What are your thoughts. All is legal. Whitetail deer hunting, over bait with cell cameras and a crossbow. Personally I think this going to far and not hunting, harvesting. This is night and day from when I grew up bowhunting deer, no bait, no cameras. Killing a mature hunted whitetail was HARD and required a lot of work to do it consistently. Now you dump corn, set a camera, pattern a deer, check the camera before you walk into your stand so you do not spook deer, and then kill him. To easy?
Aldo Leopold (largely considered the father of the Wlidlife Biologist profession), who died in 1948, addressed this basic issue in his Essay entitled “Wildlife in America”. In that essay, Leopold spoke to the idea that the sporting goods industry and the “gadgeteers” developed and marketed products they claimed would make the outdoorsmen better hunters. He argued that the gadgets did just the opposite. Rather than developing their individual skill set to effectively hunt and kill game, hunters were relying more and more on their gadgets, thereby eroding their true wood craftsmanship. The gadgets allowed hunters to reach out and kill game in greater quantities and at longer distances with less stealth and knowledge of the hunted animal.
We are a long ways from Leopold’s world. Leopold was a man who crafted his own bows and arrows. He also carved his own decoys. At the time when he wrote that essay, he was complaining about aluminum boats with outboard motors replacing canoes, composite decoys replacing hand-carved decoys, and shotguns with poli-chokes.
For those who might be interested in reading this essay, it can be found in the publication “The Sand County Almanac and Conservation from Round River.” and can found online for about $10.00.
For my personal ethic, I approach it this way. If a person is a subsistence hunter (needs the meat to survive), by all means do what it takes to feed yourself and your family. I don’t fit that criteria. I like the meat. I appreciate the meat, but at the end of the day, my life is not diminished without it. If I am not a subsistence hunter, I must be getting some sort of primal need or recreational value out of the hunt. If I am going to kill something in that vein, I am going to enter their world and attempt to beat them on their terms. I will attempt to catch up with them by understanding how they move across the landscape (rather than artificially concentrating them at a feed site). I’ll use the natural vegetation and my own stealth skills to conceal my presence (no blind with a mister buddy heater and a lazy boy). I do my best to work with the wind (no scent blocking clothing). If I get busted, so be it. That’s part of the game. Getting cold and wet and covered with snow is also part of the game. If I can’t handle it, then I don’t deserve to be the winner. In other words, while I do allow myself a nice rifle with good optics, I’m not going to dishonor the prey by eliminating the animals’ opportunity to use their natural defense systems to survive.
For many of my friends, it is all about hanging large antlers on the wall. I won’t lie. I would also like to hang large antlers on the wall; if they are obtained through a process in which that animal had every opportunity to use it’s ears, eyes, and nose to avoid being killed. For me, it is about the hunting journey, not the destination (big antlers).
Happy hunting and Merry Christmas.
