ORIGINAL: Doug S

Please excuse me if I start to rant, and it's not aimed at anyone in particular, no matter what I might say....I've just had it!!!!

PA's primitive season is the last bastion of "real" hunting that I know about, atleast anywhere that is a reasonable commute for me. Forget about flintlocks and roundballs for a moment, think about what hunting in 2006 has become. 300fps+ bows with 85% let off and mechanical heads on carbon arrows, I'll skip them and just get a crossbow, what's the difference? Sentlock suits, tons of calls + electonic ones, cover scents, enough camo that you should be invisable. Baiting, if you want to bait you don't even have to struggle to dumpa bucket of corn out evey few days, just get an electionic one with a 55gal drum and watch what shows up on your laptop. Of course, nobody who is a serious hunter goes to public ground-(unless they have an ATV), $10,000.00/year leases is the only way to go if you want to "hunt"-ha!, a large buck, and big antlers is what it's all about, right? I know a guy who hunts a lease and has more electonic gear on it than I have in my house, he actually names the bucks on the property and decides which one to kill befor he even "hunts" over his feeder, and he get results, yeah-I'm impressed. And if you can't quite come up with the cost of a lease and all the equipment you (need) to ha!-hunt it, you can always just buy a buck, I mean hunt a buck at some guided place that grows them big for ya to shoot, saves time too. Speaking of saving time-(back to ML'rs), who needs all that messy black powder stuff, just get a Savage and shoot your pistol bullets with smokeless, heck it's almost the same thing since you only get one shot and a scope doesn't really matter, now does it.

My comments here are about hunting in generaland if it's because of my generation and someone doesn't see my point then I feel sorry for there generation. You see, I remember when hunting was about guys getting together to HUNT deer, getting one was great but to behonest, we had more fun ribbing the guy who blew his chance. That was ussually done at night, sitting at a table playing cards-(real cards, not internet poker)-and the drink of choice was often poured into a small glass from bottles that were marked WT or JW, not ready made drinks with twist off tops in plastic bottles. If you were out and a deer winded your red plaid coat and bounded off while you stood there with your "dirty-thirty" Winchester slung over your arm, you most likely thought "Good for you Big guy", not, darn, if only I had a new scentlock suit or maybe I need a bigger scope, better camo,nevermind I'll just call so & so on the cell and tell him to get ready cause the deer is heading for him-with all we spent this year we have to get something to bring home-just to prove that we had fun.

I'm sorry to spout off like this but I see very little hunting going on these days andway too much interest onlyin what & how many are killed. Results...just get results and never mind how you do it, might as well just go to work. So, do us "old" guys a favor and leave the primative season alone until we die off.

Doug