Originally Posted by Muley669

I appreciate this post SS. I have grown increasingly uncomfortable over the years with with the whitetail hunting community. I grew up in farm country of Illinois, hunted whitetails rabbits etc through my childhhood. My dad would put on a pair of Carhartts and a blaze orange vest and walk the edges of the cornfield. He carried an old savage 12 gauge and a few slugs in his pocket. When he got a deer the the neighbors would all come over and laugh and chat around the kill hanging in the tree, and off he would go to the neighbors when they got one. Every once in awhile somebody would shoot a nice buck, and then it was dang near a hoe-down. Stories were told, chili was served and it was a great time. We turned that simple celebration into horn porn, and it is a shame.
Why? I see all the gadgets, gimicks etc and those are all things we never needed. I use scent, it's called the wind, and it's what my dad taught me to use. We have commercialized hunting to the point of no return. Knocking on the neighbors door doesn't get you in the field because the land has been leased for the almighty dollar. The land wouldn't be leased if it were not for hunters near insatiable desire to kill the biggest buck in the woods. The real beauty of a trophy class whitetail is in it's rarity. We have sought to make it common place, and in doing so the beauty is lost.
Now in Montana the leasing scurge has reared it's ugly head. I blame it on eastern whitetail hunting. I have seen the Texas hunting videos and it is enough to make me puke, that ain't hunting. I am also tired of folks saying we all need to stick together, I call BS on this. I'm done sticking up for anything that prostitutes hunting the way we have. I look at the vast amounts of money spent by hunters trying to weigh the odds in their favor, at what point do the gimicks, cameras and crap like that become too much? Forget the antis, hunters are corrupting the sport from the inside out, and it starts with whitetail hunting. No other hunting has been twisted and distorted to the point of perversion like whitetail hunting.