Yes, we need to encourage bowhunters to take good shots and to make every effort to find wounded animals before shooting more, but we don't need to chastise them and call people names who need a little education. If he thought he was doing something that terrible, he wouldn't have come on here and posted about it. We had an opportunity to teach a hunter a better way, while forgiving him for seeemingly being careless.

It appears now that all we have succeeded in doing, is to chase him away and to leave him with hard feelings towards the hunters on this forum. Hunter numbers are down and anti's are getting stronger. When we find a fellow hunter who is not exactly promoting our image, we need to take them under our wing and encourage them to do things differently. Denigrating his character is not going to help us with our cause.

Highcountry, if you're still reading, I would encourage you to give every search for a wounded animal your very best shot before attempting to take any others. There are lots of posts on what's a high percentage shot and good tracking and recovery techniques on this forum that may help you in the future.

The average person is not an anti hunter, but then again, the average person is not a hunter and has no strong opinion of hunters and can easily be swayed to thinking we're bad. If we act concerned over a wounded animal and appear to do our very best to see that each animal is killed as quickly and painlessly as possible, the voting public will not support taking our rights away. If they perceive our sport as somewhat inhumane, then hunting will go the way of the dinosaurs. We should keep in mind that, like the saying goes, image is everything.