When I read something like this, the question I’m left with is why does the experience seem to have killing the animal as a goal? If this beauty and serenity are the major reason for your enjoyment, why would taking a photograph of the deer that wanders by or just enjoying the experience itself not be enough? Because I love the experience you describe. I love to be out on a boat or going camping and just sit quietly in the woods to see nature wander by. It’s never occurred to me that experience would be better if I hunted something as well.
Please note this question is not a passive aggressive swipe but an attempt to understand.
I don’t know how “radical” your brother’s views are, but you will find that most hunters are very much conservationists. We love the outdoors, want to keep it pristine, and want to protect wildlife and habitat. I would wager that most hunters, being gun owners, are more “right-wing” than most dopers on this message board. “Radical”, I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder.
I am not a hunter. But I would like to be. For me, the attraction is that I am a meat-eater (non-vegetarian). I believe that if I eat meat, I should be able to slaughter or hunt an animal myself. I should witness what an animal experiences at its death–kids its death as caused by me. It’s a moral thing. I haven’t been able to find anyone to teach me these skills yet. But once I do, I will either become comfortable with being a meat eater, or I will become vegetarian.
Secondly, I am saddened by the large amount of roadkill deer and possums in my area. Better they are meat than roadkill. Also, non-native boar are terrible on the environment around here and need to be culled.
I have learned to fish for crab, and found it satisfying in that while I was sad for the poor things, I could still justify their use as nutritious food, especially for my pregnant friend whose doctor recommmended it for her. Sadly I developed a shellfish allergy, probably from being clawed by those beasts.
Deer populations have to be managed, since they have few natural predators left. Overpopulation of deer results in some or perhaps all of the following:
Overgrazing, which reduces habitat for smaller prey animals, which reduces food for raptors and other smaller predators, leading to starvation especially during cold winters.
Overgrazing also leads to starvation of the deer themselves, plus weaker populations with higher incidents of disease.
Increased migration by deer into areas humans live in - so, more car-deer accidents, more nuisance behaviour and crop damage.
The best and most fun hunting for me is dove or quail. I love walking out in the fields on a nice day and watching the dog work. It’s amazing how a trained dog can get the scent and point the birds. Then flush them out so we get a shot.
Its hard to describe to non hunters. Total relaxation. No distractions. Just me and the dog on a beautiful day. It’s been decades since I lived anywhere that I could keep a dog, train it, and bird hunt. I miss it.
My dad pheasant hunted up in New England. The base Rod N Gun Club raised pheasants and they were released just prior to the season. Dad had just gotten a brittany spaniel puppy he was going to train. He got shipped off to Viet Nam and then transferred to a air base in Louisiana when his tour ended. I never got the opportunity to pheasant hunt.
I agree, and a good part of my childhood was as a farm kid, so we did slaughter and eat (or sell) the animals we raised.
I’ve had offers to go out hunting and would kind of like to, but the idea of sitting in a blind for ten hours freezing my butt off on the off-chance I MIGHT get a deer doesn’t really appeal so I’ve wussed out.
I’m also saddened by the carnage in fall, and especially spring time, of all the deer, possums, raccoons, turtles and other wild critters along the highway. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the spring time there’s probably a carcass every half a mile - and those are just the visible ones, that got hit and died right there. I saw a deer get hit by a semi (which kept going) and ran into a nearby field, thrashing and convulsing. I called 911 in the hopes that a cop could stop by and put it out of its misery. I also saw one of two fawns hit and killed in front of me in an urban area - the other fawn was stuck on one side of the street and the doe on the other. Several of us stopped and managed to chase the remaining fawn across the street to its mom and then chase them into the nearby woods.
Finally, car-deer collisions result in the most deaths caused by wildlife to humans (about 200 per year) of any animal in the US.
True. It’s their sense of moral and intellectual superiority, even as they make it manifestly clear that they know fuck-all on the subject, that really sells it.
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Yeah, I can see that you guys just can’t abide people who think they’re better than other people.
Or people who can’t read and comprehend. The problem is with people who know nothing at all about a subject yet have ironclad, erroneous and foolish opinions about it.
For me the actual harvest of an animal is secondary to the joy and fun of hunting.
I am fortunate to live in a heavily forested area. My house sits near the bottom of a logging road mainline, that was a railroad line when the old growth timber was taken out a hundred years ago, and before that the very same road was a Native American trail that led out of the forest down to the Columbia River and large indian settlements on the river that were noted when Lewis and Clark passed by. This road is about 20 yards from where I am sitting now. There are actually a hundred square miles of forest land right out my back door for me to go and play in. The towns are along the river and the coast around the edges with a large central forest area. You could Google Earth NW Oregon if you want to see the area.
On a hunting morning I pack a lunch, a couple beers, and various other gear along with my guns and head up into the hills. Most people would call them mountains, but in Oregon they are just hills.
The mornings in the hills can be very beautiful, the fog shrouding the river and the communities below and clear sunshine above. Views of Mt. St Helens in the background.
Then I get out on a hike into the forest and the experience is a wonder, to see all of the different animal signs, the ravens flying above, all of the serenity that being alone in the high forest provides. And sure, I am looking for a deer to shoot, but that is surpassed by being alone in the forest. I might pick a few chantrelle mushrooms while I creep through the woods.
This experience is very emotionally refreshing in a way that is hard to describe. Perhaps some urbanites feel the same way when they get out on vacation to a national park or other native area outside of their normal life. I have this available right out of my backyard and feel very lucky.
Then there is the actual deer harvest. I haven’t been successful this year but I did pay $60 for the tags and license and all that goes to the management of the wild animal population. I even bought a cougar tag for the same reason. In many or most parts of the US the deer population is higher than it ever was when the first Europeans came here because deer are better suited to open areas that civilization provides than a forest. There are huge populations of deer in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, areas that have been domesticated for a couple hundred years. If these populations are not harvested they will over graze and simply die of starvation during a hard winter.
But as I said, the actual harvest of a deer is completely secondary to my actual hunting experience. It is my time alone, away from life down below, that I cherish.
He’s a rabid equal-opportunity racist, homophobic, Palin worshiping (yes, really), Fox & Friends believer. He laughed when JFK and RFK were assassinated and has stated that he wished he had done it himself. He voted for Goldwater. He believes women should shut the fuck up and he actively harasses restaurant servers and the like. Radical enough for you? Despite all that, he’s not nearly as big a jackass as our mutual brother-in-law.
I’m a lefty and a lifelong gun owner, and have no quarrel with hunters, having hunted and fished myself. I get the whole gestalt of being out in the woods communing with nature, but the indiscriminate killing of animals solely because one can is repugnant to me.
I don’t know if I’d call them “mentally unstable.” I think “narcissistic” or “arrogant” might be more descriptive.
But now that you’ve brought it up… nothing pisses me off more than deer hunters who only want to bag a buck. I hear it so often: “Can’t wait to go hunting this year. Gonna bag me a big buck!” They won’t even take a shot at a big doe, as they won’t be able to brag about it afterwards.
When I’m in my tree stand, I don’t care what comes by. If it’s brown, it’s down. Doe or buck, it’s meat in the freezer.
You mean subjects like the biographies of people they’ve never met?
FWIW, I hunted every year from about age 9 to 17. I lost my taste for it after joining the Army. Whether that was because of some army-related experience, or just one of the things where your taste changes as you grow up, I don’t know. Still own plenty of guns.
I just stated the simple, well-known fact that it doesn’t take much skill to shoot a deer. I compared it to a video game. I play video games myself, so it’s not a condemnation, but for the simple-minded, I even stated explicitly that it wasn’t a condemnation.
Didn’t help; people still got butthurt over the perceived insult. I could give a crap.
If you’re referring to the shot itself, you may have a point when using a rifle or shotgun. But it’s bow season here in Ohio right now, and it does take some skill to use a bow. (Not so much a crossbow.)
If you want to be successful at deer hunting, you need to possess a healthy abundance of The Three P’s – patience, persistence, and perseverance.
The post I quoted said the majority of your enjoyment was from being alone in nature, still and peaceful and watching wildlife and almost a meditative state. Whether the deer came by or not was almost irrelevant.
My question was why not simply photograph the deer or just admire it. Was does it being hunting vs nature-watching add to the experience for you?
Enjoying the outdoors has a lot to do with it. Eventually hunger kicks in, whether your outdoors or not. Outdoor meat tastes a lot better than indoor meat though, solely due to the fact it lived a free life, and was a more content animal living it’s life while frolicking around in the woods, and then one day… BAM!!! SHOT IN THE FACE, and it’s on your plate next to potatoes covered in gravy.
While an indoor meal …who knows what type of happy meat pen it’s coming from.
No, it doesn’t take much skill to shoot a deer. The skill and knowledge part is being able to get close enough to a deer for long enough to get off a good shot. Deer, like most herbivores, are prey for other animals. instinctively they’re always on high alert. They’re not like a video game, they don’t do things in a predictable, scripted, or repeated manner to let you figure out the best way to just point, click, and shoot. If they’re nearby and they sense something unfamiliar, they GTFO. If the wind changes and they pick up your scent, they GTFO. They can hear and smell you long before you know they’re there.
I’m in it for the meat. Venison I take (which as far as I’m concerned tastes of something, unlike factory beef) will be meat I don’t buy from a store. But even then, I enjoy the entire experience. Trying to break it down into parts as though we’re supposed to justify each aspect of why we do it is tiring and not something I’m wont to do.
I’m not asking you to justify anything. I’m just curious about the experience as it’s meaningful the person who wrote the post I quoted, or anyone who feels similarly.
It is my belief a person who has no interest in hunting will never understand why someone would find hunting to be an enjoyable activity. As a hunter, therefore, I do not make an effort to explain (to a non-hunter) why I enjoy hunting, as I believe it would be a futile exercise.
Doe or buck, it’s meat in the freezer.