ORIGINAL: Injun

I think this whole issue is indicative of our changing society. Slowly but surely, we are losing rural hunters who grew up chasing squirrels and rabbits and hunting for the pure enjoyment of it. Hunting is now a big business, like it or not. Personally, I don't. It's becoming more and more of a competition. If you don't kill a big one, you "failed".
Many people want to kill the bucks they see on TV, but they haven't taken the time to learn how to do it. They haven't spent hundreds of hours over the years scouting, reading, and learning through trial and error. Mistakes....that's how you learn. So, they pay all this money to go be a shooter. Face it, that's all they are. They have not scouted the land, patterned a buck, or learned how to do it on their own in many cases. A guide puts them over a food-plot or a powerline and tells them which deer to shoot. What have they done other than pay money and pull a trigger? To me that is awfully hollow. If that is what someone wants to do, fine...but I have no desire to do that, nor will I respect their ability as a hunter when they are later telling me about all the big bucks they've killed at XYZ ranch.

Now if someone consistently takes a buck representative of the upper-echelon in their area...that is a hunter AND a deer to respect. I just don't get the "have to" to kill a big buck. Again, it's personal, but I'd rather truly hunt and kill a 120 class here in Ga. than to pay a few thousand to go to Texas or wherever and shoot a 170 class I didn't earn.