Great thread.
This topic reminds me a lot of the phrase:
"You don't see anymore the same four seasons we used to have in the good old days"....
And as in the case of this saying, there is a lot of truth in it - or is there?
Instinctively, I would have to agree that yes, today's hunting ethics would have to be slipping down, along the same slope as our morals as a society.
But when I really think about it, I also know that today there is quite a bit more of a conscious effort by "good" hunters to conserve wild habitats, to manage game more efficiently and to pick cartridges that are suitable for the quarry.
So, to me, the question is: is the "conscious effort" made by good hunters enough to offset the sloppier behavior of some?
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As a hunter (or a living human being, for that matter) I haven't been around long enough to have witnessed any trends first-hand. The "good old days" that I can remember as a budding hunter are not any further away than a quarter century. So I'll defer to men of better vintage than me (such as Art
) to answer the question of whether times have indeed deteriorated.
As a devotee of early 20-C. hunting literature, I can't help but notice that the writers and sportsmen of yore had no compunction about letting us know about behaviors that our writers today would definitely be ashamed of admitting.
This includes losing game, firing wildly with open-sighted rifles at game several hundred yards off (read Roosevelt's African Game Trails!), using inadequately-light rifles against large game, killing large quantities of one species regardless of rarity, etc.
Also, today our youth is initiated to hunting through formal classes designed to instill ethics and safety in the new generations. This standardized training was not in place until a few years ago, and back then we had to rely on the spirit of sportsmanship of the individual "mentors". I see this too as a step in the right direction.
All in all, I think that the collective conscience of "real" hunters is better today than it ever was. Sloppy behavior enrages me, but at least I am happy to see that the sane side of conservationism has gone a long way to ensure that the environment in which we hunt will be there 50 years from now.