I came on this late and just had to read through the whole thing. Same old crap, "Lets all stick together". Like hell. If you want to really find out what hunters are, show a couple of tapes to people that don't hunt but have no objection to hunting. Those people will become very opinionated on what hunting really is about half way through the tapes. They are disgusted by them and I don't wonder why because I am too. Somebody said it earlier, it is not the hunters or the anti's that matter, it is the people sitting on the fence. (No pun intended)
Elitism? You bet. I started with a recurve that had a split riser that I screwed and glued. I am still using it. You are not a bowhunter unless you can use all 4 bows like a REAL BOWHUNTER. I love to rifle hunt, and still do. If you hunt land open to the public it is harder than bow hunting. I don't want to hear that nonsense that "I hunt with a bow to challenge myself". What a bunch of crap. I remember when the compound came along and guys that almost never got a deer during rifle season started to get deer every year. Then the bow season was extended into the rut. Everybody and his brother ran out and bought a bow. Then the crossbow. Then the early muzzle loader. Anything to make it easy. After all this venting, what it comes down to is: How many of those high fence "hunters" would still hunt if they did make it illegal and they had to resort to real hunting? As the "easy" deer are being shot out in my state due to the above mentioned regulation changes, more and more people are dropping out of hunting. The first ones to drop are the casual hunters that really don't care about hunting, it was just something to do that was easy. That is my definition of hunting.
Game Farms should be illegal. The only cases of CWD in Pennsylvania were in captive deer. Their is no doubt in my mind that CWD got to the east because of Game Farms. It mysteriously appeared in the 80's out west. My theory is it came in with exotics on some ranch. Probably carried by an animal that is immune to it but is a carrier.
Do what you want to do, hunting is on the way out anyway.