from 454c:If you walk into a bar in texas and yell out "People who hunt in blinds over feeders are unethical" ,you would probably be thrown out in worse shape than you went in.If you did the same thing in wyo.,you might get drinks on the house.
This is just an example as I haven't hunted in either state.
Yes, you would get differing results from differing parts of the country, but the fact that some people support hunting over bait, doesn't make it the right thing to do. Same with hunting with electronic aids, a lot of people use them and like them, but that doesn't make it right.
Trip: What you view is a deterioration of a sport, may be what others view as it's possible savior. Numbers are down. In my latest F&S (talk about a rag that throws products in your face) there is an article that states (paraphrasing wording but not numbers) "for every 100 hunters only 69 take their place". That is the average among all 50 states. There are states where it's as low as the teens... That's not good in anyone's book.
I disagree with the concept that increasing the number of hunters by lowering the standards of the sport is a good thing. The number of hunters is not relevant to using technological aids that put the hunter at an ever increasing advantage over the deer. At some point the use of ever more powerful technological aids must stop. If we simply want to increase the number of hunters, then all we have to do is allow hunting from the side of the road, allow spot-lighting at night, etc - in other words, allow the sport to deteriorate even further so that more and more people are attracted to it.
fisherman66: Morals have a greater social element to ethics and tend to have a very broad acceptance and provoke a "Judgement". Morals are far more about good and bad than other values. We thus judge others more strongly on morals than ethics.
OK, but remember that hunting is a sport, it is defined by "rules" that create an artificial reality. Sport rules are developed around the creation of the sport, not around basic morals. For instance, the rule about not hunting at night isn't based on any moral premise, it is based on a rule designed to keep the sport in a certain condition.
Ben:That's absolutely preposterous.
There is nothing level on the hunting playing field. Nor should there be. A level playing field means mutual combat. A nearly level playing field would be hunting with a baseball bat and a dirtbike with a quarter-full tank (or better still a horse and tree limb). You don't do that and I don't know of a state that would allow that. No bow, rifle or shotgun has any equivalent defense in nature other than hiding - which basic skill, blind luck and the law of averages can easily defeat.
Hunting as a sport is based on the premise that it is a challenge for us to kill a deer. We can tilt the playing field so far in our advantage that we could kill deer nearly on demand. Spotlighting is a good example of that. Using electronic devices that overcome the deer's ability to avoid us would tilt the field so much in our favor that eventually it won't be called "hunting" any longer. The deer have far superior senses than ours, with the ability to kill at distance and the use of our superior thinking ability, we can kill deer. It should be a challenge to kill a deer. Shouldn't it?
David: All yer screaming and hollering is like the golf addict who buys every dingaling gimmick that comes down the pipe. Fact is, if you don't know how to swing a club, no amount of gizmos is gonna make you any more successful.
David, your last post had so many points to it that it is hard to respond to them all, but this one seems to sum them up. What I am afraid of is that technology is in fact making giant strides agains the deer's ability to evade the hunter. Golf gizmos don't generally improve a golfers game, but mostly because the PGA has set some very strict limitations on technology. If the PGA removed those limitations then you would see 450 yard drives routinely, and they would sure enough change the game into something else. The technological devices that I have listed are just the beginning of what is happening to deer hunting - the devices are going to get better and better and better every year. The various wildlife management agencies are not doing what the PGA does - there appear to be no limitations at all on what technology a hunter can use, none zip zilch nada. I suspect that at some point in the future you are going to say to yourself, this has gone too far, I am just saying it before you do.
You also made the point of the need to kill more deer due to increasing deer herds. That may be necessary to manage the deer, but it is not necessarily a part of the sport of hunting. If TPWD deems it necessary to trim the herd more, they can simply raise the limit on how many you can kill per year.
People have used every trick they can from the beginning of time to gain an advantage. They even used to stampede and drive animals off of cliffs by the thousands to their deaths. For food and clothing, that is...certainly doesn't make it sporting, tho...in these days where do you draw the line? Tree Stands, Camo, Scent Lock, attractants, etc...it's a fine line, but you do need SOMETHING, or you'll never, ever bag a deer because of the sense of smell and ability to run and hide.
Yes, people have and will always contine to use whatever they can get away with, and some things that are flat out illegal. Subsistence hunting and sport hunting are apples and oranges now - it used to be that all hunting was for survival, then there was a period of time where there was survival hunting and sport huntinge going on in various forms, but now in the USA