I agree with all the posts above as I have been preaching the same thing for years. It has been a full 15 years since I have hunted with a gun. I shot my first deer with a shotgun and tried bowhunting the following year and have never went back.

I enjoy hunting the deer on their own terms and not when they are running scared from some blaze orange over the hill. The quiet woods, solitude, closeness, and challenge were all described well above and are reasons I would not enjoy gun hunting.

My 11 year old son even made a comment the other day when watching a hunting show on the Outdoor Channel. Some guys were hunting Whitetails in rifle season and when it showed them climbing into their treestands my son said "they are using guns AND tree stands"? He said he didn't think it was fair to the deer to be able to shoot so far and hide in a tree at the same time. I was suprised to hear that from an 11 year old but I guess my beliefs have rubbed off on him.

This weekend my son and I were sitting in our tree stands together and it was the youth gun season here in Ohio. We were bowhunting my woods when my son saw the orange of a guy and his kid sitting in the cornfield adjacent to our woods. They were sitting watching our woods hoping a deer would walk out into the cut cornfield. Now they were not doing anything wrong so-to-speak, assuming they had permission to hunt the farmers field. But if seemed strange to me that they were watching my woods where I have planted Biologic food plots, created thickets for the deer to bed, and planted thousands of pine trees for additional cover. I want to enjoy the entire experience of hunting, and the actual act of shooting an animal is such a small part. But with many gun hunters the act of shooting something seems to be the only concern.

Stonyrvr, that was an interesting story and thanks for sharing your honest feelings with us. I would imagine I would feel the same.