Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game When hunting became shooting

Trying to answer the question of when hunting becomes shooting is sort of difficult.... I suppose it may be like defining pornography in that you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it.

As some have rightly pointed out, all hunting involves shooting. It is the essence of closing the deal. But this presupposes that some hunting-related activity or effort on the part of the hunter preceded it,other than just showing up. Inherent in this pre shooting process is ALWAYS (if it is hunting)the possibility that the quarry, whether through the use of its own senses, conditions of terrain or cover, or any combinations of these factors, can escape and render the outcome uncertain. In other words, there has to exist the possibility that you could lose...and not get your game.

An example or two come to mind. One story I think I read on here involved a group of guys perched on a ridge and the quarry was some sort of out-sized ram, whether Rocky Mountain bighorn or desert sheep I cannot remember. The story was about a fabulous shot that killed the ram at 1200 yards, or something like that.

The permit was once in a lifetime....seems there was a group of people along for this...some were charged with doing the necessary ballistic calculations on an i-phone to help the trigger man/permit holder (that's all he was)and IIRC one guy had to leave the scene to access a laptop to do the calculations or access the ballistic tables for that distance...the i-phone was apparently not enough. In any event the shot was made and the ram was killed.

Several thing struck me about the episode(setting aside for a moment the presence of a large group which would have been pretty impossible to bring along if the ram had to be approached more closely, and the extensive use of technology which rendered the "hunter" nothing more than a trigger man), one of which was the justification for having to shoot at that distance, which was that the ram was in an impossible position for a stalk....no doubt sometimes this happens but I could not help but wonder how, then, did they ever manage to retrieve it? My suspicion is that the "hunter" couldn't make the climb.

The other thing that struck me was the sense of entitlement displayed that somehow, because he had drawn a long sought tag, he was entitled to the ram and would employ every technical trick in the book to make sure he got it. I couldn't help contrast this story to the that of the killing of the world record typical mule deer by Doug Burris; or the hunting feats of a lot of guys who took record heads in the mid 20th Century.....sure they used technology but there was a whole lot more "hunting" involved.

Another was a recent Best of the West episode and the animal was some sheep, maybe aodad....I forget the distance but it was out there quite a ways...800 yards or so(?)....and this was all caught on camera....the animal was killed but I could not help but notice that the shot was taken over an intervening ridge,and draw that would have concealed a stalk and cut the distance by half .....or maybe more. Maybe this was not an option in light of having to sell the uninitiated some more Huskemaw scopes.


Observing human behavior tells a lot....I notice that when someone on here manages to kill some animal at long distances....say 500-1000 yards or beyond, or kills elk annually at 1200 yards from his back porch, they are quick to post and tell the story, and the thread will go on forever while everyone marvels at his skilled use of the technology....the poor slob who had to crawl through ground cactus and broken rock for the better part of a day to pull off a 75 yard shot at a big pronghorn is greeted with a few handclaps, and two pages of congrats.....that is if he is able to escape being reprimanded for "not giving the game a chance" for having shot it at such close distance.

I know some very good and consistently successful hunters who are ,by the standards espoused here, mediocre riflemen in terms of their acquired skills, and the equipment they use. The rifles are not finely tuned, the bullets garden variety and the scopes contain Duplex reticles and have no adjustable turrets for instant spinning. They could not make a wind call in a wind tunnel....their rifles are reliably zeroed ( they see to that) but I doubt they could always pass the 400 yard pie plate test and have no doubt infrequently flubbed a shot at an animal (show me the guy who has NEVER flubbed a shot at an animal and I will show you a guy who has not shot much game, nor done much real hunting....or is a liar). Their biggest nod to modern technology is the ability to crank a scope from 3 to 9 power....not much help these days.

But their dens are loaded with big bucks and bulls and hides and skulls, and their garages piled high with the antlers of lesser specimens....the freezers are always loaded.

When confronted by a 700-1000 yard opportunity, they figure out how to get closer for a certain shot....implicit in the decision is the knowledge that the animal could escape in the process but this is expected. In short, they know how to "hunt".

I'm impressed by the guys who successfully use bows, rifles, and muzzleloaders interchangeably.....this show great versatility and hunting ability and a lot of different skill sets....I am equally unimpressed by the use of technology as described in the ram story above...or the Best of West episode. The lines of demarcation between "hunting" and "shooting" may be about as clear as mud these days....but like pornography, I bet we all know it when we see it.

Keep on keeping on Tanner. Methinks you got this stuff worked out just fine.

I'm going to continue to hang my hat on repertoire. Many are happy to beat the one trick pony.

That one word, sums up the entire discussion....

There's a reason I've picked up bowhunting.... I like to be out there with a tag in my pocket, and I couldn't care less what I've got in my hands as long as it's going to hit what I'm aiming at. If somebody wants to tell me that's wrong, so be it...

Grin

Someone who gets it. Thanks for the response.

Hunting never "became" anything. It is what you make of it.

any goober can slip up on an animal and shoot em close, takes dedication to shoot them long

I guess it boils down to how do you feel after the kill. Did you earn it or not?

Thanks will check that out. A friend of mine Who recently passed who was a bush pilot in Alaska in the 50's and 60's before he was a pilot for Alaska Air. Told a lot of amazing stories of Alaska back then.