Hey John! I'm finally up with ya here on one of your morning sojourns! (Momma's trying to break baby of the 3 a.m. feeding these days, and now I'm the one who can't go back to sleep! [8D])

Anyway... thought I'd throw a couple things out for ya. One, you're right... I personally wouldn't take a lot of joy in hunting over feeders, but -- as buckeye stated on the other thread -- I'm now old enough to "live and let live" as long as it's legal.

Having said that... Would you classify these statements in the same light as the very question you're posing?

and..

Here's why I ask the question...Should picking up a gun and shooting a deer -- even if it's NOT standing under a feeder -- be any different a moral issue in your mind than someone hunting over a feeder with a bow? Here's the reason I say that: To me (and yep, I know this can open a whole 'nother can of worms! ), shooting a deer with a gun is no more sport than what you perceive hunting over feeders to be!

Maybe it's because I was such an excellent shot growing up, having hunted behind a pack of beagles my whole life and killing perhaps thousands of rabbits in my youth with a shotgun and then progressing on to hunting rabbits with a .22. I kept a running log of how many birds I killed with my pump b.b gun one summer, and killed over 1,500. (An onithologist's nightmare, to be sure... but I sure did get good with that little rifle!) I later went on to of course qualify "expert" with the M-16 at Military Police school.

I don't know... maybe I'm the exception rather than the rule. But the first time I shot a deer with my .44 Remington Magnum rifle, I just felt no joy in the act of accomplishment. I saw the deer, and when I decided I wanted to take its life, the hunt was over. Before I even pulled the trigger.