Josh_E, no offense but if you live your life based on others peoples experiences, are you really living your life? How do you know what is truth from myth? By looks of the person telling you, maybe the cadence the person uses when speaking to you? Obviously not, your much smarter than that based on your own experience.

Do I consider food plots unethical? No I do not. Matter of fact we have one, and plan to add yet another. Food plots were likened to farmers crops, a trees mast, and food grown for human consumption. Whats the difference? Food plots are planted for the sole purpose of attracting and holding deer. Period. Then we hunt on the fringes of these plots, much the same way some hunt over a dumped pile of corn or fruit.

Ethics is a word tossed out loosely all to often,usually to gain attention to a subject. More often it is used by outsiders looking to infringe on others chosen activities. In thinking about ethical hunting many aspects must be considered.

The reason I bring up food plots is this. Why are hunters planting food plots when the population of deer is criticaly high in a lot of areas? Why are we trying to concentrate deer artifically in a smaller area?

With CWD spreading with reckless abandon are we in fact helping the spread by concentrating deer like this? Has the need to shoot a trophy buck gotten so important that we no longer are willing to learn the needed skills to hunt them one on one?
I think there is enough doubt that it at least warrants some discussion.

For now plots are legal, and I believe an effective way to hunt. But the question of ethics has been raised and a fellow hunter was castigated for his beliefs. What makes artifical feeding areas more ethical than ones decision to kill an animal in a manner different than your used to seeing?