Free: Contests & Raffles.
It was a bad conclusion to come to Bow. I assumed that all the westside guys wouldn’t be driving to the Methow if they had deer coming out their kazzu, especially with gas costing 6 bucks a gallon. That buys a lot of black angus compared to eating one of those sage brush stinking does.
I'm a little bit older now so I have seen some of the changes....You used to get razzed and/or made fun of if you were a doe shooter, no one in camp shot does back in the day, not even kids, even if you could. Of course, you wouldn't be caught dead rolling into camp with a man-bra for your binoculars or ladies half chaps. Things have changed!I remember the hunting mags pushing doe shooting back in the day, it was entirely foreign to us in the West but they kept pushing their Eastern whitetail stuff on us, including climbing into a tree, clothes made to look like a tree (and then put your hunter orange over top of it, about as stupid as it gets) and "scent blocking" sprays. I guarantee some of you still have your butt-out tool and likely carry it with you but you won't admit to it. Eventually, the everyone-gets-a trophy-crowd came along and they think that somehow our youth won't be happy unless they shoot something and doe shooting became a thing. Personally, I think it was from the increase in constant kids sports, the kids would only have a day or two to hunt instead of the season, with the men in camp learning and apprenticing. Now, guys can't leave the truck without a tacticool 1st aid kit and a satellite messenger beacon, they have no traditional skills.As far as predators go, every house in the country you walked in to had a .22 or a .410 in the corner for anything, and I mean anything that threatened the chickens. You can use your imagination here, 4-legged and winged, it didn't matter. The same thing happened in the hunting woods too, that's why we didn't have a predator problem 30 years ago, in fact if someone even saw a cougar it was pretty rare. I know it won't change back again. Just know that your Grandpa and Great Uncle's would mock you relentlessly if they could see you hunt now days. Between jokes about your outfit and your scope with the big knobs on it, they would get a bigger buck (with iron sights) then you, drag it out by themselves, and throw it on the top of a rig and drive it right through the middle of town waving to the folks on the side of the road as they went by. All of this in wool or denim pants with nothing other then a sandwich in their pocket and an extra shell or two.
Quote from: boneaddict on October 20, 2022, 07:42:53 AMIt was a bad conclusion to come to Bow. I assumed that all the westside guys wouldn’t be driving to the Methow if they had deer coming out their kazzu, especially with gas costing 6 bucks a gallon. That buys a lot of black angus compared to eating one of those sage brush stinking does. You spend enough each time you travel to the east side to take your pictures to buy a lot of angus?
The generalizations you put in there as ‘absolutes’ of how things ‘used to be’ do not correlate to my experiences. Perhaps in YOUR camp it was that way. I am ‘fairly’ certain I am older than you, so maybe that all happened after I stopped being ‘part of the group’ and hunted on my own, but in the camps I was in any deer was good. The trophy hunters went for horns, the meat hunters went for either.
Fast forward 40-50 years and you encounter a generation of hunters and non hunters who have put a negative spin on the term "trophy hunter", to the point they actually spit it off their tongues for the fowl taste it leaves them . Even here on a hunting site, trophy is usually used as a derogatory negative almost insult. If you kill a mature buck on here, youre a trophy hunter even though 99% of the bucks so called dont actually reach that officially. I admit, I prefer to hunt mature animals WHEN THEY ARE AVAILABLE which is not always, and matures can be in limited supplies by regions and conditions and events (blue tongue, fire, etc.) making it less likely for success.
To be so egotistical to think I am talking about him specifically is laughable......well unless he has a guilty conscious. One that sits so high on the pedestal to think his way of hunting is the only way to hunt and then partaking in actions that lesson the chance for others to partake in legal hunting is wrong. Again....prove me wrong.
