of property. Out of state trips, I am coming home with punched tags and coolers full of meat. Always managed to get a decent represenative of the species. We eat game meat only, so I have to perform.

Well said. My attitude is the same.

Yeah, there it is. Me too, another meat hunter. Though antlers do make a good chew toy for the dog if one only has a buck tag.




Around here, you make your choice before you buy your tag. Antlerless are draw only. (for rifle season anyway) And we only get one deer tag.

I always put in for the doe tag. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I do not and have to purchase a buck tag over the counter. The doe tag pretty much assures one that a deer carcass will be slung over the saddle before noon on opening morning.

Luckily I am in a position to do both. With management tags here I can basically shoot unlimited number of deer while in the act of managing for bigger deer. So I can go out and kill an incredible number of deer for meat and still trophy hunt.

I would guess for the majorit of the southeast that can apply to most hutners as well. They'll wind up with more opporutnity/tags to kill deer than they will have the desire to go out and kill.

Meat

I hunt because I love being in the woods, like to eat the meat, and enjoy the experience of beating nature.

Never gave a moment's thought to 'trophy' animals, and I have never passed up an opportunity to put meat in the freezer, in the hopes that the 'meat accompanying a better set of antlers' showed up.

Meat and Trophy are pretty much the same thing. Most mature animals are "trophies" for most of the hunting population. A mature animal will yield a substantial more amount of meat than an immature animal. True "Meat" hunters will obviously be out for the most amount of meat, which will come off of a mature "trophy" animal.

So, the appropriate question should be:

Mature or Immature

It's interesting that you bring that up.

My dad was a true meat hunter. He looked at body size before anyyhing else. The deer he was proudest of, was one that cost him $26.00 to process. 260 lbs. @ .10 cents a pound. Gutted and skinned, of course.

Back in the 60's they had a big buck contest in Sparks, Nevada and it was judged soley on weight. Racks didn't matter. It was all about body size. That generation was all about the meat.

Mature but that tends to be determined by antler size.


ddj

To give you a better of just how much of a meat hunter my dad was is he never kept a single set of horns from any deer he shot. He always said "you can't eat horns".

Somewhere I have an old black and white photo of the "big one" he shot. It's a worn and torn picture that he carried in his wallet for many years. Whenever he showed it to someone he always talked about how big bodied it was. He never bragged about the rack. There's five or six deer hanging on a pole and the big one dwarfs every one of them in body size. Not only that, but it had an amazing rack. It was a super tall 4x4 mulie with looooong skinny forks.

Here's one of our opening morning deer (Saturday), not too bad for SE Texas...

I've seen too many guys try to bullshit that a spike or a tiny young fork is OK, because they are a meat hunter... hahaha! Tell it like it is boyz! You couldn't find anything bigger, so you punched your tag for 40lbs of meat, when a mature animal would have given you 70lbs of meat! (Sitka Blacktail Weights)

You're forgetting about the AK whack em and stack em.

It's all about how big a pile-o-meat you can get.

Ouch! Your'e off our lease if you kill a buck less than 4.5 yoa unless it's obviously inferior. Of course, you can kill lots of does for the meat aspect, and yes, it is open range.

how do ya get a big ole plie of meat if ya keep wackin the little guys - ya end up with a little pile of meat

i do not concider myself a "trophy " hunter
I have passed on spikes/2 points the first few days of a hunt- mainly looking for something with a little more MEAT on their bones

keep shootin scrawny spikes if ya like- sure they say they are the best tastin - after you cut of all the siney mussle that aint developed yet, thats stuffs tough chewin- ya get even less MEAT

For those of us raised pretty much country... raising our own meat, eggs , milk, what produce will grow in our area. There is a balance of quality and quantity, we don't raise a steer to 4 years old before butchering, though we would reap maximum weight. Usually at 1 year and 800 lbs is the time to butcher.

As a meat hunter, I will take a 1 1/2 year old cow elk over a triangle head matron, actually hunt that way. If there is a spike deer next to a small 3 point and I have decided to put meat in the freezer, I have taken the spike. My wife is very picky about her venison, wants it tender and mild.

Anything old and tough gets ground and jerkied.

I try for a combo, this year I killed a young cow elk out of a herd and in Dec I have an opportunity for a true trophy Mulie in the areas I drew, I won't shoot a small buck.

Kent