Yeah, that’s pretty tacky all the way around.
The photos you’re all seeing is just the result of the social networks. It has little to do with hunting, as those photos have been taken literallysincetheirwere cameras.
Women hunters and fishers that are the real deal, do the dirty work (like field dressing) , and put in the effort are damned impressive. It’s a step towards equality. Between Brave and Hunger Games, young women’s interest in archery has skyrocketed. I’m betting a good percentage of those young ladies may take up bow hunting and bowfishing in the near future.
Obviously, huh? Simple question then – if the odds are so unfair or stacked in favor of the hunter, why isn’t there a deer killed for every deer hunter out there? Pure and simple, if you are right then the 1.2 million deer hunters in PA should mean 1.2 million dead deer. Actually what you are probably looking at is 350,000 ----- so in a manner of speaking, in the fair chase between deer and man, man ain’t doing all that well. Add to that (or compensate the numbers by) the fact that PA allows multiple deer per hunter (depending on how you do it, 5 or more) and what you more likely have is 1 out of 8 hunters being successful at best and some figures give it as more like 1 in 15.
Poop or run away? Don’t discount the ability to run over impossible terrain as a defense mechanism. And setting that aside, try even finding one of the durn things. And once you do just try getting a shot. You don’t need a firearm or a license to do it. Get some blaze orange (for safety) and a good camera and go take some shots that way. You may learn it isn’t as easy as it looks on television – most of which is “staged” on deer farms with the semi-domesticated version. Its one of the reasons good wildlife photographers are as rare as good/usually successful hunters.
I don’t hunt, but I eat meat. I think that the life of a wild animal that is responsibly hunted in the wild is infinitely better than that of a factory farmed animal that is born, lives and dies in abject misery. I also can understan why a huntr would want to document his/her hunting success.
The OP’s position on women hunters isn’t a little sexist, it’s just plain old sexist.
It was part of the package deal that they purchased. An actual ton, 2000 lbs of meat, frozen and shipped back to the US by air. It was all included in the great deal they purchased for about $18000 as I recall. They only kept the best cuts and gave the rest to locals.
I don’t think the USDA gets involved in game for personal use, or course you couldn’t sell it, but it was all for personal (or family) use. I know that closer to home many people hunt and fish in Canada and bring home the things they catch into the US without much trouble.
Some kinds are amusing. Depends on what habitat you’re trying to blend into.
Adding to the pile on: Great post, Shagnasty.
Especially for a city dwelling lily-livered non hunter! 
We should meet up for a beer sometime. I’ll share some of this year’s venison if you want.
Yes, to both questions. They are edible and they are becoming so common in Oregon as to be a nuisance. They used to be hunted with packs of hounds, much like raccoons are hunted in the southern US. But that was outlawed in 1994 and since then cougars/puma/mountain lions have become so prolific that they are moving into suburban areas and eating house cats and dogs.
So now the cougar hunting season in Oregon lasts all year long. You need to have a hunting license and an additional cougar tag. Price for that cougar tag is a whopping $14.50. And should you happen to bag one you can go out and buy another tag and keep hunting. A deer tag costs $24.50 for a resident, $385.50 non-resident. You know how much a non-resident cougar tag costs? Still $14.50
They are very elusive animals so I don’t want to give the impression that they are running all over and being slaughtered. I have only seen one in the wild while hunting. And it was just a glimpse.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/licenses_regs/hunting_trapping.asp
Let’s fight some ignorance here.
Deer most definitely have many “resources” and “abilities” that they can and do use with great effectiveness to avoid hunters. Those might not be the exact words I would have chosen, but the fact that deer are very difficult to hunt is impossible to argue against unless you are completely ignorant.
Deer have excellent vision, plus they have rods and cones in their eyes so they can basically see at night where humans cannot. This is why they are mostly nocturnal. Especially the bucks. I have cameras out in my woods and there are some bucks that literally only get photographed in the middle of the night. They simply don’t move during daylight and are thus impossible to hunt.
Deer have excellent hearing and work in herds so that while a few are eating others are scanning their huge ears like radar in all directions. If just one of them sees you or smells you they all will bust and run off.
Deer have excellent noses and can smell like a dog. They use the wind to their advantage and know if a human is upwind of them.
Deer are also naturally camouflaged and are just about impossible to see until you are right on top of them.
Finally, deer can and do sharpen these skills all the time. When stalking a herd of six does earlier this year it was the old matriarch who was always staring right in my direction. She was old enough and wise enough to smell me and be looking for me and this prevented me from getting close enough for a shot. The younger fawn of the year does that were with her? Not so much, which is why one of them is currently occupying the top shelf of my freezer.
The idea that deer just sit there in a field or something waiting to be shot is a silly and false perception of what hunting is.
Hunting whitetails is damn hard. Plenty of years I go home empty handed despite working very hard at it.
On to women and hunting. This is a real thing. Hunting magazines have been devoting advertisements and articles to women hunters for a while now, but I wasn’t sure if it was just for show. But more recently hunting stores like Cabela’s are devoting large section to women’s clothing. They wouldn’t be doing this if women weren’t buying them. Camo for women is as functional as the men’s stuff. Scent proof, water resistant, etc. Plus it’s cut to be flattering and made for women.
I think it’s cool, first of all, although I have yet to run into a woman in the field. But I also think it’s great for the sport, since as others have pointed out hunting is stronger with a diverse group participating in it.
Just to clear the air here, when kopek referred to the resources available to deer, he was referring to a wildly different meaning of “using resources.” I was thinking in terms of beavers building dams, or birds building nests: physically using the actual resources in order to make the environment more survivable. I was curious as to what resources the deer were using, and how.
As it turns out, what everybody else seems to be thinking of when they say “use resources” is “evolve into a species of deer which hides all the time and is very sneaky.” Hunters are helping them along in this by shooting the ones that don’t hide well enough.
Ignorance fought!
OT: Washington banned them in 1996, which is probably why that same year I adopted a beautiful redbone coonhound who’d been found dumped off in Tacoma, with his ribs showing. (I say we hunt bad people for sport, preferably from horseback)
They’re completely different species, mountain lions were not mentioned in the post you replied to, and, though they are both ‘big cats’ it’s really not the same.
Mountain lions are in a different situation from lions- they are not being bred for hunting in game reserves consuming local resources, they don’t sit out in the open allowing people to pick out the big males, and they don’t live in prides, so there isn’t the same behaviour dynamic.
I don’t know enough about the mountain lion situation in the US to say if I would agree with controlled hunting being permitted or not; my main concern is the effect on the local ecology, and I really don’t have enough information about that.
I’m wary about it certainly, and I think any hunting should be carefully checked for sustainability and effects on the local environment regularly, but I won’t automatically condemn it.
They do. Or at least Customs & Border Patrol does. Canada, and sometimes Mexico, get treated differently than the rest of the world, if that link from CBP is right. I mean, your friends did it, so there’s a legal way; I was just curious what sort of rigmarole you had to go through to do it. The people I’ve talked to who’ve hunted Africa mentioned the game was delicious, especially nilgai, but I don’t think they brought any of the meat back, and so I was surprised to hear your account.
Mmmmmm, 1 ton of antelope…
I have nothing against hunting for meat, but don’t like hunting pictures regardless of the hunter’s gender. I don’t like fish or game either, but have nothing against people who do like it (no political opinion against it, I just don’t like the taste. I grew up on the darned stuff, and if I’m lucky I won’t have to ever eat it again :)).
Nicely said!
I live in a rural area, where the overpopulation of deer has become a significant problem. Hunting has become unfashionable in during the current vegetarian/vegan fad, and that has contributed to the problem.
I am not a hunter myself, and I’m not going to start now, at over 60. But I respect the good and conscientious hunters, male and female, as much as I disrespect the untrained, disprespectful ones.
Let me explain the last. When I was young, men would come up from NYC to hunt, and they were not educated in gun safety or hunting procedure. They had a tendency to shoot anything that moved, including cows, horses, dogs. Not real hunters. And even though they were city sophisticates who didn’t get red necks from outdoor work, they were true rednecks, in the derogatory sense, in mentality.
I know someone who hunts in Canada, and says he is not able to bring the meat back home to the US. He donates it to local food banks or the local Indian (First Nations) reserves.
Lions are edible; google “lion burgers” for example.
Sport hunters are a poor choice for that since unlike nonhuman predators they go after the biggest, healthiest animals, not the weak ones. Human hunting selectively breeds animals to be smaller, more sickly, more prone to deformities because those are the ones hunters don’t shoot. If that’s really the point of hunting then forbid sport hunting and pay people to go and kill the sickly ones and leave the bodies for the scavengers.
Then the bunny had it comin’. Some rabbits just need killin’.
I think you will find more hunters are meat hunters than trophy hunters. Plenty of big ones left to breed. They still have to fight for the right to breed and they still have to be smart enough to avoid predators including man. I doubt hunting is changing the course of evolution in this regard.