ABOUT THINK TANK II and “SPORT HUNTING”

From the Thinking Hunter:

I’ve been doing some work on my notes and ideas from the Think Tank II.  I came away from the gathering wishing it had been at least one day longer.  There was a lot of free discussion about the present state of recruitment to the outdoors but I heard something that was, to me, very important for the future of hunting, and it was the simple statement that hunting would be referred to as “hunting” and not “sport hunting” or have any other adjectives affixed to it.  
More:

Ethical Hunting Think Tank II

Dear Readers,
I just returned from Orion's second Think Tank. Thanks to the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation for hosting us and their wonderful staff. Thanks also to the Pope and Young Club for helping to sponsor the event and assist in travel costs. But the real stars are the participants who racked their brains and tapped their experience in tackling some of the thorniest issues we as hunters face. I will be reporting on our results in the coming weeks. Focus areas included articulating the core values we hold as hunters; laying out a series of questions that need to be considered and answered in the affirmative when deciding where and how you will hunt and at the moment before you pull the trigger; how hunting can be a metaphor for living and how it can, when done right, increase one's ethical fitness; how to get the ethics message out to new and veteran hunters in a way that resonates and elevates behavior thus serving to attract responsible people to become lifelong hunters and opens land to hunt.
Stay tuned!

Craig resident’s trophy bear kill erupts into statewide controversy

From the Craig Daily Post

Archive for Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Curious Case of Richard Kendall

By Ben McCanna

August 28, 2011

The story that started it all: On Dec. 4, 2010, the Saturday Morning Press published the story of Richard Kendall, who tracked a bear into a cave and killed it. Reaction to the story spread throughout the country, with some condemning Kendall’s actions. Kendall insists he did nothing wrong.

It was a shot that reverberated around the state and beyond.
In November 2010, Craig resident Richard Kendall crawled to the mouth of a dark cave with a .45-70 caliber lever-action rifle.
...

Fair chase?

Randy Hampton, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife, says Kendall’s actions were legal at the time.
“It’s important to note, Mr. Kendall did not commit a violation in what he did,” Hampton says. “There was an issue regarding the use of a flashlight, for which he was cited, and (Kendall) paid the fine.”
Rather, the question at the crux of the Kendall controversy is whether it was ethical. “It comes down to the element of fair chase,” Hampton says.
...
But the question today is as relevant as it was then: was it OK to pull the trigger?
Read More

Despite Best Efforts, Poaching Still Plagues the Rockies

New West Feature

Officials believe almost as many animals are killed illegally as the legal take.

By New West Editor, 8-22-11

	Poached bull elk in southern Utah. Photo courtesy of Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

More than 5,000 reports have been received of poaching in Colorado since 1981, resulting in more than 900 convictions, for which about $800,000 in fines were levied, and $150,000 paid to citizens for reports of suspected poaching, a recent summary asserts.
Studies show that poachers kill almost as many animals as legitimate hunters do during legal seasons in various states, says the report, from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW). It points out that poachers steal not only revenues generated by legitimate hunting, but kill threatened, endangered and non-game species.
Notifications of suspected poaching arrive through Operation Game Thief, a program pioneered by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, which has been adopted by 49 of the 50 states.

Bob Thompson, acting chief of wildlife law enforcement for CPW, retiterated an agency theme that it’s a romantic myth to regard poachers as poor people trying to feed their families. Some kill for the thrill of killing and others for trophies, he said. Some kill for money, because trophy heads, antlers and bear gall bladders can be worth thousands of dollars.

“Hunters who keep shooting into a herd of animals should realize that not every animal goes down right away when it is hit,” Thompson said. “Not only is it unethical hunting, it leads to a lot of game waste, which in itself is illegal.”
Examples of mindless poaching are not hard to find.  MORE

The ‘sport’ of hunting: Why I don’t call it that

This topic was the focus of an Orion Think Tank several years ago.

From A Mindful Carnivore:

by Tovar on August 18, 2011 · 11 comments

For some people, hunting for “sport” implies frivolity: killing for fun.
For some, it suggests wastefulness and a lack of respect for animals: taking a whitetail’s antlers and cape for a trophy mount, and leaving the meat to rot.
Those are two reasons I don’t call hunting a “sport.”
When I talk or write about hunting and why I do it, I want people to understand what it’s like for me to take a deer’s life. I want my words to bring them to where I kneel beside the fallen animal, my hand on his still-warm shoulder. I want them to feel some faint ripple of the soul-deep wave that shudders through me.
I want my words to bring them to where I stand in the kitchen, separating muscle from bone and, later, sautéing tender slices of backstrap. I want them to sense what that venison means to me, taken so close to home, from woods I know.
I don’t want them thinking I get my jollies through a rifle scope.
More

What goes through your mind prior to the shot?

Take a look at this slide show from Orion supporter J. Michael Schirra

http://www.jmichaelschirra.com/orioninstitute/

Too much 'BBD' on TV these days

From the Great Falls Tribune, Randy Newberg is a founding board member of Orion:

Too much 'BBD' on TV these days

February 3, 2011

A noteworthy trend is developing in the outdoor media and it involves one of my favorite themes — the heavy emphasis on killing and the lack of emphasis placed on hunting.

No pulled punches here. Mostly it is an outdoor television industry problem of too much "big buck down" mentality brought to us by grinning red-necked yahoos who hoot and holler and high-five after even marginal shots on game.
They turn to the camera with a toothy grin and in a hoarse stage whisper summarize what we already have watched. A two- or three-day's growth of beard is a prerequisite — and they seem so barely able to contain themselves that I am surprised more of them don't wet themselves or fall out of their tree stands.
Along with this country bumpkin buffoonery comes an apparent lack of interest in the skills required to be a good hunter — we used to call it woodcraft — the art of tracking, of getting close to animals, of being comfortable and secure in the outdoors.
Almost all of these "hunters" are guided and they arrive at their stands on an ATV or some other conveyance that saves them from walking. They have watched the deer all summer long on one of several dozen trail cameras placed strategically around planted food plots that lure the deer in. They even have names for the deer.
Money of course is at the root of this — money and our nation's love affair with seeing ourselves on TV or Facebook or Twitter. The money comes from advertisers, product manufacturers who just can't seem to come up with the latest gimmick fast enough.
But, I digress.

.... "We all know that our freedom to hunt and fish depends on a healthy habitat," BCHA says on the group's website.

Then there is On Your Own Adventures, an outdoor TV program produced by Montanans Randy Newberg and Will Holmes in conjunction with Warm Springs Productions. That show airs on Outdoor Channel. It is the only hunting TV show dedicated exclusively to non-guided hunting.
"Any hunt you see on our show is a hunt you can do," its producers say.
The first season of "On Your Own Adventures" was filmed in 2008 and began airing in July, 2009. All episodes are based in the United States, with most of them on public lands in the West.
The first season has 12 episodes, in locations including Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa. Species hunted are elk, mule deer, whitetail deer, antelope, bear and turkey.

read more

HUNTING AND TROPHY GAINING HONOR THROUGH EFFORT

by Jim Posewitz
November 2010

Hunting in this creative “New World” democracy we call America is still carving a sustainable niche for itself as our rapidly evolving culture closes the first decade of the 21^st Century.  A lot has happened since we became a nation in the 18^th Century, declared wildlife a public resource in the 19^th Century, exploited many species to near extinction in that same century, and then restored almost all the hunted species to a wonderful abundance by the close of the 20^th Century.

            Introduction of a hunter’s sporting code and the emergence of a conservation ethic late in the 19^th Century, advanced by people like George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gifford Pinchot, led to the restoration of a wonderful wildlife abundance.  As this was occurring, hunters gained the cultural respect of the people.  The respect was earned through the conservation investment of sportsmen; and, through the image they presented as hardy outdoorsmen in fair chase pursuit of wild, elusive, maybe even a few dangerous, game animals.  In the process, the animals pursued also acquired a value with the idea of trophy very much a part of the social value of wildlife.  In the process, wildlife trophies became symbols representing hunters gaining honor through effort and the animals too were thus valued.

            As with any activity in a free-enterprise market driven economy, things of value are coveted, taken as commodities, and peddled for a price.  This was true in the 19^th Century when the last buffalo seeking sanctuary in Yellowstone Park were poached for profit.  It is true today as game farmers and high-fence ranchers domesticate deer, elk, and other species for profit.  The peril is that each purchased pseudo-trophy devalues the real thing the community had come to value as totally wild and traditionally earned through personal effort.

            The privatizing, commercializing and domesticating of American wildlife is not a new phenomenon.  Theodore Roosevelt spoke directly to the subject in Outdoor Pastimes of An American Hunter in 1905 when he wrote: “The professional market hunter who kills game for the hide or for the feathers or for the meat or to sell antlers and other trophies ….and the rich people, who are content to buy what they have not the skill to get by their own exertions – these are the men who are the real enemies of game.”  At the time, he was President of the United States.

            On the positive side, there are still legions of American hunters in fair chase pursuit of wildlife out on the great American commons – gaining honor through effort and collecting trophies as honorable and rock solid as Mount Rushmore.  Their activity and character was described by the last president whose image we chiseled into that national icon.  Here is how TR described the hunter and the hunt:

When hunting him (wapiti) …he must be followed on foot, and the man who follows him must be sound in limb and wind.”

“…skill and patience, and the capacity to endure fatigue and exposure, must be shown by the successful hunter.”

“We knew toil and hardship and thirst…but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living.”

“If they would only keep to rowboats or canoes, and use oar or paddle themselves, they would get infinitely more benefit than by having their work done for them by gasoline.”

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach the highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

            Writing in his biography Gifford Pinchot, the father of American forestry, had cause to describe the character of TR.  While scores of biographers have written volumes trying to capture the essence of TR, it took Pinchot only nine words to describe what the man was all about.  Pinchot wrote: “He was an outdoor man – more a wilderness hunter.” TR’s observations on gaining honor through effort are as valuable today as they were the day he penned them.  The value our society places on wildlife trophies was built on the reality of what it takes to earn success afield – not really on the dimensions of the animal thus taken.  Each commercially manufactured pseudo-trophy or catered easy kill only contributes to the inevitable erosion and ultimate loss of those values.

It's what you do after the shot

The other day a fellow came up to me to ask if I would sign a copy of my book, Vermont Wild. He then said, "You arrested me years ago for shooting an illegal deer, do you remember me?" I had to admit I didn't but if he remeinded me of the facts I might. Turned out he had shot at a legal buck, and hit a doe. He didn't realize it until he came out of the woods and his neighbor pointed out a blood trail coming down the hill. This fellow then figured out what happened and proceeded to try and cover up what had happened. With the help of good tracking snow he eventually fessed up and settled it thru court diversion.
The clipping below shows a better way to do it. Like my neighboring warden would say, "Everyone makes mistakes, but the measure of a man is what they do after." Very true...

100 yard bow shot at a deer? Wrong!

There is a discussion going on over at the On Your Own Adventures blog about a hunting show bow hunter talking about taking a shot at over 100 yards at a deer. He claims he can make that shot constantly on targets.
My take on long bow shots is that anything over 45 yards is a no shoot, no matter how good a shot you are. At that range even the fastest bow will not get the arrow to the deer faster than it can react to the sound or sight of the arrow coming toward it. Plus all the usual problems with the animal moving just as you release,,,
Clean kill is a core ethic for hunters. We all know that lots of stuff can go wrong, but it is our responsibility to reduce the chances of a wounding shot as much as we can before taking a shot. One quote that comes to mind is, " you don't shoot to see if you can hit your target, you only shoot when you know you can hit it."
There was a variation on this in one of the hunting magazines a few years ago with a very long rifle shot and the writer justified it because it was a once in a life time trophy. Which sounded to me he valued this deer less than a normal deer by taking a much higher probability wounding shot. More likely he got sucked into the mind set that he was hunting to kill a big animal for bragging rights. It that is true, why not use poison, or napalm or a machine gun?

ND Hunter's for Fair Chase Measure

KFGO pod cast featuring Orion founder Jim Posewitz talking about hunting heritage and how it relates to high fence shooting operations:

ND Hunter's for Fair Chase Measure 2 pt1
Dick Monson and Jim Posewitz, North Dakota Hunter's for Fair Chase, talks about Measure 2 on the November 2 ballot.

Backpacker Hunter - "Killer Hike"

This is one of the rare times that I have seen an article on "the other side" done to this level.

 

*Note* there are 9 pages to it, so when you finish the first click on the 2 just below it, then 3, etc. I struggled a bit until my 9 year old pointed it out...........Mark Hirvonen

From Backpacker Magazine

Killer Hike

When a lifelong backpacker decides to shoot a deer, will he lose touch with the wilderness he loves--or get closer to it?

by: Bruce Barcott Photography by Paolo Marchesi

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

On farmland in eastern Washington.

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Tracking dear in the Snake River Bluffs.

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The author approaches a buck she shot seconds earlier.

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Expect a gallon of blood from a buck.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The author learns to dress a deer.

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The author (right) scouts for deer.

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The author dresses a deer.

Day three: Gator’s last chance at a deer. We decide to hit it hard, hunting the Blue Mountains’ ponderosa pine forests in the morning and working the isolated Grande Ronde River breaks in the afternoon.

At first light, Gator and I and Shaun Bristol, who has joined us for the morning, set up on the edge of a Blue Mountain meadow. We’d seen some does browsing in the field at dusk the previous night, and figure we might catch a buck among them this morning. We lean against the rough bark of the ponderosas, trying to blend in and remain motionless. If open-field hunting is all about covering ground and flushing game, forest hunting requires opposite tactics: Hide and wait for the prey to come to you. Or so we think. We’re hunting for the first time without Jennifer—a solo flight of sorts.

As Gator creeps forward for a better view, a spear of meadow barley nails him in the eye.

“God damn,” he says, pulling the barbs out of his eyelid.

“Um, guys…” Shaun is trying to get our attention.

“Did you get it out?” I ask. Gator shakes his head.

“Guys…” Shaun says. I look back at him. He points to two whitetail bucks quietly crossing

the road 20 yards behind us.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. The deer catch our movement and bolt into the
forest. I laugh at the thought of Gator and me standing there, Jethro and Elmer Fudd, as our prey fearlessly strolls by.

In the afternoon, we load our packs with food and water and hitch a ride to the rim of the Grande Ronde River canyon. The Grande Ronde, a tributary of the Snake, unwinds like a curling ribbon through the Columbia Plateau near the Oregon-Washington border. It’s world famous for its steelhead, and the dry, brushy ravines above the river are prime habitat for deer, coyote, wild turkey, chukar, black bear, elk, and bighorn sheep.

We have a plan. Gator and I will start about a quarter-mile apart at the top of the rim, then pick our way down in a V that meets at the bottom of the ravine. I’ll flush the deer in Gator’s direction.

As I heel plunge down the scab-land ravine, my eyes scanning for movement, Gator in my periphery, a sort of perfect moment comes over me. My own hunt is done. Because I’ve already bagged my deer, I can relax and enjoy the hike, the camaraderie, the strategy and cunning, the suspense, and the pure joy of physical movement in the wild. Gator, on the other hand, hunts with all the pressure and anxiety of a live trigger. If you’re doing it right, hunting comes with a huge responsibility. You’ve got to line up a good shot, not carelessly wound the animal, not shoot something illegal, not crack off an errant bullet that flies into a house a half-mile away, and not kill your partner. It’s not that far from mountain climbing, in fact. A certain amount of danger and risk enhances the experience of moving across wild terrain. It revs up your adrenaline and puts the senses on edge. Hunting combines strategy, motion, experience, skill, and danger.


read more:

Hunting Stories

http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/

http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/multimedia/radio/deer-stories/

Vermont Folklife Center Radio Deer Stories Deer Stories Hunting is as fundamental to Vermont's cultural heritage as dairy farming, and its lineage reaches back beyond the arrival of the first European settlers. But as Vermont has changed, knowledge of hunting is no longer universal and some Vermonters are entirely outside its culture. Based on interviews with hunters conducted by the Vermont Folklife Center, the Deer Stories series does not advocate for hunting but rather explores the experience from an insider’s point of view. In programs that range from tracking to taking an animal’s life, deer hunters introduce us to their world through stories that illustrate its culture, practices, and core values. The twenty-three narrators featured in this series were chosen for their passion, knowledge, commitment and excellence as deer hunters, and their stories are representative of stories heard many times over in the course of this research. About the Series About the Hunters Read the Transcripts Listen Online (sign-in required) Programs: 1. Hunting with My Dad 2. The Changing Culture 3. A Championship Buck 4. "Hunt Like an Indian" 5. Careful What You Shoot 6. Being in the Woods 7. The Rut 8. Taking a Life 9. Hunting Companions 10. Mother and Daughter 11. Dogs and Deer 12. Cleo Johnson and Lady

The ethical life: Hunting leads to an appreciation and understanding of life, nature

The ethical life: Hunting leads to an appreciation and understanding of life, nature

By Richard Kyte | La Crosse 

lacrossetribune.com | Posted: Sunday, October 10, 2010 12:00 am | (4)

Robert Marshall, co-founder of the Wilderness Society, predicted that wild places would acquire even more value as they became scarce.
He thought, as many did in the early 20th century, that wilderness is an ineluctable human need, like food, water and security, and that the less people have, the more they will desire it.
But history has proven him wrong. Wilderness appears instead to be an evanescent good, like art or literature. The less we have, the less it is desired. In its absence, other things, arguably less valuable, take its place. (Facebook, anyone?)
In his best-selling book, “Last Child in the Woods,” Richard Louv documents how our society is raising a generation of children who are technologically adept but ecologically illiterate. He refers to the condition as “nature-deficit disorder,” a condition characterized by both indifference to and fear of the outdoors.
My own introduction to and, ultimately, infatuation with wild places came through hunting and fishing, but by the time I had children of my own, I had effectively given them up as serious pursuits.
We were living in a big city, and instead of going hunting and fishing, we would read our kids nature books, take them to the zoo, go on trail hikes and the occasional camping trip. All of which are fine entertainments. But they allow children merely to observe — not to have a participatory relationship with — wild things.
So I began hunting and fishing again with regularity, making those activities part of a seasonal routine integral to my life, so that I could introduce our children to the natural world in the same manner that I was... read more

 

A Matter of Life and Death, Hunting in Contemporaty Vermont

This post is from my friend Tovar Carulli's blog The Mindful Carnivore. I highly recommend reading the book he comments on, A Matter of Live and Death by Marc Boglioli. As a former Vermont Game Warden the commentary on rural culture and hunting resonates loud and clear with me.

Redneck culture, city culture: The clash over hunting

Oct 3rd, 2010

by Tovar.

Eighteen years ago, I had no doubt: hunting was wrong.
Not that I made big distinctions among kinds of violence. I abhorred the idea of industrial meat operations, and thought little about the alternatives. Why split hairs? A murdered animal was a murdered animal.
Hunting, however, did seem especially gratuitous. We no longer needed to do it. Thanks to agriculture we now had ample plant matter to survive on.
At the same time, though, I mourned the extermination of indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures around the world.
If someone had pointed out that contradiction—the fact that I wished for the survival of cultural traditions that involved killing animals—I probably would have argued that such cultures, like ours, could make moral progress away from hunting and meat-eating.
Yikes. Might I have made a good missionary?
I also would have argued that indigenous cultures respected animals in ways that Euro-American culture did not. My problem wasn’t really with human predation in all times and places. My problem was with hunting here and now: mainly white folks with guns.
Now, most of two decades later, a new book has me reflecting on the views I held back then.
In A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont, anthropologist Marc Boglioli argues that mainstream American culture is increasingly dominated by a particular way of seeing (and talking about) nature and animals. “Killing beautiful wild animals,” he writes in the Introduction, “simply does not fit into the mainstream urban worldview.”
Read More:

Moose hunting in VT for ill youngsters in the Boston Globe

On Second Thought

These licenses are to thrill

Seriously ill youngsters given shot to hunt moose

The charitable organization Hunt of a Lifetime will pay the way for three seriously ill young people to participate in Vermont’s moose hunt in October. (Shawn Patrick Oullette/Associated Press)

By Kevin Paul Dupont August 1, 2010

Vermont has upward of 4,000 moose roaming its woods, and this October it will have more than 750 hunters hot after their behinds during the state’s annual moose hunt. Three of the Green Mountain State’s rifle-toting, big-game hunters will be under age 21, each of them with a life-threatening illness, which means, sadly, it’s likely that both the hunted and the hunter won’t see next year’s moose season.

Yes, that’s unsettling on many levels, especially for those of us who aren’t the least bit familiar with, or tolerant of, the hunting culture. I don’t hunt (beyond foraging for stories) and I’ve always detested guns. I think guns and I think war and crime, senseless deaths, a government and a people in dire need of finding a better way to govern and live.

With that predisposition, I found it curious that a young hunter, most likely a kid in his or her early- or mid-teens with only weeks or months to live, would place shooting a moose on a things-to-do-before-I-die list. Faced with death, what happiness, what fulfillment, could there be in killing a moose?

The answer turns out to be the culture. Specifically, that hunting culture, which in many parts of the world remains a very big deal. To a lot of Vermonters, in fact, being awarded a moose hunting permit isn’t just akin to hitting the lottery — it is hitting the lottery. For this year’s six-day hunt, some 14,000 applicants, roughly 25 percent from out of state, applied for 765 permits. About 94.5 percent of the applicants were plain ol’ shotgun outta luck.

“It’s hard to explain to someone from Massachusetts, or someone not from a hunting culture,’’ said Tom Decker, director of operations of Vermont’s Fish & Wildlife Department. “But here, the hunting culture, especially the moose hunt, is a very big deal. If you go to a Babe Ruth League game, the talk on the bench is, ‘Did you hear who got a moose permit?’ For the kids who are granted special opportunity permits, they’re from hunting families, it’s central to what they do. It’s not a frivolous thing like, ‘OK, we shot the moose, it’s dead here in the woods, it’s all done.’ ’’

Tina Pattison is the founder/operator of Hunt of a Lifetime (huntofalifetime.org), the charitable organization in Harborcreek, Pa., she started more than 10 years ago in memory of her son, Matthew, soon after he died of lymphoma. The Pattisons, who live on the outskirts of Erie, are all hunters, and Matthew, explained his mom, became keen on harvesting a moose during his two-year battle with cancer. With a load of persistence and a load more phone calls, his parents found Matthew a moose hunt in Alberta.Continued...

Ethical Hunting - Every Hunters Resposibility

I found this article over at the Seminole Brass and Bullet blog

Ethical Hunting – Every Hunters Responsibility
Author: Bob Darrah
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

As I look at my hunting equipment a couple of things occur to me. First, My goodness I am spoiled! I have rifles, scopes, rangefinders, binoculars, shooting sleds and a bunch of other equipment to numerous to mention. Second, at one point or another I felt I absolutely needed every one of these items to become a better hunter. Do I really? Probably not, but it sure does make me feel better when I use them to fill my tags.

As a young boy growing up in the Midwest I can still remember getting my first gun and the responsibility lessons that came along with it. Most of it made sense but some of it I had to figure out. My first gun was at age 7 and it was a BB gun. I was only allowed to shoot at cans, flowers, pieces of wood, or any other non-living things that I could find that did not require too much clean up. I begged my father to let me shoot coots on one of our ponds so I could have the feeling of shooting something that reacted. I was always told no because the BB gun would not kill the bird, it would only be inflicting pain and besides that we could not eat it if I were to kill it. Well, being 7 I knew I was much smarter than my father so I snuck down to the pond one day and lined up a coot in my sites. After checking to make sure nobody was around I let him have it. That bird flew away, after squawking, flailing and making enough noise for everyone to hear within a mile radius. Of course, my Dad was only about an eighth of a mile away. Needless to say I understood what he meant about the inflicting pain part for a few days after that.

read more

ATVs and Fair Chase

I came across this interesting post on the Dakota Backcountry Blog We have been having this debate in Vermont because the Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Johnathan Woods has pushed for a rule to open up some corridors on state owned land to ATVs. Currently all state land is closed to ATVs. There has been lots of push back to any opening of the corridors which are suppose to only be short connector trails to existing trails on private land. It sounds reasonable until you see what ATVs have done to public land out west, and do with illegal riding in Vermont.
I don't fully agree with the post below that they are also in violation of fair chase in all cases. Except for pulling out harvested big game and getting to trail heads that are open to other vehicles, I find ATVs offensive. But there are plenty of good reasons to restrict them with out using the fair chase argument. When I hunt in the west I'll only hunt wilderness and other land where they are banned. Otherwise it feels like hunting in a cloverleaf off an interstate. But that is my preference, Others may like that experience. To me they should be restricted to certain areas and then on existing road beds only.
What do you think?

Blogging About Hunting & Wildlife on the Northern Plains

ATVs and Fair Chase
2010 February 8
by dakotabackcountry

The Winter 2010 issue of Backcountry Journal, the quarterly magazine put out by the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers has an excellent article by Tom Wharton about ATV use in big game hunting, its impacts, and postulates that unlimited ATV use tips the scales too much in favor of the hunter. Together with improved weapons, optics, and other gadgetry, unlimited ATV use eliminates the fair chase ethic from hunting. It struck close to home; we’re involved in attempting to regulate ATVs on public lands in South Dakota at the present. Hunters out here are divided.

Read the whole article at the Backcountry Journal

Exploring the meaning of hunting

I have a question for all of you that hunt or assist in the hunt in any way - What is the meaning of hunting to you, and why is it an important part of your life? This is a deeper question than "Why do you hunt?" which focuses on motivations. I'm looking for the what do you get from hunting that justifies the time, money, effort and sometimes grief that you put into hunting and being a hunter.
I've done the "Why do you hunt?" question with many groups and come up with some long lists. Interestingly the lists generated by poachers looks very similar to hunter education instructors. But when you dug deeper into the reasons, much different priorities emerged. But even more telling was the fact that many of the poachers had never thought about why they hunted (or why they broke the game laws). For example, "Challenge of the hunt", was on all lists. Yet many of the poachers had been arrested because they had shot at the decoy deer, from their vehicle, under a light. Go figure!
What I'm interested here is the next level deeper. If you are thinking one reason is to get wild meat, I'd like to know why - beyond the protein. Does it represent something to you, is it an affirmation of your ability to provide for your family, a direct connection to the circle of life, a spiritual sacrament...
I'll post my thoughts below and look forward to seeing yours.

What's hunting got to do with respecting animals?

An excellent discussion is going on over at NorCal Cazadora's Blog

Question du jour: What's hunting got to do with respecting animals?

I did a radio interview last week with Radio Netherlands Worldwide about hunting as an alternative to buying factory-farmed meat, and after I left the studio, I couldn't stop thinking about this one word that I'd kept saying in reference to meat and animals: "respect."

In particular, I talked about how much more I respected animals since I started hunting. I've said that many times before, but in this interview, I also talked about how I grew up in a family that raised animals for meat.

Afterward, that left me wondering: Taking responsibility for killing animals that provide your meat increases your respect for the food they provide. But why was it that hunting increased my respect for the animals themselves?

Read more and join the conversation