Admission, I actually watch it fairly regularly. It seems a step above the mean, in the sense that the hunts generally seem un-edited: people miss, or they don't see game, or sometimes hunters make bad shots and have to track, etc. I pay attention.
The tag line in the opening credits is (warning: this is not verbatim) "the last, best, pure hunts for people willing to go the extra mile."
So the episode from last Sunday was a bit different. Instead of one of the usual hunters, the show followed a guy who was brand new to big game hunting. He was starting with elk. He hadn't been small game hunting at all either. He was an absolute beginner but had picked up shooting sports and distance shooting as a hobby recently. He had been practicing. I was intrigued.
The guy pulls a tag for a rifle season in area 66 in Colorado. GMU 66 is, for those not on the 10-year waiting list, an area on the Western Slope that has many big bulls, low numbers of hunters, and gorgeous terrain.
Anyhoo, the guy has already won the lotto, but the TV host 'wants to put him on a big bull'. So the TV people have some locals pre-scout the area and find several herds and big bulls.
Summary: the guy shows up gets the map coordinates and a local to guide him. He shoots a bull from 300 or 400 +/- yards away across a wash and packs out a rack (to be fair, I'm sure he took the meat, albeit not on camera).
Total disclosure: I admit that I don't practice long distance shooting and I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to take that shot with my 30-06 and 2-7x scope. Nor would I ever take a shot that would require 30+ minutes of hiking to try to find the last known location of my quarry and BEGIN to follow a blood trail if I'd made a bad shot. Feel free to label me a green-eyed monster or an overly cautious girly man.
And I'm thinking:
What happened to going the extra mile? What's pure about this? How is this different from a guided hunt on a private ranch? What happened to learning how to hunt big game? Why wasn't this guy doing his own scouting and learning about elk sign and learning to find potential bedding, watering, feeding locations? Why weren't the TV hosts helping him (and the viewer) appreciate that getting the big bull is maybe not the point of hunting, but learning about animals, woodsmanship, colleagues, nature, mountains, and yourself while hunting IS the 'pure' of hunting big game? There's not a lot of hunting pressure in that area, so he could have TRIED to get closer than the next zip code before calling in an artillery strike. They could have tried to let him pick his own locations and burn some boot leather looking for whatever bulls he could find. Maybe his experience could have immortalized on camera that "any elk is a trophy elk." Maybe he was pressed for time, but so what? Do what you can. No one learns all there is to hunting in one year (week/season).
I'm actually a whole lotta bummed. In my opinion this episode was a let down not only from the usual level of reality/humility in the series but also in the sense that it could have glorified the journey of hunting that makes us more-rounded people. Instead it was all about the rack, which made it little better than a 30 minute fraternity-house wet-tshirt event for sofa hunters.
The tag line in the opening credits is (warning: this is not verbatim) "the last, best, pure hunts for people willing to go the extra mile."
So the episode from last Sunday was a bit different. Instead of one of the usual hunters, the show followed a guy who was brand new to big game hunting. He was starting with elk. He hadn't been small game hunting at all either. He was an absolute beginner but had picked up shooting sports and distance shooting as a hobby recently. He had been practicing. I was intrigued.
The guy pulls a tag for a rifle season in area 66 in Colorado. GMU 66 is, for those not on the 10-year waiting list, an area on the Western Slope that has many big bulls, low numbers of hunters, and gorgeous terrain.
Anyhoo, the guy has already won the lotto, but the TV host 'wants to put him on a big bull'. So the TV people have some locals pre-scout the area and find several herds and big bulls.
Summary: the guy shows up gets the map coordinates and a local to guide him. He shoots a bull from 300 or 400 +/- yards away across a wash and packs out a rack (to be fair, I'm sure he took the meat, albeit not on camera).
Total disclosure: I admit that I don't practice long distance shooting and I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to take that shot with my 30-06 and 2-7x scope. Nor would I ever take a shot that would require 30+ minutes of hiking to try to find the last known location of my quarry and BEGIN to follow a blood trail if I'd made a bad shot. Feel free to label me a green-eyed monster or an overly cautious girly man.
And I'm thinking:
What happened to going the extra mile? What's pure about this? How is this different from a guided hunt on a private ranch? What happened to learning how to hunt big game? Why wasn't this guy doing his own scouting and learning about elk sign and learning to find potential bedding, watering, feeding locations? Why weren't the TV hosts helping him (and the viewer) appreciate that getting the big bull is maybe not the point of hunting, but learning about animals, woodsmanship, colleagues, nature, mountains, and yourself while hunting IS the 'pure' of hunting big game? There's not a lot of hunting pressure in that area, so he could have TRIED to get closer than the next zip code before calling in an artillery strike. They could have tried to let him pick his own locations and burn some boot leather looking for whatever bulls he could find. Maybe his experience could have immortalized on camera that "any elk is a trophy elk." Maybe he was pressed for time, but so what? Do what you can. No one learns all there is to hunting in one year (week/season).
I'm actually a whole lotta bummed. In my opinion this episode was a let down not only from the usual level of reality/humility in the series but also in the sense that it could have glorified the journey of hunting that makes us more-rounded people. Instead it was all about the rack, which made it little better than a 30 minute fraternity-house wet-tshirt event for sofa hunters.