That's been done and it doesn't draw near the participation.
If you look in the archives you can see past contests. You'll see contests with over 20,000 comments in them.
Many more with over 5,000 comments.
Despite the opinion of some members above, the contests were extremely popular. Very well ran.
And in my memory had very few issues with cheaters or bad attitudes.
Members were split into teams. The team threads developed into a bond and many friendships were made, including ones that lead to hunting partnerships in "real life"
There was often good back and forth exchanges between teams. In good fun. Again, I recall very few issues where the "competitiveness" turned into something negative.
The idea that it turned hunting into something focused on competition or ruined it somehow is silly. It was a platform to connect hunters and give them a reason to share their stories and to engage with each other.
There weren't prizes. There wasn't money involved. And the bad apples were quickly weeded out.
If I post on the regular whitetail section "hey guys I can hunt Tuesday evening and Thursday morning this week." I'll get maybe two replies. And nobody really cares.
However in a contest team thread I'll get 5-10 replies and people will be watching the thread on Tuesday night and Thursday afternoon to see how my hunts went. It seems silly, but it really did draw people together and generate ALLOT of traffic to the page.
The proof is all there in the archives and can be read by anybody. Just the fact that a contest thread can run up 20,000+ comments in a few months tells you how popular and liked the contests were.
I have trouble imagining that we'll ever see that kind of participation here again. The entire website probably doesn't get 20,000 comments in a year. That would be over 50 new posts per day, and I know that I don't read 50 new posts every day. Likely closer to 10/day.
-Jake