Originally Posted by
Champlain Islander
I understand where Muley is coming from especially on the bolded part. I have hunted whitetails for the past 46 years mostly in the northeast. In the past 15 years I have ventured out and done some hunting in the mid west, Canada and for the past 4 years out west. Times have changed for the deer hunter and all the TV productions glorifying horn porn plays a part. I remember stealthycat making a post a few years ago saying practically what Muley said about how hunting is changing and the old times were better. I don't agree with changing this forum away from whitetail. If there was enough interest then the owners could create a separate mule deer forum. The real important part of his post is in bold and should be discussed further.
Indeed there is alot of truth in this statement, however, painting all hunters with the same wide brush puts a dent in the ol credability.
I realize how fortunate I am to have land that I can hunt on where I don't have to open the checkbook and jump through all the hoops. I can be old school and while I won't probably get a record book buck, I still have plenty of fun with it.
I came to this realization after a morning hunt with my 8 year old daughter. We hunted and watched a young spike all morning then went home and flipped on TV to watch a few hunting shows. That show, the 'Bucks of Tecomate' that runs on Versus, Saturday mornings. I explained to my kid that hunting isn't like 'that'. She seemed to get it pretty well and has not been deterred by the difference between edited TV 'drama' and real life.
Ironically, I'm a little grouchy today. We have some nice land but it falls under the 'common sense' herd management theory. We own a large construction company and we have opportunities to go on 'canned' hunts with the bank, for example. My brother and dad are going down to south Texas tomorrow for a weekend hunt on a big bank's heavily managed, high fenced ranch.
Would I like to go? Hell yes. I'm not going to apologize for that. We get 2 full months straight of rifle season. If I could go on a 'canned' hunt once a season and take a trophy (heh, we're not THAT good of customers, we get to pick a buck off of menu 'B' or something) heck, I'd do it. Would I give up my other hunting for it? Never. But just for one weekend? yeah. Well, I was odd man out this year and in fact, haven't been on one of those before. /shrug.
But yes...deer hunting has changed alot from those piles of black and white photos from the 50's in my grandma's house. Then again, nostalgia glosses over some things....not everything about the way it used to be done was superior.
For that matter....though White Tail hunting seems to be the most egregiously infested with commercialism, all forms of hunting suffer from it.