Unfollowing Hunting Social Media Will Make Hunting Better: Matt Rinella Essay

[ODB]

Matt's mention of the Bushmen means he gets high praise from me, as I have studied them for years.

Perhaps the greatest motivator in the Bushmen world (pre-western contact) is practicality. In other words, will what we are doing help or hurt our ability to exist in the future? Almost their entire culture was built around this idea. As an example, they will 'plant' ostrich eggs full of water at strategic places and mark them. If another Bushmen comes across it, they may take a drink, but they will never empty it - they always leave some. If they come across a tool or some other useful item, they will not take it, figuring someone must have left it there on purpose and will come back for it, and if the roles were reversed, they would be harmed if someone else took their tool. When they take honey from a bee hive, they will never take it all, rather leave a good portion of the comb so that the bees will continue to make honey in that location, which they will visit again at some point in the future. There is no word or concept for homosexuality in the Ju/Wa language because the activity would not support the furtherance of the Bushmen themselves - it has no practical reason for existing, so to them, it doesn't exist.

It's worth considering the practical nature of hunting and social media - is it going to help the activity we like so much to exist well into the future? If so, how? If not, why keep doing it?

Matt is doing something important with these essays, in my book. I said to someone recently that perhaps people's getting defensive about things is a realization that they were wrong about something and the abasement stings a bit. I know it's been true for me several times over...growth is a good thing.

 

[Cameron.25]

I've done my part, never been on FB, Instabro, Twatter, etc, etc.

forums are my thing, sites dedicated to a certain topic without all the other distractions.

Same here

 

[Tony Trietch]

Maybe Rokslide’s influencer Tony Trietch will chime in and tell what he does with his meat and trophy antlers?

It gets eaten by my family, friends and coworkers. My father doesn't get out to hunt like he used to so he takes as much as I will give him. You are welcome to come to my construction jobsite and join us for our Friday wildgame bbq. You want to see happy workers, feed them venison smoked on site. I am hiring if anyone is interested.

 

[Wellsdw]

Even though I wish Matt Rinella was an influencer himself, I’ve circled one of my favorite parts of Matt’s essay.

I saw that too, and laughed. Also completely agree with him

 

[Actual_Cryptid]

I won't disagree that social media carries a lot of ills with it, much in the ways it's administrated. But I will disagree with the framing of any of this as new. Cable TV hunting shows were already mentioned, the Outdoor network or whatever it's called. There's also print magazines. I grew up reading 5 or 6 different hunting and shooting magazines and while I'm sure it would cause each of them a stroke every one of those writers was filling the exact same niche as a social media influencer. John Tiffin writing article number 300 about a .454 Casull that you ABSOLUTELY NEED is the exact same function as @HuntLyfe69x420 flogging the new Sitka pattern or the newest Kryptek gear. Steven Rinella posting a video that walks you through how to clean a grouse and make some schnitzel is the video version of an Outdoor Life article showing you how to skin out a deer with a golf ball. Jack O'Connor was an influencer. So was Holt Collier, Yank Allen, Elmer Keith, Townsend Whelen, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway. Every single one of them hunting and then wrote about how great the places they went and the rifles they used were, and got money doing it. TR even did it on the federal dime!

As far as the "kids these days don't know humility" kindly stop being a literal self-parody. Hanging antlers and taking pictures with your kill is something that was learned from the Polaroid and Kodak generation. Before that we had buffalo hunter's posing stop giant piles of bones. Trophies of kills probably pre-dates human speech, all that changed was the size of the audience and the method of distribution.

Now lastly, the "there's too many hunters spoiling it for us" needs to quit. Look, if there's not enough public land then gosh golly if only there was a way for the public to acquire more land. Wait, my aid is telling me that the state and federal governments have ways to...this is breaking folks they have ways to raise money, and can use that money to purchase and allocate land. The last century of building more suburbs are up a lot of land, and now the animals walk through those suburbs and get hit by cars to boot. We can't un-build suburbs though (realistically) but we can look at limiting the sale of public lands, acquiring land to protect it, and incentivizing landowners to allow use of their land.

We don't want to end up with hunters being an ever-shrinking part of society. That's bad for hunting.

 

[Shupe88]

Sounds like a bunch of grumpy old men…

“back in my day!”

matt even says its its extremely difficult to determining hunter numbers. So how can he be certain its actually getting more crowded other than anecdotal information?

Is it really that bad out west or in Midwest? Maybe it is I have no clue? In Virginia virtually no one hunts public land anymore. Seriously!

Could it be that a lot of private land that had allowed hunting keeps getting sold to developers and/or really rich people who make it a hunting lease business or just say sorry no hunting. Then those people are now moving to public land with an additional influx of some new adult onset hunters. So it appears like all hell is breaking lose?

I know a lot of people who follow social media hunters and tell me they are trying hunting for the first year, or trying public for first time. But they barely make it out more than 2x a year or they never get anything cause they don't hunt effectively.

Again, never been out west, but I don’t think everyone hunting is just in it for the likes. Plus matt is literally publishing media about hunting and has written about hunting prior.

Maybe Matt’s jealous of his brothers success? Imagine going to be a dentist thinking you’ll be the money maker compared to your brother whose a writer for an outdoor magazine. Now that brother is making half a million to hunt…

This is the first year I have seen out of state hunters in the spots I have hunted for years. Never seen anyone until this year! Why someone would travel from out of state to hunt swva I will never understand! “Make public land hunting suck again”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[GARLICSALT]

AMEN BROTHER,,,,,,,unfortunately in today's all about me world, i feel this will fall on blind eyes and deaf ears.
Unfortunately!

 

[Tod osier]

And multiple deer, a buffalo, an antelope, a javelina, and multiple aoudad. Yeah, these hunts are cool and most guys would go if they had access. But really?

I stop killing when I have enough meat. There is always room for one more for a special animal, but that animal is taken into account on the next season's needs.

 

[deerhunt1988]

I won't disagree that social media carries a lot of ills with it, much in the ways it's administrated. But I will disagree with the framing of any of this as new. Cable TV hunting shows were already mentioned, the Outdoor network or whatever it's called. There's also print magazines. I grew up reading 5 or 6 different hunting and shooting magazines and while I'm sure it would cause each of them a stroke every one of those writers was filling the exact same niche as a social media influencer. John Tiffin writing article number 300 about a .454 Casull that you ABSOLUTELY NEED is the exact same function as @HuntLyfe69x420 flogging the new Sitka pattern or the newest Kryptek gear. Steven Rinella posting a video that walks you through how to clean a grouse and make some schnitzel is the video version of an Outdoor Life article showing you how to skin out a deer with a golf ball. Jack O'Connor was an influencer. So was Holt Collier, Yank Allen, Elmer Keith, Townsend Whelen, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway. Every single one of them hunting and then wrote about how great the places they went and the rifles they used were, and got money doing it. TR even did it on the federal dime!

As far as the "kids these days don't know humility" kindly stop being a literal self-parody. Hanging antlers and taking pictures with your kill is something that was learned from the Polaroid and Kodak generation. Before that we had buffalo hunter's posing stop giant piles of bones. Trophies of kills probably pre-dates human speech, all that changed was the size of the audience and the method of distribution.

Now lastly, the "there's too many hunters spoiling it for us" needs to quit. Look, if there's not enough public land then gosh golly if only there was a way for the public to acquire more land. Wait, my aid is telling me that the state and federal governments have ways to...this is breaking folks they have ways to raise money, and can use that money to purchase and allocate land. The last century of building more suburbs are up a lot of land, and now the animals walk through those suburbs and get hit by cars to boot. We can't un-build suburbs though (realistically) but we can look at limiting the sale of public lands, acquiring land to protect it, and incentivizing landowners to allow use of their land.

We don't want to end up with hunters being an ever-shrinking part of society. That's bad for hunting.

Magazines and current social media platforms have vastly different outreach potential.

Magazines you had to pay for and came once a month (or less). Social media is free and the outreach is MASSIVE. Youtubers with 100-350k followers, instagrammers with 100k-1million followers, etc. And with just a few clicks, you can easily share whatever and spread the influence even more. Like a chain reaction.

 

[Idaho_Potato]

Magazines and current social media platforms have vastly different outreach potential.

Magazines you had to pay for and came once a month (or less). Social media is free and the outreach is MASSIVE. Youtubers with 100-350k followers, instagrammers with 100k-1million followers, etc. And with just a few clicks, you can easily share whatever and spread the influence even more. Like a chain reaction.

This is a great point. Magazines sat on a shelf in a store. Social media has algorithms to put stuff in your feed you might not have found otherwise. And everybody has this algorithm in their pocket.

 

[Ozarkansas]

This is a great point. Magazines sat on a shelf in a store. Social media has algorithms to put stuff in your feed you might not have found otherwise. And everybody has this algorithm in their pocket.

For sure, I think all of the negatives mentioned in the article existed in hunting culture before social media, but now those things much more visible and easier to spread.

 

[SurfAMHuntPM]

Interesting thread.
I agree with a lot of the posts here but I’m 43, which is old enough that I would have bah humbug‘d social media anyway. I left it years ago.
the whole humble brag phenomenon is lost on me.
just pondering how much Forum guys and YouTube videos have crept into my gear purchases and the commoditization of every thing “ lifestyle “ marketed in general.
Technology makes it all visible; my buddy texting me that a piece of woods is real hot, an app that tells me the right wind and cell trail cams letting me know two hunters in 1 week blew through a great spot because content driven marketing told them, the picture of a successful harvest.

I had a tough season with 2 archery misses both on what would be personal bests. I don’t know how to share this online in a meaningful way but I would be happy to, I know of at least a few acquaintances that gave up bow hunting and one that moved on from hunting.

Still like anything the article does seem anecdotal, there are probably scores of one and done hunters with delusions of success that sell thier gear after a cold wet and crowded trip, miserable season or just a shift in priorites.

like my posts and follow me @kookhunter ;P
(joke)

 

[wind gypsy]

The only increases will be in unlimited OTC areas. Limited tags haven't been increased anywhere I've been so he's pretty much full of crap.

Bob, I gotta believe hunter days have increased significantly. The time in the mountain scouting, the AZ/UT/NV style "team" hunt with 7 people helping for a single tag. The effort and hunter days put into a single tag.

 

[wind gypsy]

I'm on board with the general tone of most of the article. It does get a little elitist with the private land stuff. I don't blame anyone for wanting better hunting opportunities but the influencer misrepresentation of that experience is pretty pathetic and deserves the criticism.

Cam hunting San Carlos, Hill Ranch, and Deseret ranch on a given year could easily cost the non-celebrity $100k but that sure doesn't come across on his platform. Sure, he'll wax poetic about how he earned it with hard work (which he did) but it aint how it's insinuated. So if others want to earn it like Cam, the recipe is to hunt a ton, write articles, pimp yourself "grinding" on social media non-stop until you have six figures of private land/guided hunts on your table annually. Anyone else see a problem with a bunch of people pursuing this?

There's no denying that hunters are a small minority of the population and unless we can effectively advocate for ourselves amongst the non-hunting public, our passion will cease to exist by the will of the non-hunting public. Newberg and (steve) Rinella have helped paint hunting in a better light and helped hunters present it more positively. Whether that balances out and outweighs the increased pressure their platforms have put on the resource, hell if i know.

 

[Newtosavage]

Yes, ruined hunting. Directly and/or indirectly. I don't have a social media account on any platform other than forums where I go to to learn, seek help and provide help if I'm able. I used to, but what I saw on a daily basis from "hunters" (and other people, too) turned me off from it. It is self-serving, self- promoting garbage by-and-large.

To me, the content does not fit into my ethos. It has commercialized something that was sacred and cherished into just another means to an end for someone to get attention, fame, money and adoration at the expense of taking an animal's life. It's distorted the reality of what a "trophy" is and reduced it to be simply defined by the size of body, antler or horn, rather than the experience, story, location, difficulty and effort it took to harvest the animal. Not everyone on social media, no. That would be hyperbolic to say. But I don't think it's a stretch to say it's more prevalent than you seem to believe it is, and that it's had a detrimental impact on the sport. Look no further than many peoples' comments in this thread.

That's like saying hip hop ruined music. Just don't listen to it (or watch) if you don't like it. Problem solved.

 

[rodney482]

Matt use to have a FB account and I was friends with him, he had some good videos on there basically making fun of his brother’s show …

 

[Actual_Cryptid]

I'm on board with the general tone of most of the article. It does get a little elitist with the private land stuff. I don't blame anyone for wanting better hunting opportunities but the influencer misrepresentation of that experience is pretty pathetic and deserves the criticism.

Cam hunting San Carlos, Hill Ranch, and Deseret ranch on a given year could easily cost the non-celebrity $100k but that sure doesn't come across on his platform. Sure, he'll wax poetic about how he earned it with hard work (which he did) but it aint how it's insinuated. So if others want to earn it like Cam, the recipe is to hunt a ton, write articles, pimp yourself "grinding" on social media non-stop until you have six figures of private land/guided hunts on your table annually. Anyone else see a problem with a bunch of people pursuing this?

There's no denying that hunters are a small minority of the population and unless we can effectively advocate for ourselves amongst the non-hunting public, our passion will cease to exist by the will of the non-hunting public. Newberg and (steve) Rinella have helped paint hunting in a better light and helped hunters present it more positively. Whether that balances out and outweighs the increased pressure their platforms have put on the resource, hell if i know.

I agree with this, the celebritization/grindset-mindset/FOMO sales stuff is not good. But it's capitalism in the 21st century. It takes the same problems as 19th and 20th century capitalism (wealth and power restricted primarily to a small group of people with very little check on their power, lots of people competing for the same space and resources and very few winners) and introduces a new angle, using social media to gain wealth and power by selling the idea of having that wealth to other people. And since there's money to be made in selling both the idea of a 14 glam hunt on a private 4,000 acre ranch dripping with [insert game] and in selling the idea that you too could sell that idea, everybody involved is going to keep selling. Outfitters, guides, social media networks, everybody is going to keep selling because there's more profit in that than not.

Even if we shut down every social media website by fiat,it'll be on youtube and other video sites. If we shut all those down, it'll be back to cable shows or maybe zines will mage a come back. The incestuous relationships between retailers, service providers, and social media networks is the result of the economic system. The amount of private land being cultivated for private use for profit is a function of the state and federal government not protecting land for public use in the long-term.

Hopefully we can recognize that this is a problem created by and continuing to feed the market economy without being labelled evil America-hating communists. I don't look forward to seeing my favorite public land hunting spots sold off for another round of mediocre beige McMansions, or trying to save enough to buy my own land before it's all sold off to investors.

I also take umbrage to anyone saying hip-hop ruined music. It's the same themes as country and blues. Partying, relationship problems, running from the police (outlaw country anybody?), hard times, etc. Fact is east coast classic hop-hop, even the new stuff like Kendrick Lamar or the resurgence of Killer Mike? That's more in line with classic country and blues than modern country, the stuff Tom Petty described as "a shitty rock bank with a banjo."

I will close by sayign social media has it's merits. When I left the cream corn, I moved to the midwest. Some of my friends moved out west, Idaho and Washington, some moved to Florida, some to Pennsylvania, some stayed there in North Carolina (we can't all be genuises). A couple acquaintances got sucked into some extremist stuff and are now facing federal prison. Now I'm not an influencer with a million dollar expense budget, so I can't drive around and check in on everybody, and a phone call only works if they pick up every time. The nice thing about social media is I can shoot someone a message, I can see what they've been doing (hunting fishing crafting reading) and keep up to date with folks that maybe aren't "phone call" people. Even people I wouldn't consider good friends, I like to see them thriving in their new gig as a college football coach or a welder or a (true story) divinities student. If it weren't for the way the algorithm is used to sell you a bunch of garbage, it would be a great tool, especially since it's much faster to snap a few pictures and upload them than it is to have your film developed, make 36 copies of each print and mail them to somebody using a rolodex of addresses. The problem is in the way the algorithms are built and used for profit.

 

[AnnualRye]

That's like saying hip hop ruined music. Just don't listen to it (or watch) if you don't like it. Problem solved.

Perhaps you missed the the part where I said I did turn it off?

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the hunting woods from being overcrowded by people recruited by these DIY, public land advocates who make their name and money off exploiting these lands, then use their connections to run to private land to make "content" after the damage has been done. They aren't dealing with the very people they've brought into this pastime that are only there because it looks cool on YT or Instagram, with absolutely no woodsmanship skills, flinging arrows at game from a hundred yards out, walking into someone actively working a bull, etc. This is my experience now. This is what I and others who do practice woodsmanship and ethics afield and scout hard have to put up with year in and year out. And as I've previously stated, it has gotten worse since Social Media in hunting as gotten popularized.

And maybe that sounds elitist, but I have no problem with recruiting new hunters, but I do have a problem with the way its being done, and the type of new "hunters" I am encountering in the woods. If you're truly making this content out of altruistic intent and to give back, then quit monetizing your social media, quit trying to sell me gear and discount codes, and hunt the very land and ground you made a name for yourself on. Don't whore it out for "likes" and "subscribes" then put it away rode hard and wet for the rest of us while you move onto greener pastures...literally.

This I cannot turn off.

 

[grizz_bait]

I think GoHunt and OnX are far more detrimental to hunting than social media

 

[540-Virginian]

This is the first year I have seen out of state hunters in the spots I have hunted for years. Never seen anyone until this year! Why someone would travel from out of state to hunt swva I will never understand! “Make public land hunting suck again”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Interesting - you think the elk had anything to do with it? Or are you not in that area specifically.