IS IT JUST ME OR WHAT?

[45MAN]

I KILLED MY FIRST DEER (A WHITETAIL BUCK) 65 YEARS AGO (USING MY DAD's MODEL 94 30-30) AND MY MOST RECENT DEER (A WHITETAIL BUCK) YESTERDAY MORNING (USING A 14" RPM XL IN 356 WINCHESTER), AND HAVE KILLED A LOT OF DEER (LOTS OF WHITETAILS, A COUPLE ON MULIES, A COUPLE OF ELK, AND LOTS OF EXOTICS) IN BETWEEN. I AM NOT AGAINST DEER HUNTING AND GLAD TO SEE OTHERS DOING IT BUT LATELY I HAVE BEEN FEELING LIKE I DO NOT WANT TO KILL ANYMORE WHITETAILS AS I AM JUST "not mad at 'em" ANYMORE. IF I HAD A GOOD PLACE TO HUNT HOGS WITH HANDGUNS MY WHITETAIL HUNTING DAYS MAY BE OVER. I STILL WANT TO HUNT AND KILL HOGS, COYOTES AND DANGEROUS GAME BUT MY DESIRE TO HUNT DEER AND ANTELOPE HAS WANED.

I AM ALONE ON THIS OR WHAT?

[bula]

Funny, I no longer feel the need to tag out. Have friends that are still driven, DRIVEN, to fill every tag they can buy for Oh/Penn and sometimes other states too. Their kids outta the house, they give away some every year. They make good use of every pound of meat, not wasteful, but they are still number driven. If the weather is not horrible, the scenery good, the company good, I am ok.. 

[bigbrowndog]

Spoke with Sherry the other day and told her if I could just hunt pigs I’d be happy. I like all hunting, but pigs are just flat out fun. The sharing a campfire with like minded folks is more important than killing something. But if I’m gonna pay for the privilege then I’ll take game as well. Folks who feel they have to kill in order to have hunted do not interest me much.

Trapr

[sixshot]

Rey, you & I are about the same age & I've sort of hit the same cycle a couple of times over the years but for me its been a little bit different. The first cycle was rifles, I got to a point where I just about quit because that "little boy" excitement just wasn't there anymore & so I transitioned over to single shot hand guns for a number of years. Then the same thing happened with them, it got to be a little bit boring & about 25 years ago I went to revolvers & re-found the old excitement again.
Now it's mostly the getting out in the mountains & sitting next to a warm fire, drinking from a cold stream, seeing the golden leaves fall off of the Quaken Aspens, listening to a Owl hoot in the distance & telling stories with my son's & grandkids. I'll be 79 in a couple of months & I'll never get tired of that. So for me the hunt is secondary but I'll always hunt deer because it's what I do. And who could ever, ever get tired of hearing a elk bugle right at daylight on an early morning, down on those beaver ponds in the fog, damn!

Dick

[hunter01]

I still love to hunt, but like you, I prefer to shoot a hog or coyote over a deer. I still like to pick out a particular buck every year and see if I can get him, but hunting has evolved into MUCH more than killing as I’ve gotten older. Had a group of WT and a group of muleys in the “front yard” (a ten acre wheat field) this morning. I enjoyed watching them and wouldn’t let the bird dogs out to potty until they had their fill of wheat. I think I just have more respect for the game than I did when I was younger.

[taffin]

Jan 14, 2024 12:47:27 GMT -5 45MAN said:

I KILLED MY FIRST DEER (A WHITETAIL BUCK) 65 YEARS AGO (USING MY DAD's MODEL 94 30-30) AND MY MOST RECENT DEER (A WHITETAIL BUCK) YESTERDAY MORNING (USING A 14" RPM XL IN 356 WINCHESTER), AND HAVE KILLED A LOT OF DEER (LOTS OF WHITETAILS, A COUPLE ON MULIES, A COUPLE OF ELK, AND LOTS OF EXOTICS) IN BETWEEN. I AM NOT AGAINST DEER HUNTING AND GLAD TO SEE OTHERS DOING IT BUT LATELY I HAVE BEEN FEELING LIKE I DO NOT WANT TO KILL ANYMORE WHITETAILS AS I AM JUST "not mad at 'em" ANYMORE. IF I HAD A GOOD PLACE TO HUNT HOGS WITH HANDGUNS MY WHITETAIL HUNTING DAYS MAY BE OVER. I STILL WANT TO HUNT AND KILL HOGS, COYOTES AND DANGEROUS GAME BUT MY DESIRE TO HUNT DEER AND ANTELOPE HAS WANED.

I AM ALONE ON THIS OR WHAT?

As my good friend HAL SWIGGETT said years ago: "I'm not as mad at him as I used to be!"

[woody]

I used to love deer hunting. Especially bow hunting. I would fill every tag. Now I could really give or take deer hunting. I still enjoy bow hunting some and now that we can use rifles I do like using lever guns.

What really ruined it for me is the way hunting has gone. Everyone thinks they need to kill only big bucks and look down on the guys that are out to fill the freeze with a few does and any buck they choose to shoot. I miss the days of getting together with a few buddies to push out a few spots to fill tags and have a good time most of all. I know new hunters that have hunted for years and have yet to kill a deer because they are holding out for a big one. One that probably doesn’t even exist where they hunt. I call the new style of hunting the Outdoor Channel syndrome. Guys forget that what they see on the outdoor channel is not what the average guy hunts. They are putting a lot of money and time into “farming” big bucks to kill.

Another big spoiler for me is leasing. In my area it used to be easy to find spots to hunt. We always gifted the landowners something or helped them out in some way. Those days are long gone. Everything is about leasing. Money driven. Hunting for the common hunter is harder and harder. I look at my kids and think in 30 years they won’t be hunting because of this. It’s becoming a rich man’s sport. I have one buddy that is pretty well off and worked hard for it. He’s hunted all over the world and leases a lot of land locally. Always bragging on what he kills. Every once in a while I have to remind him he’s paying alot to kill what he does. It’s tougher for us common folks. He agrees and usually toned down the bragging around the gun club. I get real happy for the guy that kills a big buck on his 50 acres more than the guy that leases 100’s of acres, puts in food plots etc.

So what did I shoot this year. One doe with the 30/30. Nothing eats like a deer that has fed on corn and soybeans all year. Also a bear in Maine early fall.

[500fksjr]

I have come to this point with most hunting except Ground hogs,yotes,and pig hunting...My kids are all grown and the grand kids are all under the age of 9. I have started shooting 22 rifles and single action 22s with them,and that is a hoot!!

[handgunhuntingafield]

I enjoy being solo in the back country. The harder….both physically and mentally….the better the hunt is. I packed in several times this year and got on deer and elk…just not the ones I wanted. Ended up hunting more close to home to fill a couple elk and deer tags for the freezer.

I like cow/calf elk better than beef. I’m always trying to fill those tags.

After my time in the service I was pretty much done with rifles. Handguns opened a new path in hunting. I have now almost completely left the single shots behind and went nearly all wheelgun.

The stalk…solo deep in the back country in pursuit of game…..that gets the blood going…..strangely…I enjoy the pack out as well…my back and knees, not so much.

[revolvercranker]

If you feel that way I suggest a rifle stock setup with a scope and a camera that records where the shot hit the deer or whatever species you are hunting. This was propose my an anti hunter group that firmly believe we hunters only hunt to KILL. I hunted deer for a few reasons. One was the sport. Two was for the meat. Three was to be with friends and enjoy the great outdoors. Could we say the same thing about women? That is when we were young we went after the women and it was great back then. Is it or would it be the same today for us? Don't bring up ED please.

[bigbore5]

I have slowed down on deer hunting myself, but until they start committing suicide by locking themselves in my freezer I probably won't stop entirely. These days I prefer a fat doe to a buck.

[Fowler]

I am reaching the point where I would rather watch my shoot something over myself but I still want to get mine so to speak. But I certainly don’t have the bloodlust I once did.

[cas]

Every now and then I think about it. It's not that I "don't want to kill them anymore", heck I kill them so infrequently it would be like very little had changed. I'm good for one every 5+. Maybe it's more of a "I go through all this every year, for what? To try and kill some poor animal?" On the other hand, it's such a big part of my life because frankly, there's so little else. I fear what I'd become without it. It also validates how so much of my time is spent.

Another part I have noticed has to do with work. Where I work there's deer everywhere. It's a rare day I don't see a few. Some days I see a dozen or more. They're semi tame at this point. I'm immersed in them, instead of the being some rare creature you seldom see. I get it, how non hunters see things, "Why would you want to kill these beautiful animals that just stand around not bothering anyone." The more acclimated I get to seeing them, the more "pet like" they become, the lower my desire becomes. I've always had a very strong set of "personal rules" when it comes to hunting, this has just made them stronger.

Rules.... like the brief time I got to go bow hunting this year. It was a scenario I played out in my head several times, "What will I do?" if this happens. I figured I'd play it by ear. It happened just as I expected, and played out as I thought. I didn't see any deer in the woods, from my tree stand. But the last evening I did have does feeding on the apple trees in the yard/meadow in front of the house. 35 yards from the door of the cabin. I let them be. I came to shoot a deer in the woods, not in the yard.



("How I shot one from inside the porch..." would have made a cool story for generations though. Had it not been my last evening in camp, who knows... )

[cas]

Jan 14, 2024 15:54:53 GMT -5 cas said:

Another part I have noticed has to do with work. Where I work there's deer everywhere. It's a rare day I don't see a few.ows... )

Sort of off topic, but I thought it funny. No sooner did I finish typing that than I got called in to work for something quick. I wasn't really looking for them, just keeping track of the really obvious ones... I counted 11 deer in about 6 minutes of driving in and out.

Counting the two I saw in the yard ^, I saw 6 deer in 19 days of hunting.

[sharps4590]

For the last few years I have been saying "the fire is burning quite dim." Last year I couldn't walk, (back surgery Dec. 22nd that was wonderfully successful), so I didn't hunt. The year before I killed a button buck, which might be my last deer. This year didn't bother going.

Except for 3 years in Wyoming, the last 45 years we've always had our own land to hunt on. Out there it might as well have been ours, we lived 1/4 mile from Bridger Natl. Forest.

As others have said, I don't like the direction hunting has taken with many. I have to laugh at those who need a 338 Lapua and a 12 X 36 scope to shoot a 100 lb. deer at 60 yards. Or who look like they're going on a secret, deadly mission with their camo and AR rifle with flashlight, scope, Red Dot, 1/4 in. drive socket set, can opener and bug out bag.

How did we ever kill anything wearing jeans and red and black wool jackets....with an open sighted 30-30 no less?

Anyway, yeah, I think I've just killed enough stuff.