Kill or Tranqulize if you had the option?

Carr5vols

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I was just reading the story of the guy from Colorado that caught the potential world record lake trout but released it instead of having to kill the fish to confirm his record.

Got me wandering would you if you had the opportunity tranquilize the (insert game animal) from your normal hunting distance hundreds of yards. Take some pictures with it for memories then step back until it got back on its feet and walked away. I do get the meat aspect of it but females of the species eat just as good but not better.

I am not sure what i would do. Just wandering your opinions.
 
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Kill. I hunt for a number of reasons and meat being one of them. Sure, does and cows taste just as good, but there is a reason there are a lot less female tags out there. Simple herd dynamic biology, if we killed nothing but females for meat, everything would be extinct.
 

Glendon Mullins

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Kinda like the other guy said, I want the meat, memory and horns so I kill, that being said, I love me some wildlife photography as well, and even though i enjoy eating fish I 90% catch and release as well.
 

GSPHUNTER

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I'm not certain how the meat on a trout that big would be, especially lake trout. I would have released it. I caught several lake trout and the only way I could eat them was smoked. Maybe it's just me.
 

Rich M

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Releasing that overly large female trout kept that egg producer in action. If he had killed it, Ida shook my head and sighed - she probably produces 1,000,000 eggs at a pop. We catch and release some when fishing. My first goal is dinner, too small and big breeder fish go back in.

I don't think laker is bad, not much diff from other trout. Once fish reach "too big" size they get fat layers between the meat and taste yucky - grouper especially.

As for tranquilizing an animal for photos... Either you want to shoot, kill, and eat it or you want a photo. You can take amazing photos without risking harm to the animal.
 
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I rarely keep what I catch when fishing but my dad keeps even less. If I'm trout fishing, sure as heck I'd be keeping it
 
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Every animal that is killed allows another animal to live. Ergo, if you didn't kill your animal, you let him go, you have by consequence killed another animal. By that logic, I prefer to be the more active participant, killing and eating and preserving trophies.
 

9.1

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Based on the title, I was imagining using a tranquilizer to eliminate the risk of wounding with a bad shot. If you hit an animal and could track it down, you could finish it off while it slept. It's not something I'm going to put too much thought into since we're never going to be able to develop tranquilizer darts that fly as consistently as a bullets.
 

Glendon Mullins

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I'm not certain how the meat on a trout that big would be, especially lake trout. I would have released it. I caught several lake trout and the only way I could eat them was smoked. Maybe it's just me.
Agree, reproduction mounts are far and away better for fish than skin mounts anyway, catch, a few measurements and photos and u can still have the trophy in your house
 

Lytro

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Anyone who would rather do that should not be hunting. Maybe they could take up photography or go to a petting zoo instead.
 

grfox92

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I hunt to kill the animal I'm hunting. I think photographers would be the appropriate correlation.

Sent from my SM-G990U using Tapatalk
 
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Carr5vols

Carr5vols

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Good replies all. I am letting the trout go, only fish i typically keep are flounder and crappie. For game animals i am dispatching and eating them.
 

GSPHUNTER

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The one big difference between fishing and hunting is, There is no catch and release in hunting. have have released as many fish as I have kept.
 

Marbles

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Tranquilizing an animal could cause real harm. To expose it to that risk just for a picture is dumb. Unless doing legitimate research, either shoot it with a bow/firearm to kill or shoot it with a camera while not being dumb about how one does that.
 
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