Free: Contests & Raffles.
It's great to read stories about hunters/people rescuing wildlife. Killing wildlife legally during a hunting season is done many different ways. Some hunt private fields and are more harvesting than hunting and have great success rates. Some drive the roads with somewhat lower success. Some prefer to put down some boot leather in the mountains and have somewhat less success still. I have a hard time feeling bad toward someone who legally takes an animal on public land, regardless of the circumstance. Would I have made the same decision? I would hope not given the same circumstance. Is an animal that's stupid enough to get caught in an irrigation ditch likely to survive long anyway? Probably not. Let them have their bull, sporting or not. Hopefully, they'll make good use of all of it. As hunters and gun owners concerned about our privileges and rights, we have enough people to fight without turning in on ourselves.
Quote from: 92xj on September 30, 2020, 03:12:27 PMHe saw the farmers family/friends post on Facebook that they just rescued an elk out of the canal. He then drove to the location and shot the elk.Man, that is a tough one. I certainly would not have gotten a thrill out of that hunt. Hopefully it happened because the family desperately needed the meat.Different circumstances but similar in a way. My daughter had the "Any Deer" tag last year. We got a call from a friend that he bedded down a nice 2Pt that had already been shot by somebody. He said that it was in bad shape and not going anywhere. My daughter and I hiked into the spot he had seen it lay down and when it stood up you could see that it had been shot through the "elbow" likely the day before as the season was only open for 2 days at that point. Anyway, my daughter took one look at the buck and said to me "Daddy, I have to put him out of his misery." She took aim and put him down. Not the hunt we wanted but we used the animal and it was put out of it's misery and we gave him a fast death compared to the slow painful one he was sure to have. Sometimes the "hunt" is not what you would want. I don't think this is going to be a case of a guy needed the meat so badly that he was able to look past the circumstance but in the end he had a tag and he filled it. Legal? Probably but certainly not a story that will get much admiration around the campfires of the hunting community.
He saw the farmers family/friends post on Facebook that they just rescued an elk out of the canal. He then drove to the location and shot the elk.
Quote from: pianoman9701 on September 30, 2020, 02:13:20 PMIt's great to read stories about hunters/people rescuing wildlife. Killing wildlife legally during a hunting season is done many different ways. Some hunt private fields and are more harvesting than hunting and have great success rates. Some drive the roads with somewhat lower success. Some prefer to put down some boot leather in the mountains and have somewhat less success still. I have a hard time feeling bad toward someone who legally takes an animal on public land, regardless of the circumstance. Would I have made the same decision? I would hope not given the same circumstance. Is an animal that's stupid enough to get caught in an irrigation ditch likely to survive long anyway? Probably not. Let them have their bull, sporting or not. Hopefully, they'll make good use of all of it. As hunters and gun owners concerned about our privileges and rights, we have enough people to fight without turning in on ourselves.Here we have Pianoman making the argument that if its legal its ok. Don't we hold ourselves in higher regard then what Pianoman is saying?
All I know is if I did that (which I wouldn't), I'm pretty sure..... no, I know that I would be disowned by all of my immediate hunting buddies and probably all of my friends and family. Elk are one of the toughest animals on this earth and for anyone to suggest that it probably would have died anyway and needed to be put out of it's misery is sorely mistaken. It at least deserved a chance after the efforts of the people who put in the effort to try to save it from being "stupid" for getting stuck in a man made water source. They get stuck in all sorts of man made obstacles ( fences, bailing twine, mud bogs, broken ice, etc.) and most of the general public, including sportsmen typically try to help them out of the predicament knowing they can possibly pursue them on another day in a "fair chase" situation. What kind of a sicko enjoys walking up to a defenseless wild animal and executes it just because they have a tag and technically it's "legal" (aside from trespassing on private property and using their occupational right to drive a ditch road that is posted). I sure hope this loser is going to suffer the embarrassment and consequences of his action for quite a while and is labeled appropriately Ever heard the term "slob hunter"? He's the definition. Unfortunately he has children to teach this kind of behavior to. Nothing surprises me anymore, including some of the posts on this subject.
It is always hard to say what is the truth anymore without both sides and a healthy amount of skepticism and common sense to make a judgement. Looking at one side of the story, we can ascribe all sorts of ethical and moral deficiencies to the person who killed the bull. If the story and assumption(?) that he read the Facebook post and decided to kill the bull for bragging rights (or whatever unethical/perverse reason) is true, the guy is a turd sack that gives hunters a black eye in the view of people reading the story. There are a lot of assumptions to the article and bad feelings weighed against the guy. Another plausible scenario is that a guy gets a call about a grievously injured elk and he goes out to humanely End the suffering, harvest, and salvage whatever possible. From the posts I have read Here, all are basically throwing the guy and daughter (?) under the bus as completely amoral trophy hunters more concerned with killing a set of horns than an actual hunt with no prof other than the assumptions in the article. Years ago I had a class called Crucial Conversations that delved into the psychology of different biases that lead to misunderstanding and assumption of bad intentions by people with no proof support the feelings. Great class that more people should take, it really shows how misunderstandings can build a narrative on nothing more than a few misconstrued facts or actions. Just my 0.02
