I feel the need to express myself, so here goes. I already know I'm going to get blasted, but I'd like to stir the pot and see what people say.

I think the hunting mags build up the sport like its some sort of rocket science that can only be cracked by spending thousands of bucks on the latest gadgets. It seems to be about spendy shortcuts to get around spending time in the woods learning your animal.

Put it this way, hunting mags are to hunters what fashion mags are to women. Fashion mags prey on women's insecurities to sell clothes, perfume, and makeup. In the same way, hunting mags prey on hunter's insecurities to sell ... well ... clothes, perfume, and makeup! The fashion mags sell garbage like "horizontal stripes make you fat" or "OHMIGOD Cameron Diaz is wearing Skunkee' perfume and you just gotta try it!" Hunting mags do just the same thing.

When, may I ask, is the last time a guy looked at a girl and thought, "Wow, I like her, BUT, she's wearing horizontal stripes and that's just so not in style, so I'm not going to approach HER"? When was the last time a girl's brand of perfume, or mascara, or whatever, was the deciding factor in a guy falling for her. Get real!

By the same token, I suspect we do the same in hunting, obsess over silly details and pour money by the gallon into doubtful remedies because the hunting mags have tapped into our insecurities.

Anyway, I'll close with a list of things I think are overdone:

1) Dozens of variations on deer calls (grunts and tending grunts and estrous doe belches and 24-hours-until-I-go-into-estrous-then-we'll-have-hot-times bleats and on and on). I'm sure they invented four more deer vocalizations while I've been typing this.

2) See #1 and apply it to elk (big bull bugles and little bull bugles and big-bulls-that-still-have-a-little-bull-compex-even-though-they're-really-big bugles). You get the picture.

3) Cover scents. I think a few years ago a deer ran up to his pals and said something like this, "Gee fellas, I just smelled this hunter who had fox urine smeared on his boots." Nobody believed him at first but they soon learned 'twas true. How about this, the guy sitting in a ponderosa pine forest, with his treestand in an 80-foot high ponderosas, and he's hawking a pine scent wafer you pin on your shirt. I actually saw that on a video.

4) Attractant scents. They recently proved that you could pour motor oil in a deer scrape, or pee in it yourself and get an effect equal to any other type of scent.

I'll stop with that, and I know 9 kajillion of you who have sunk bigtime cash into these things are going to blast me, but is there anyone out there who sees my point? Or, am I just this deranged guy on the fringe who just doesn't get it, like the girl wearing horizontal stripes on her blouse?