ethics thread

[Mooter]

GOOD LUCK

[LT]

Sat down in pitch black darkness, arrow nok'd,  Saturday am, no elk, no deer, no bull, heard 2 bugle at different times/locations around 7 am, but either a lil too far away or I just couldn't sweet talk 'em in, another day. to Boulder in search of an elusive deer, laters boys, laters,
                                                                    D

[tughillmcd]

     I decided to start this thread so we (myself included) could vent a bit about unethical acts we have seen/will see during our hunt. What sparked it in my mind was an article I just read in Wyoming Wildlife, titled "Face of the Hunter". Therein mentioned was a bumper-sticker on a hunter's pickup which read, "Happiness is a warm gutpile".
     The wording of the sticker troubled me and I had to think about it for a few minutes to determine what it was about the slogan. It reaches deep into me and cattle-prods something I'm very particular and touchy about...the dignity of the animal. Reducing the kill to that...detracts from the sport of preparation, stalking and a clean kill. Notice I didn't say "harvest". For me, to each their own here, I face the reality that I have just taken the life of a big game animal. While the term, harvest, is appropriate in general to game managament, I prefer to face what I have done on my way to filling the freezer. I didn't harvest it...I killed it.
      Yes, packing my critter out of the woods is a very satisying experience, but not because I nonchalantly left it's innards steaming in the forest. 
                                                         ICENSNOWMNSTR bow-stalking

  Ice I can understand your feelings about how the anti's view hunters. It bothers many of us. When you say we are giving them ammunition to use against us, they will always find something to use no matter how hard we try and keep to ourselves.

  As for the term "Happiness is a warm gutpile" I don't see that as the reward at all, rather if there is a warm gut pile then I was successful with my kill. It's no more degrading to the dignity of the animal than mounting his head or antlers to a wall as far as the anti's are concerned. I for one am sick and tired of keeping quiet, not upsetting the anti's, or giving them some ammunition to use against us. If we continue to roll over and keep quiet they will roll over us for sure. We will only protect our sports by being seen and heard and not afraid of what they think.

  What really bothers me is that "Wyoming Wildlife" magazine, the official magazine of Wyoming Game and Fish would write and article about the "Face of the Hunter" and even mention that bumper sticker. Now I haven’t read the article as I live in New York and don’t have it available here, but it sound’s like the author and editor’s are the ones feeding the anti’s fire.  Now if the New York State Conservationist magazine (NYS DEC equivalent to Wyoming Wildlife) were to print an article with a tone like what you imply, my major venting would not be in this forum, it would be a letter to the editor blasting them for misrepresenting hunters in general. Isn’t it the responsibility of Wyoming Game and Fish to promote hunting and fishing? Should their magazine be a platform for increasing anti hunting sentiment?  I would hope Wyoming hunters would let them know how they feel about this.

I recently was watching a Whitetail hunting show on VS's when a debate came to my attention.  They were talking about the pros and cons of a "Big Buck Contest".  Are we as hunters going to draw the public eye to see us as "Horn Hunters".  I love being in nature and see the creatures that the good Lord bless my eyes to see.  I will strive even to find bigger animals not so much as to have a bigger rack on my wall but to harvest more meat to feed my family.  The idea of a "Big Buck Contest" would just give anti-hunting organizations more fuel for there quest to end my favorite past time and my source of meat for my families table.  My goal when I set out into the field to harvest a animal is strictly meat and game management.  Us as hunters need to not give the public a bloody cruel image of the "Rambo Hunter" and show the positive and ethical ways that we were all brought up with.

  Moot, don't take this wrong, but I don't think a Big Buck Contest is portraying a Rambo Hunter image anymore than circulating this picture around the internet does,  as much as many of us agree with the message.

  As for the “Big Buck Contests”, if we stop them then they will just find something else to fuel their fires.  Not everyone that is involved in these contests waits for the biggest buck, they enter their buck to see how they compare with others, and if and when they are blessed with that once in a lifetime kill they can show it off. We have to quite changing the things we do just to try and appease the anti’s or we will eventually appease them to the point we end hunting all by ourselves. We need to unite and stand up to their lies and deceit and quit cowering.

  Education and involvement is the only way we will change the public opinion of us. Join a club or 2 and get involved, it is our best defense.

[LT]

GOOD LUCK

Mooter, you're gonna love this, that day and a half bowhunt in Boulder for deer was one of my more unique experiences. I mean, I knew going in that the dirt roads around the lakes were fairly well-traveled, but this is a kick....I did the textbook locate-a-spot waaaay off the road where you know the bucks will come out of the dark timber to feed, set-up downwind of said approach and wait 2 hours, quietly. Well, several vehicles passed my location, but about 15 minutes prior to last shooting light, 2 really hefty, nice 3 X 3's stepped out onto the road and began browsing the shrubbery along the edge. Could I have made the 40 yard shot from where I was? You bet...just didn't want to sling an arrow across the road...wanted them to come across into the quakies and 6-inch lush, green grass they had been coming to each and every evening. I'd wait. So here comes this guy in a white pickup...the deer have seen pickups before, they know what they are...so the bucks keep feeding in the ditch, ignoring the stopped pickup  where they are feeding, close enough for me to read the 3-inch high letters on the door..."U>S> Government" Mind you he's stopped where the deer are feeding and they are on the shoulder...in the ditch and he stands up on the horn and hazes them back into the timber. They came out later, but by then the legal light was gone, they were jittery and I was busted!  Go figger!
   Tughillmcd,  re: the "hot gutpile" bumper sticker, I don't like it, never will, I don;t care how many hunters put it on their trucks, that's just me. Sometimes a hunter's personal  ethics transcend what is written in the law.  re: Wyoming Wildlife Magazine, the author is a biolgist/hunter who saw something that disturbed him, thought it gave hunters a bad name and wrote a positive article of which the bumper-sticker was a very small part. His point was most guys/gals are ethical hunters, unfortunately a few are not. I doubt the story signifigantly fed any PETA fires, there's enough crap being done out there by unethical hunters to fuel that for years. I'm with him on the article, I did the very same thing last year...encountered something that set me off (an article for The Bugle, magazine of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation) And no offense intended, Tughillmcd, I won't spend any time on this site, justifying what I personally do or do not do concerning anti-hunters/anti-gunners. On a personal note, I agree with you about not soft-peddling or cowtowing to them, believe me, when I deal with them one-one-one, they depart wishing they had not brought up the topic.  We can talk more about that "personal ethics transcending the law" ...or anything else you wish. 

(Moot, we need more smiley-face icons, aren't these the same guys who run Iceshanty ? Heeey! Nice bunnies!)
                                                                 ICENSNOMNSTR. Theeee El-Teeee

   

[LT]

ITS CALL MASSIVE NUT SYNDROM.  I HAPPEN TO SUFFER FROM THE SAME THING.   

Mooter, I have been told I am "massively nuts"... is that one and the same condition? 

                                                           Theeeee Lteeee/ICEMSNONSTR