c903, Great Post!!! My thoughts exactly. It amazes me how the almighty rack has become more important than the actual love of the hunt to some people these days. Greed has reared its ugly head in yet another area of life. For me, it boils down to one thing. I LOVE BOWHUNTING and being out in the woods. Yes I have killed several bucks. And some does. And I get excited every time, no matter what it is. I get excited every time I see deer . I just love everything about it. I have 2 bucks that are P & Y bucks for sure. But I haven' t even entered them in the book. It isn' t that important to me to have my name in a book. I have a full mount of my biggest one in my trophy room so I can enjoy till the day I die. Yes I am proud of it, but putting my name in that book was no big deal with me. Me and a hunting buddy work with a guy that finally killed a his P & Y buck a few years ago, and had his name put in the latest addition of the " almighty book" . He brought that bok in to work and bragged and bragged and bragged. He really turned alot of people off. That was so important to him. He really seemed to be more proud of the fact that his name was in the book instead of the fine animal he took. I was at a checking station once getting ready to check my buck in. There was a guy in there who had taken his buck a few weeks earlier. This young kid and his dad came in to check in this kids first deer. That kid was beaming. We all went outside to see it and it was a decent sized bodied button buck. Right away that other guy started joking about it. He asked the kid if they had to cut the umbilical cord off of the deer and started laughing. That poor kid was crushed. The thing about it that made us the maddest, was that the guy ridiculing it was a well known outlaw in our area. He is notorious for chasing deer with 4 wheelers, shooting from his truck and gang hunting ( on land he has no permission for) during the slug law here. Anyhow. I told the guy right in front of the kid that I would rather take the deer that the kid did the way that he did it, than take the world record buck the way that thiat guy gets his. The point I am trying to make is that every deer taken with a bow is a trophy. I love big racked bucks. But I love nice does also.
It is a shame that as soon as someone is blessed with a trophy the pundits come out of the woodwork. Don' t get me wrong. If the allegations against Zaft are true, then he doesn' t deserve the credit. Just like any other hunter doesn' t deserve it if it isn' t legitimate. I live about an hour and 10 minites north of where Mike Beatty took his buck. You wouldn' t beleive all the rumors that started flying around. But in the end it turned out that everything was on the up and up.
Sorry to say that this will always happen. I just don' t see why people ( you know who) make it to be almost their life mission. White raven said in the last post" Man I am gonna love it when the results are posted in a few weeks" That sounds alot like NaNa NaNa NaNa to me. Lighten up WR. Move on and do something constructive. I think that the majority of the people on here are really tired of your accusations all the time. Well, everyone but you your new recruits.
There is a lesson here guys. If you ever shoot anything that you feel may be any kind of record. Get out of the stand. Go call as many game wardens as possible. Get a video camera rolling and document everything. Then go take a polygraph test tellingthe whole story. Then keep all that info, copy it all and send all documentation to WR and wait for the White raven Verification process to play out!