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

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Seems that there needs to be more hunter participation in wildlife/habitat management, not just more hunters afield. Several dozen hunters showing up to a wildlife commission meeting is a positive and will net benefits. Liking a post with a huge bull and a 12 man hunting "posse," won't.
 
It was and interesting podcast. It sure seemed like Steve was having a hard time keeping controll of his anger.
Was a little odd listening to Steve’s fairly week arguments. Seemed a bit like he wasn’t really trying to argue against his brother so much as just give him some airtime for his cause.
After a bit the curse words were flowing fairly freely.
 
matt seems like an unusual dude. Maybe a bit of a loaner. Live in a remote city in Montana with his dog and a pack of llamas. he is fairly articulate but I thought Matt came off as a bit of a curmudgeon. He started out with a criticism of people that were hunting solely for social media credibility. I am sure there Are a few people that do this, but honestly how many can there be That are killing things to up their instagram followers. He seemed to say that Somehow media portrayals of animals polluted the purity of hunting. Truth is, people have been bragging about their hunting stories spfor as long as we’ve been hunters or people For that matter. I bet Matt himself has some mounts and grip and grins laying around his house. Social media just amplifies what people have been doing since cave paintings and stories told round a camp fire about spearing mammoths. But Matts complaint morphed into basically saying that hunting media was making hunting too popular and blowing up spots. His focus was on social media but he was painting with a pretty broad brush That seemed to implicate not just media but all commercialization of hunting. It’s not lost on me that he is speaking on his brothers podcast when podcasting is a relatively new form of media itself. Further, this 40+ page debate is occurring on a form of social media.

I still think I wouldn’t know who Matt was if his brother wasn’t a “hunting celebrity“. I also think growing hunter numbers is a fairly important element of preserving the tradition of hunting. I acknowledge and readily accept that successful 3R work is going to lead to more people in the woods. I myself RE-engaged in hunting relatively recently, after a long hiatus, in part inspired by hunting media, including Steve Rinella and other forms of social media, such as this forum.

i live in PA, which still has blue laws that impact most Sunday hunting until very recently. They are finally introducing Sunday hunting in the last two years and someone on here said they were against it because their family had a tradition of showing up at deer camp the Sunday before opening day on Monday after thanksgiving and hunting until the next Saturday and they did t want to change the way they did their Camp when opening day was changed to Saturday. All the benefits of extra licenses sold, and extra out of state hunters spending money in the local economy and hunting gaining new participants and supporters meant nothing if it changed the way they liked it. Well, guess what? Before it was the way you liked it, it was some other way. If you are lucky to live long enough, Things change. Given the trend in hunter participation in the US if the number of hunters, is growing, IMO that is a good thing. I will gladly share the woods, or walk a little further from the crowd In order to see the sport of hunting continue to flourish.
 
Matt comes off as a spoiled kid who grew up and doesn’t have it his way anymore. Then comes up with every excuse imaginable to get his way back. That said I think it’s all a publicity stunt for his brother. What better time then right before Christmas.


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JRam07 said:
1 hunter can blow out the entirety of the public land in my area in a weekend. The people who are here and who've been hunting it are generally more courteous. Especially the newer crowds of bowhunters that have extremely aggressive tactics similar to what Dan Infault and the Hunting Public guys use.

The history of public land here is lengthy and complex, far to simple of a take to "blame the state for selling it off"

The reality is what it is, even in the other states I've lived Public land has always had the same reputation, lots of hunters, not a lot of big game.

There is no walking away from the crowd, you can walk the whole parcel in a day.
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So now this is about little parcels of land whitetail hunting? This is hard to follow first no one can draw tags out west now new hunters are blowing out all the deer in small eastern areas. If it was that big of an ass ache for me to hunt don’t know that I would. Well off to go hunt. geese are piling in.
 
One other point I think that is lost.
We have roughly the same total numbers of hunters that we did thirty years ago.
How much habitat has been lost in thirty years?
Some of y'all with the "walk in further" argument need to realize that as we lose places to hunt, more and more hunters will be concentrated in fewer and fewer areas. If we don't reverse that trend, some of y'all gonna be ten miles back sharing a drainage with ten other camps.

Which is why I think habitat preservation is the single biggest issue we have as sportsmen.
 
ddd-shooter said:
One other point I think that is lost.
We have roughly the same total numbers of hunters that we did thirty years ago.
How much habitat has been lost in thirty years?
Some of y'all with the "walk in further" argument need to realize that as we lose places to hunt, more and more hunters will be concentrated in fewer and fewer areas. If we don't reverse that trend, some of y'all gonna be ten miles back sharing a drainage with ten other camps.

Which is why I think habitat preservation is the single biggest issue we have as sportsmen.
Click to expand...
In the West, RMEF specifically has made a noticeable difference in buying up targeted tracts of land that open up large chunks of public. Not a talking point, I look at them every day. Further, to OnX’s credit, they just brought an easement layer online which I know is going to redistribute hunters this year and confirming that there is an easement in one location probably is going to change my spring bear plans dramatically *for the better*.

If public lands are for everyone, the goal should be to increase the carrying capacity of hunters on public land. In the West, that is a huge focus and meaningful work is being done. Some people will have a problem for every solution but the sky isn’t falling.
 
Desk Jockey said:
matt seems like an unusual dude. Maybe a bit of a loaner. Live in a remote city in Montana with his dog and a pack of llamas. he is fairly articulate but I thought Matt came off as a bit of a curmudgeon. He started out with a criticism of people that were hunting solely for social media credibility. I am sure there Are a few people that do this, but honestly how many can there be That are killing things to up their instagram followers. He seemed to say that Somehow media portrayals of animals polluted the purity of hunting. Truth is, people have been bragging about their hunting stories spfor as long as we’ve been hunters or people For that matter. I bet Matt himself has some mounts and grip and grins laying around his house. Social media just amplifies what people have been doing since cave paintings and stories told round a camp fire about spearing mammoths. But Matts complaint morphed into basically saying that hunting media was making hunting too popular and blowing up spots. His focus was on social media but he was painting with a pretty broad brush That seemed to implicate not just media but all commercialization of hunting. It’s not lost on me that he is speaking on his brothers podcast when podcasting is a relatively new form of media itself. Further, this 40+ page debate is occurring on a form of social media.

I still think I wouldn’t know who Matt was if his brother wasn’t a “hunting celebrity“. I also think growing hunter numbers is a fairly important element of preserving the tradition of hunting. I acknowledge and readily accept that successful 3R work is going to lead to more people in the woods. I myself RE-engaged in hunting relatively recently, after a long hiatus, in part inspired by hunting media, including Steve Rinella and other forms of social media, such as this forum.

i live in PA, which still has blue laws that impact most Sunday hunting until very recently. They are finally introducing Sunday hunting in the last two years and someone on here said they were against it because their family had a tradition of showing up at deer camp the Sunday before opening day on Monday after thanksgiving and hunting until the next Saturday and they did t want to change the way they did their Camp when opening day was changed to Saturday. All the benefits of extra licenses sold, and extra out of state hunters spending money in the local economy and hunting gaining new participants and supporters meant nothing if it changed the way they liked it. Well, guess what? Before it was the way you liked it, it was some other way. If you are lucky to live long enough, Things change. Given the trend in hunter participation in the US if the number of hunters, is growing, IMO that is a good thing. I will gladly share the woods, or walk a little further from the crowd In order to see the sport of hunting continue to flourish.
Click to expand...
My article in Free Range American does a better job of laying out my points. One thing to keep in mind is that Steve and the other influencers had zero interest in increasing hunter participation prior to when they began making $ off hunting. Probably the best way to get more hunters afield would be to get on social media and tell everyone exactly where you’ll be hunting that week. You’ll be hunting where you think your chances of success are best, right. Don’t you want others to have those same high chance of success?? Hopefully you’ll run into the people you’ve inspired to hunt your area so you can give them a head start and not spook anything for them.
 
It’s Matt Rinella. I couldn’t resist weighing in. People that inspire people to hunt so they can sell them products invite the veterans to everyone else’s houses, not their own. They live in gated mansions on the hill. They hunt their fans private lands, fly to Alaska and other expensive hunting locations and enter expensive tag lotteries so they don’t have to deal with the crowding they create. Even good-hearted people that engage in R3 invite the veterans to other peoples houses, whether those people like it or not. R3 is pushy that way. I don’t believe more hunters render the future of hunting more secure. More hunters means more dumb asses putting controversial pictures on the internet. That’s how grizzly hunting got banned in B.C. More generally, 3.4% of Canadians hunt, and I don’t think the future of hunting is any less secure there than here where the number is 5%. New Zealand has 1.4% and is a hunting paradise I’m told. The future of hunting rests with getting existing hunters to fight for it, not in creating new hunters on already extremely overcrowded public land.
 
TL406 said:
Point creep is a full blown disaster out West, to the point that me being a young guy can’t justify putting in for points in other western states (the math doesn’t work out in my head). I don’t know how you could disagree with anyone on that.
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Seems like you're a MT resident so I get it when you can hunt deer, elk, pronghorn, wolves, bear every year in your own state and have a shot at the big 3. Pretty hard to get enough time off work to maximize that opportunity and still look elsewhere unless investing and chasing glory tags that may never come.

For guys that don't have that opportunity, even in western states like NM, NV, UT, the points still get you an opportunity to go hunting for western species and being in the game is necessary if you want to hunt western big game without buying big $ tags.
 
Mattrinella said:
Probably the best way to get more hunters afield would be to get on social media and tell everyone exactly where you’ll be hunting that week. You’ll be hunting where you think your chances of success are best, right. Don’t you want others to have those same high chance of success?? Hopefully you’ll run into the people you’ve inspired to hunt your area so you can give them a head start and not spook anything for them.
Click to expand...
Mic drop!
 
bsnedeker said:
Someone has been busily googling his own name recently!!! Lol!
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Absolutely I have. You can’t imagine the work I put into that Free Range American article. I am a slow writer, and it took me a month of evenings to write that. I definitely want to hear what people think of it. I’m pretty disappointed nobody seems willing to weigh in on the more complicated arguments in the article. Is bragging about and profiteering over dead animals to strangers of value to the hunting community? Is the proper attitude of the hunter one of understatement and humility? Would disincentivizing the bragging and money making by unfollowing sponsored hunters that show legions of strangers what they shoot move the needle in the right direction? Is it fair that people like Cam and Joe that pay 20k to hunt glorified cattle on landowner-sponsored tags and thereby contribute to the privatization of wildlife are creating throngs of aspiring hunting celebrities to crowd out lifelong public land hunters? Would we be better humans if we stopped patronizing these people and used the time to shoot our bows?
 
Mattrinella said:
Absolutely I have. You can’t imagine the work I put into that Free Range American article. I am a slow writer, and it took me a month of evenings to write that. I definitely want to hear what people think of it. I’m pretty disappointed nobody seems willing to weigh in on the more complicated arguments in the article. Is bragging about and profiteering over dead animals to strangers of value to the hunting community? Is the proper attitude of the hunter one of understatement and humility? Would disincentivizing the bragging and money making by unfollowing sponsored hunters that show legions of strangers what they shoot move the needle in the right direction? Is it fair that people like Cam and Joe that pay 20k to hunt glorified cattle on landowner-sponsored tags and thereby contribute to the privatization of wildlife are creating throngs of aspiring hunting celebrities to crowd out lifelong public land hunters? Would we be better humans if we stopped patronizing these people and used the time to shoot our bows?
Click to expand...

Meet the real @Mattrinella

Debate well, people.


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