Originally Posted by
Oldtimr
"Originally Posted by Exophysical View Post
IMO To me the act of big game hunting involves the reading of sign, the consideration of wind, the use of stealth. For me taking an animal involves immersing myself in the world of that animal, almost living the life of that animal for a period of time. When these things are not present, for me, it wasn't a good hunt. Shooting at extreme distances may take more shooting skill than it does to shoot a deer out of a pickup truck, but IMO it doesn't take a whole lot more hunting skill.
In your case RR, you seem to be one of those hunters that puts more effort into making extremely long shots happen than you do into closing the distance, or any of the other skills that I consider to be the mark of a good hunter. I wont call you a slob, or unethical, or wrong in any way, but from where I stand I feel that hunters like you are completely missing what I feel is "the point". Great shooting, poor hunting, I'd rather hear stories about 5 pin bowling than look at your cardboard score cards, if you shot them from 10 miles I still wouldn't care".
By God gents, we seem to have picked up a perfect person along the way! If he disapproves of our hunting methods, we have no hunting skills. We should be truly humbled to be in the presence of such perfection! I do suspect though he doesn't continue with this fantasy wen the bullet comes crashing through the boiler room:"For me taking an animal involves immersing myself in the world of that animal, almost living the life of that animal for a period of time". I suggest he put down the books with all the flowery descriptions and definitions of what hunting is and refrain from trying to make himself feel better about taking an animals life. I am all for developing skills and have railed at times about electronic gadgets taking the place of skills leaving a person in trouble if the gadget fails and they have no skills to fall back on. However, the above isn't about skills, it is about idealistic snobbery and I recommend he gives up hunting if he doesn't enjoy it if all his requirements do not come together, because most times in hunting, if you are not flexible, you will fail, that and what he "feels" is his problem not ours. Then there is the question, is this guy real or just playing?
I suggest you do a search of my posts, pretty easy since there isn't that many of them... its all there, in the posts and the links, once you have seen how I hunt then come back and call me a keyboard jockey if you still feel like it. Call me wrong if you want, do not blindly call me a hypocrite, I very much take offence to that.
RR asked for our opinions on what he does, I gave him mine. Seeing as he is hunting within the law all I can give him is MY reasons and MY OPINION... which is pretty much what everyone else here has done. I never told him he was wrong, I never told him to stop, I just told him why I disagree with it which is what he asked for. Pretty much for me it boils down to the obsession with distance, setting up specifically to shoot deer at extreme range rather than hunt them, if the long shots happened incidentally I would better understand it.
I still stand by my statement, hunting skill is in reading the sign, using stealth, playing the wind. When these things are being circumnavigated to any great degree, IMO one is not displaying the traits of a good hunter. There are plenty of ways for this to happen, and long range shooting is one of them.