Ann:

As far as the Project Venision issue, you may be right, they ran out of money. But the next year it wasn' t funded at all by the local chapter. So I gladly put my own money into it, so that some extra protein would go to the local food banks. And you may well separate what a local Buckmasters chapter does from the headquarters, but I don' t. In my view, I don' t care what happened, Buckmasters pulled out, and that' s a negative reflection on Buckmasters, the whole organization.

But that' s not my point at all! My point is simply this... You interest in the show and the Buckmasters organization and keeping it going and all it' s marketing and commercial hype is more important than the interests of promoting the hunter and the hunter' s image in the community via your chapter membership. Doing canned hunts is great for getting footage on the TV and selling commercials, but it doesn' t do anything for the hunter or the communities in which they live.

I personally enjoy seeing footage of quality fair chase hunts and I' m sure that most of your hunts qualify. But if I have to dodge an excessive amount of commercials to see it, I think I' ll turn it elsewhere. Is that what you want?

My next comment is not specifically geared to Buckmasters, but to hunting shows in general. I say no to bucks shot over cornpiles or any other bait, no to fenced ranches, no to heated luxury shooting towers, no to high$ hunts where a guide has lead you by the hand and tell you which deer you can shoot, no to guaranteed 170 class bucks! All of these things are geared towards a group of deer shooters (not hunters) who are eliteist financially and would not know how to find a deer on their own. This is not hunting, it' s capitalism, which is legal, but is it best for our sport? I don' t think so. I would be more proud of a small doe that I did the work for, than a trophy under these conditions