Harvesting versus Hunting

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Its funny to read some of these comments(won't be specific).

I know some of the guys posting here are old enough to remember the days of old when if you used a caplock bp rifle instead of a flintlock, you where looked down upon. Then the caplocks became sociable acceptable and if you shot an inline its not a bp rifle. Hell, lets go back to the matchlock guys. They think all the rest of us don't hunt fair and if yoy don't use real bp then,well,your just a disgrace and don't belong in the woods at all:rolleyes:.

Then we have people that say unless you use a homemade recurve bow, you're not bowhunting. Some say a compound is ok but crossbows shouldn't be allowed during bow season.

If a caveman was alive today, he'd no doubt consider every one of us nothing but animal killers or harvestors for using anything but a rock or a spear.

Compared to the caveman's standards,which probably gave the animal the fairest chance,what gives anyone here the right to criticize another person's legal form of hunting. Also, I believe I've read that the caveman even baited.

If I want to kill a deer, I can usually open up the window and kill one under one of the apple/peach/pear tree's or when they're raiding the garden or the wifes flower gardens.

We eat deer and plenty of it. Ohio has a long bow season starting in Sept. and I usually try to get my freezer meat as fast as I can. These are nice does.

I'll usually have a buck picked out cause I've spent alot of time throughout the summer scouting. After freezer meat is in its game-on between the buck and I. The longest I've ever hunted the same buck was six years and I think he died of old age cause I never did shoot him.
Hunted him by stand,still hunted,hunted his scrape's and rubs, hunted oak and beech tree flats, standing corn,corn piles,alfalfa fields, watering holes even dreamed of hunting him. Used compound and crossbow, shotgun,pistol, b/p rifle's(yes, Hawkins 50cal. and an inline, ooooh). Would always see him at least once a season and in six years ,the most I saw him in one season was three times. All out of my range.

Some may call this trophy hunting. I call it hard hunting and a great challenge. Could have killed other bucks/does but didn't, had my does and I wanted him.

This year I'll be hunting a buck(if he survived,haven't seen sign of him yet this summer) for the third year. I'll kill my freezer meat then start hunting.

From the sounds of some of these post and some in the other thread, I've probably listed a way,style or weapon used that has offended a few if not many posters but one thing I can say is I've never taken any game illegally.

I posted in the other thread that IMO, if you use a legal weapon of any kind or hunt in any legal fashion you can always be critized by someone if you go back in history far enough.

Soooo... unless we go out in a loin cloth and hunt with a rock or a spear are we all just killing??? To bad there aren't any cavemen living today:D
 
I think you're being too harsh. WHat's the difference between him and you or someone hiring a guide? The guide feeds or follows the animals constantly and generally takes one right to them. In this case he save a grand or three and does his own prep year round. WHat's wrong with that? Does he make it seem too easy? :)
 
IN MY OPINION, any animal or bird taken over or near bait, from an elevated stand,with the assistance of an electic call, or first observed from a vechicle and then stalked, is a harvest. There is nothing wrong with harvesting an animal. As I get older and fatter these methods are sounding better. Many times I have taken cow elk in the winter in farmers fields. These are called depravation hunts. However I have never considered this hunting. It was a simple method to fill my freezer. It is no different than buying a Jersey cow from a farmer and slaughering it. I HARVESTED a few buffalo in the past as well. This is entirely different from the man that got one of the few wild buffalo tags, and went about wandering the woods for a week looking for a wild buffalo. Isnt baiting deer the same as raising livestock to butcher in the fall? Just my opinion and my code of conduct.
 
In reply to Shortwave...

Its funny to read some of these comments(won't be specific).

I know some of the guys posting here are old enough to remember the days of old when if you used a caplock bp rifle instead of a flintlock, you where looked down upon. Then the caplocks became sociable acceptable and if you shot an inline its not a bp rifle. Hell, lets go back to the matchlock guys. They think all the rest of us don't hunt fair and if yoy don't use real bp then,well,your just a disgrace and don't belong in the woods at all.

Then we have people that say unless you use a homemade recurve bow, you're not bowhunting. Some say a compound is ok but crossbows shouldn't be allowed during bow season.

If a caveman was alive today, he'd no doubt consider every one of us nothing but animal killers or harvestors for using anything but a rock or a spear.

Compared to the caveman's standards,which probably gave the animal the fairest chance,what gives anyone here the right to criticize another person's legal form of hunting. Also, I believe I've read that the caveman even baited.

If I want to kill a deer, I can usually open up the window and kill one under one of the apple/peach/pear tree's or when they're raiding the garden or the wifes flower gardens.

We eat deer and plenty of it. Ohio has a long bow season starting in Sept. and I usually try to get my freezer meat as fast as I can. These are nice does.

I'll usually have a buck picked out cause I've spent alot of time throughout the summer scouting. After freezer meat is in its game-on between the buck and I. The longest I've ever hunted the same buck was six years and I think he died of old age cause I never did shoot him.
Hunted him by stand,still hunted,hunted his scrape's and rubs, hunted oak and beech tree flats, standing corn,corn piles,alfalfa fields, watering holes even dreamed of hunting him. Used compound and crossbow, shotgun,pistol, b/p rifle's(yes, Hawkins 50cal. and an inline, ooooh). Would always see him at least once a season and in six years ,the most I saw him in one season was three times. All out of my range.

Some may call this trophy hunting. I call it hard hunting and a great challenge. Could have killed other bucks/does but didn't, had my does and I wanted him.

This year I'll be hunting a buck(if he survived,haven't seen sign of him yet this summer) for the third year. I'll kill my freezer meat then start hunting.

From the sounds of some of these post and some in the other thread, I've probably listed a way,style or weapon used that has offended a few if not many posters but one thing I can say is I've never taken any game illegally.

I posted in the other thread that IMO, if you use a legal weapon of any kind or hunt in any legal fashion you can always be critized by someone if you go back in history far enough.

Soooo... unless we go out in a loin cloth and hunt with a rock or a spear are we all just killing??? To bad there aren't any cavemen living today
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I think you can take it even one step further; cavemen did not care one iota about giving the animal a fair chance...they would have done anything necessary to get food, be it beating in the skull of a sick, 1/2 dead animal with a rock to stampeding whole herds off of cliffs, to fighting and killing members of other tribes to steal their food, if they had to.

The idea of a "sporting chance" came about much, much later in our evolutionary chain, when we had enough food through agriculture and domestication to not to fear starvation anymore.

Even Native Americans practiced some of these ancient techniques, and I am pretty sure that many tribes in the Amazon still do to this day.

We need to stick together and support each other in ALL types of legal hunting.
 
As was just mentioned, and should be apparent, primitive "hunters" were not "hunters." They were harvesters. Driving animals into a trap and beating them to death with rocks and clubs isn't hunting. Stampeding animals off of a cliff is not. Setting fires and eating whatever dies isn't, either.

There was no sport to it, and no hunting skills whatsoever, unless you insist on narrowly defining hunting as the killing of an animal for food.

I'm going to say that the buffalo hunters weren't "hunting," All they did was scout around until a herd was found, then kill until they either ran out of bullets or bison, or had as many as they could practically deal with.

If I went to grandpa's apple tree and shot the things off of the stems, would I be hunting, or harvesting?
 
briandg: Oh, I agree with you; that is all indeed harvesting as opposed to hunting.

But I still say that if it is legal, then we should support one another in our choices, rather than put each other down & try to ban it just because we don't prefer it.

United we stand ;)
 
briandg said:
As was just mentioned, and should be apparent, primitive "hunters" were not "hunters." They were harvesters. Driving animals into a trap and beating them to death with rocks and clubs isn't hunting. Stampeding animals off of a cliff is not. Setting fires and eating whatever dies isn't, either.

There was no sport to it, and no hunting skills whatsoever, unless you insist on narrowly defining hunting as the killing of an animal for food.
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I disagree.

As I tried to suggest above, the whole idea that hunting is a sport is a relatively recent development. It's not a sport if it's necessary for your family's survival, it's a matter of life and death. That doesn't mean that it's not hunting. But if you think hunting must be "sporting," and if that, to you, involves an element of chance or risk, consider this: the methods you describe depend on the herd of caribou, or whatever, showing up where a particular group of hunters has predicted it's going to. If they don't, there's a good chance that their families will starve over the winter. Not uncommon. And as to the element of risk involved in surrounding, oh, a mastodon stuck in a swamp, getting up close and personal, and killing it with clubs... I double dare you. :cool:

Unless you have some other definition of sport. If so, please explain.

As to the level of skill involved, those methods of taking game required, let's see -- scouting... tracking... flint-knapping and other tool-making skills... predicting the migration routes of game herds... these are all skills required for the activities of which you're so scornful.

Not to mention being able to organize a bunch of testosterone-crazed cavemen into a team... :D

And standing in one spot, waiting for game to come along -- it takes a degree of patience and extreme self-control: think here of the Inuit hunter (yes, hunter) standing motionless for hours on the sea ice in below-zero temperatures, over an air hole used by seals. If you don't think that's a skill, you might want to try it some time...

"Harvesting" is a term associated with agriculture. There's a reason anthropologists make a clear distinction between hunter/gatherer cultures, which used whatever wild sources of food they had available, and agricultural and herding ones, in which food, whether animal or vegetable, was systematically raised. (Presumably there were many groups that did both -- but the point is that they're very different ways of making a living.) Taking genuinely wild, free-ranging game is more or less universally considered to be hunting. If you want to get picky, you might exclude taking game with snares and traps from the definition, but otherwise, no, sorry, it's all hunting.

I think "harvesting" is, perhaps, an applicable term in areas where there's an over-abundance of deer, for instance, and the population is managed by the state, by means of regulation of season lengths, bag limits, when, where, and how antlerless deer may be taken, etc.

But it has mainly gained acceptance as a euphemism, in order to avoid having to say the "K" word. :rolleyes:

But I do agree with you about the 19th century buffalo "hunters." Not sporting at all, and since they often left the carcasses to rot, just... pointless slaughter.
 
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Vanya, you just caused me to do a 180 on my thoughts about it with your analysis...

I have to agree now with you that these were indeed HUNTING methods!

Very cool.



I disagree.

As I tried to suggest above, the whole idea that hunting is a sport is a relatively recent development. It's not a sport if it's necessary for your family's survival, it's a matter of life and death. That doesn't mean that it's not hunting. But if you think hunting must be "sporting," and if that, to you, involves an element of chance or risk, consider this: the methods you describe depend on the herd of caribou, or whatever, showing up where a particular group of hunters has predicted it's going to. If they don't, there's a good chance that their families will starve over the winter. Not uncommon. And as to the element of risk involved in surrounding, oh, a mastodon stuck in a swamp, getting up close and personal, and killing it with clubs... I double dare you.

Unless you have some other definition of sport. If so, please explain.

As to the level of skill involved, those methods of taking game required, let's see -- scouting... tracking... flint-knapping and other tool-making skills... predicting the migration routes of game herds... these are all skills required for the activities of which you're so scornful.

Not to mention being able to organize a bunch of testosterone-crazed cavemen into a team...

And standing in one spot, waiting for game to come along -- it takes a degree of patience and extreme self-control: think here of the Inuit hunter (yes, hunter) standing motionless for hours on the sea ice in below-zero temperatures, over an air hole used by seals. If you don't think that's a skill, you might want to try it some time...

"Harvesting" is a term associated with agriculture. There's a reason anthropologists make a clear distinction between hunter/gatherer cultures, which used whatever wild sources of food they had available, and agricultural and herding ones, in which food, whether animal or vegetable, was systematically raised. (Presumably there were many groups that did both -- but the point is that they're very different ways of making a living.) Taking genuinely wild, free-ranging game is more or less universally considered to be hunting. If you want to get picky, you might exclude taking game with snares and traps from the definition, but otherwise, no, sorry, it's all hunting.

I think "harvesting" is, perhaps, an applicable term in areas where there's an over-abundance of deer, for instance, and the population is managed by the state, by means of regulation of season lengths, bag limits, when, where, and how antlerless deer may be taken, etc.

But it has mainly gained acceptance as a euphemism, in order to avoid having to say the "K" word.

But I do agree with you about the 19th century buffalo "hunters." Not sporting at all, and since they often left the carcasses to rot, just... pointless slaughter.
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Scrap5000 said:
Vanya, you just caused me to do a 180 on my thoughts about it with your analysis...

I have to agree now with you that these were indeed HUNTING methods!
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Wow... it's a rare honor to change someone's mind about something. It's also rare and precious to have a changeable mind... :)

Thanks, Scrap.
 
Not my type of hunting but to each his own.

I don't have a issue with what you've described except the baiting. If you feed an animal and that animal keeps coming back to the same spot to be feed then you have livestock.

But again, people can do what ever they want.
 
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If you know in your heart you are right, it doesnt matter what your nephew says or any of us think.

FWIW, Ethics are a slippery slope, and most peoples are on a sliding scale...

Methods vary according to where and what you are hunting. Spot and stalk works fine out west where you can see for miles, but it would be a waste of time in a Southeastern swamp where you may only be able to see a few feet at the time.

Taking a walk with my gun in the hope of a chance meeting with game doesnt appeal to me at all. Thats hoping, not hunting. I like putting the pieces of the puzzle together, working towards a successful hunt. Scouting, paying attention to the prevailing winds, what the game is eating, where they are bedding and then putting myself in a position for a clean kill is what makes the hunt for me. Pulling the trigger or releasing an arrow is just a tiny fraction.
 
As was just mentioned, and should be apparent, primitive "hunters" were not "hunters." They were harvesters. Driving animals into a trap and beating them to death with rocks and clubs isn't hunting. Stampeding animals off of a cliff is not. Setting fires and eating whatever dies isn't, either.
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There was no sport to it, and no hunting skills whatsoever, unless you insist on narrowly defining hunting as the killing of an animal for food.
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The bold faced statements above show a tremendous amount of either ignorance or bias. There is considerable skill that goes into being able to drive animals into traps where they can be dispatched. "Primitive" hunters performed these tasks with technique, skill, and coordination. Just how easy do you think it is for people on foot to be able to be successful in controlling animals that are biggger and/or faster than they are?

Easy to drive animals off of a cliff? I am not sure what you mean, but Paleoindian, Archaic, and Late Prehistoric hunters managed to drive bison over cliffs at several localities across the Great Plains and do so repeatedly at the same locations. This was the case at sites like Bonfire Shelter in Texas, Dry Island Buffalo Jump and Head-Smashed-in in Alberta, and Ulm Pishkun in Montana.

I am not sure where you got the idea that "primitive" people set fires and then just ate whatever burned up. The only example that I can think of that would match this strategy was one where people in the Great Basin would build a fire around the perimeter of a hill in order to drive all of the Mormon crickets to the top of the hill where the fire would eventually reach and roast the crickets enmasse.

Otherwise, if you are setting a wildfire, it isn't going to burn with much control and you are going to be involved in a very long searh over a large area in order to find animals killed by the fire. Instead, the strategy was to set the fire and hope it burns in a given direction to where hunters have staged and attempt to kill the animals fleeing the fire's front.

No sport to it? I guess not given that hunting wasn't simply a game to those who depended on hunting for survival. It was a way of life. Then again, such methods seem much more sporting than the methods used by modern hunters. At least with the 'primitive' hunting strategies described here, the animals had a much better chance of being able to fight back and/or kill their human pursuer. Said hunters didn't have the stand-off capability seen today with the employment of firearms that allow the hunter to be able to shoot his game at up to several hundred yards...long before the game could possible even know the hunter was present and hence not having a chance to escape the hunter's wrath except for the incompetence of the hunter.
 
Driving animals ito a trap and beating them to death with rocks and clubs isn't hunting
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With that statement, I would have to say that you don't feel modern game drives are hunting either? Same difference but seems to me in modern 'drives' the hunter has it much easier given the long range weapons.
 
This argument is a variation of the old slippery slope. Can't you just see some ancient Chinese flint knapping arrow maker badgering the youngsters with their new firearms about how what they are doing doesn't take any skill? At what point does it end?

The OP presumably still used a modern cartridge firearm to shoot his deer from a long way away. He didn't run it down on foot and bludgeon it with a rock. Is that real hunting? Real men don't need guns, do they?

On a linear scale with bare handed killing on the left and the hunting methods the OP is complaining about on the right, the OP is a lot closer to the right than the left. It's splitting hairs to me, making a distinction where one doesn't really exist.

I suspect the real problem lies less with the methods than with the personality/attitude/boasting of the nephew.
 
"I suspect the real problem lies less with the methods than with the personality/attitude/boasting of the nephew."

Which pretty much sums up the gist of on-thread comments...
 
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