ESSAY: Unfollowing Hunting Social Media will make Hunting Better

[left field]

5 hours ago, Belo said:

PS the link doesn't work for me.

Looks like the "deep-state influencers" got it pulled again. There's a pasted copy and PDF on rokslide. 

[Five Seasons]

OPINION: UNFOLLOWING HUNTING SOCIAL MEDIA WILL MAKE HUNTING BETTER

OPINION & ESSAY
DECEMBER 03, 2021 By Matt Rinella

Matt Rinella is a grown-ass man with spicy-ass opinions. While we at FRA do not agree with all of his thoughts presented below, we’ll defend his right to air them till the end. We know one thing for certain: It’s gonna be an awkward ******* Christmas at the Rinella house. – The Editors
Over the past decade, hunters have increasingly publicized pictures and videos of their kills to large audiences on social media. This monumental change in hunting norms occurred gradually and with little thought for its consequences. These consequences are overwhelmingly negative. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sharing photos of harvested game with friends and family. I strongly support individuals and organizations that use social media to cover issues of importance to the hunting community. But it is time to unfollow hunters who post pictures of dead animals to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of, mostly, strangers.
Social media has corrupted our motivations for hunting and is risking the future of the very activity we love so much. Traditionally, we hunters took to the woods for hides, horns, meat, personal enjoyment, and a sense of self-reliance. Now, for the first time in human history, many seek a digital harvest. Rather than butchering meat for the freezer or tanning a hide, these kinds of hunters mostly want photos on their iPhones to beam out across the internet. More than cooking and eating what they shoot, they’re interested in exchanging it for likes and followers — and even corporate sponsorships in gear and dollars.

With my last name, this may strike some as a curious position. I’m the brother of Steve Rinella, the founder of MeatEater and maybe the most influential hunter in America today. While I dearly love Steve and am close with some of his coworkers, I’ve come to realize their approach — and the approach of many others — of blending hunting and media, and their efforts to publicize and commodify hunting and wildlife via every available digital platform, undermine hunters everywhere. It’s easy to forget these days that people can remain friends despite vehemently disagreeing, but we’ve managed to do just that.

My argument starts with the fact that, in much of the US, public-land hunting is so overcrowded it’s no longer worth it. The mainstream and hunting media have run articles bemoaning declines in hunter participation for years, but this is utter nonsense. The number of hunters is extremely difficult to determine, and even if hunter numbers have dipped slightly since the 1980s when US Fish and Wildlife Service data indicate they peaked, it’s irrelevant. Existing hunters are hunting more. When I crunched the data, it became clear that hunting license sales increased a whopping 30% between the 1980s and 2010s, and then the COVID-19 hunting boom increased hunter and license numbers even more. So, even if there are a few less hunters, those hunters are buying more licenses and spending more time crowding the woods.

Also, since the 1980s, the American landscape has changed in major ways. The US population size has increased by a third, the square footage of housing per person has doubled, and many former hunting spots are consequently residential neighborhoods now. The US simply doesn’t have the habitat needed to support the wildlife and hunters it used to.

As a result, big game draw odds have plummeted, private lands are increasingly leased for hunting and thus off-limits to the public, and public land hunting often begins with struggling to find parking at the trailhead, followed by struggling to find animals so pressured they suffer from PTSD. According to 2017 survey data, over half of hunters have abandoned spots due to crowding. In short, hunter numbers have grown beyond what the resource can support. I believe social media is largely responsible for this because it draws people afield under false pretenses and encourages hunting for unjust reasons.

I’d be remiss if I ignored my own history with hunting social media. I was never big on posting grip-and-grins online. Years ago, I completely stopped after seriously asking myself why I wanted lots of people to see what I had shot. Upon reflection, I realized bragging was my sole motivation. This troubled me. I’ve always had a low tolerance for bragging by others, so I disliked realizing I was guilty of it myself. It didn’t help that I was bragging about dead animals harvested for food. This seemed more consequential and perverse than the soccer trophies, kitchen remodels, and other inane shit people brag about online.
 

The Negative Consequences of Hunting Social Media

For proof that social media, and hunting television, are increasing hunter numbers on already overcrowded public lands, consider what hunting influencers sell their followers on Facebook and Instagram and through their TV shows. In addition to hunting products, influencers like my brother sell books that teach rudimentary hunting, game cooking, and backcountry survival skills. Many are now teaching classes where students learn elementary woodsmanship, game calling, map reading, and strategies for applying for tags.

The target audience for all this is clearly hunting-curious nonhunters because seasoned hunters don’t need 101-level how-to content. If you have any doubt that motivating people to hunt and selling them products is big business, consider how many influencers do it. Here, for example, are more than 200 of them on Instagram. In addition to inspiring people to hunt, influencers inspire people to become fellow influencers. They do this partly by example and partly by teaching the relevant skills to do so, like how to attract sponsors and how to film their hunts. In other words, influencers motivate people to hunt for the same shitty ego- and profit-motivated reasons they hunt themselves.

Top hunting influencers like to call themselves conservationists, but the fact of the matter is influencers are terrible for habitat. No matter how great areas look in terms of feed and cover, game can’t live where there are hunters on every ridge. That’s exactly the situation influencers have created in their quest for more hunter-customers. Most influencers don’t have to hunt the places they’ve blown up because they largely hunt private land, take expensive trips to remote hunting destinations, and enter pricey limited tag lotteries throughout the US and beyond.

Influencers like to believe they’re elevating our reputation among the nonhunting public, but social media has severely damaged our reputation among nonhunters as well as reduced hunting opportunity. For example, read about the banning of grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia or watch The Women Who Kill Lions on Netflix. Or Google something like “social media hunting controversy” and settle in for a very long read.

Moreover, hunting influencers routinely engage in selfish, greedy behavior that poses threats to our reputation among nonhunters. Generating enough content to gain big followings and attract sponsors necessitates gobbling up tags and killing more than one needs. Top influencers commonly kill three or more elk a year along with a variety of other game. If you’re reading this, you’re probably following several of them right now.

If I was a nonhunter doing a quick scan of hunting social media, my gut response would be one of shock. It is a cornucopia of carcasses with zero explanation of what they plan to do with all that meat. If you’re a nonhunter reading this, please believe many traditional hunters are as disgusted by all this greed as you are. Traditional hunters believe wild game is a precious resource, and we harvest only what we need to eat between seasons, thereby increasing the chances for other hunters to take an animal.

Hunting social media is also horrible for public access. Friends growing up in the rural Montana community where I live remember freely hunting the surrounding ranchlands. A tractor repairman friend remembers having permission to hunt a 100-plus-mile swath running from eastern Montana all the way to South Dakota. Access started dwindling in the late 1980s with the advent of cable-TV hunting shows. These shows increased the appeal of hunting to the point where people became willing to pay big money to lease private hunting lands. Nowadays, it’s laughable to think banging on doors will result in hunting permissions in this prairie country because years of social media hype have made un-pressured ground so rare and monetarily valuable that landowners can’t resist charging for it. Hunting influencers like to pretend fellow hunters are their stakeholder group, but their real stakeholders are large landowners and the hunting industry.

Social media hunters further degrade opportunities for traditional hunters by deceiving people into thinking hunting is something it’s not. When famous hunting personalities pay to kill elk on ranches that are off-limits to the public, what they’re doing is more like slaughtering livestock than hunting wild elk. If that’s what gets them off, great, but putting videos of their “hunts” on social media without indicating they are stalking areas off-limits to the public dupes legions of newbies into thinking publicly accessible basins are brimming with bulls just waiting to be shot. Nothing says, “let them eat cake,” quite like using social media to inundate traditional public land hunters with throngs of aspiring hunting influencers while stalking quasi-domestic wildlife on private ranches.

I can’t understand being proud enough of this fantasy hunting to film it or brag about it on podcasts. Aren’t the videos a tacit admission one lacks the tenacity for real hunting? Many traditional hunters think so. I’d rather kill a one-eyed calf with a limp on public land than a half-tame giant that’s only accessible to people who can afford to pay for it. At a bare minimum, these “hunters” should explain to their followers that they’ve paid to stalk glorified cattle at hunting amusement parks. Then they could give a virtual tour of the lodge and a cost breakdown.

Here is perhaps the biggest problem with hunting social media: It is blatantly dishonest. It doesn’t take much hunting experience or familiarity with wound-loss data to see that social media hunters regularly hide the sorrowful side of killing animals for sport and meat. Social media shows too many smiling faces and too few fading blood trails. I know hunters that upload their grip-n-gloats before the meat cools when things go right but post nothing at all when they wound and lose game. Even major hunting publications encourage this lying by omission by discouraging hunters from posting videos of poorly hit game.

“KEEP ON HUNTING, BUT POST NOTHING IN 2022. THIS WILL PROVE YOU’VE MOVED PAST THE ATTENTION-SEEKING TODDLER STAGE IN YOUR DEVELOPMENT AS A HUNTER AND NOW GO AFIELD FOR MATURE REASONS.”

Showing only the happy parts attracts people to hunting on false premises, which is deeply unfair. It causes people to gear up and head afield thinking they’ll simply pull the trigger and drag their winter meat back to the truck. It’s not a true representation. The cold, hard fact is that pulling the trigger sometimes results in wounded animals and severe regret. This is especially true for new hunters. If influencers insist on recruiting new hunters and selling them gear, they should at least have the decency to ensure these hunters go into it with their eyes wide open. Of course, honest social media that consistently shows wound loss would provoke public outrage. As such, the influencers have painted themselves into a corner: Showing only the happy parts is lying and showing everything could destroy hunting. If they want to stop lying while maintaining our right to hunt, the only option is to take hunting offline.

What’s Lost if We Stop Posting Harvested Game?

As long as there have been cameras, hunters have been taking pictures with their game animals. Before the internet, these photos were displayed in albums and sometimes on walls in sporting goods stores. While the pictures aren’t new, the motivations for showing them, and the numbers and types of people that see them, have changed dramatically. Instead of a few family members or hunters in bait shops seeing the images, they are broadcast to everyone willing to look at them across the internet. This mass posting of dead game has become so common that it’s tempting to think something virtuous might be lost if we stop doing it.

To determine what’s at stake, I recently asked eight hunters who are widely followed on social media why they show us what they shoot. If they can’t explain why looking at what they kill is indispensable to the future of hunting, who can?

Their responses included “picture storage” and “informing friends what I’ve been doing.” Both are goals easily achieved without hundreds or thousands of followers. Most other motivations I heard about clearly don’t benefit the hunting community, such as “gaining credibility as a hunter” and “being addicted to the adoration” of followers, as two interviewees put it. One said, “It’s only worth [posting dead game] if people buy something,” and six of the eight admitted bragging was a motivation.

To determine what’s at stake, I recently asked eight hunters who are widely followed on social media why they show us what they shoot. If they can’t explain why looking at what they kill is indispensable to the future of hunting, who can?

Their responses included “picture storage” and “informing friends what I’ve been doing.” Both are goals easily achieved without hundreds or thousands of followers. Most other motivations I heard about clearly don’t benefit the hunting community, such as “gaining credibility as a hunter” and “being addicted to the adoration” of followers, as two interviewees put it. One said, “It’s only worth [posting dead game] if people buy something,” and six of the eight admitted bragging was a motivation.

One motivation mentioned to me that demands more serious consideration is “celebrating the animal.” This could ostensibly benefit the hunting community as it could be seen as a positive to nonhunters watching. But do they mean celebrating the animal’s magnificence? If so, why not stick to photos of living animals? All animals look way better alive. Do they mean celebrating the animal’s life like we do loved ones at funerals? If so, why don’t we post pictures of open caskets to celebrate departed loved ones? When people say they show thousands of people what they shoot “to honor the animal,” much as I want to believe their motives are pure, all I hear is “to honor my abilities.” They’re honoring themselves, not the animal.

One interviewee said his motivation was to “portray hunting honestly” as a counter to all the dishonest depictions on social media and television. I’m positive this interviewee provides warts-and-all depictions of real hunting. I know the guy. He once released a heartbreaking video involving an elk he wounded. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to regularly consume hunting social media without regularly consuming bullshit, and there’s no way to distinguish the truth from the half-truths and outright lies.

Another motivation cited by the social media hunters I spoke with was promoting acceptance of hunting by illustrating field-to-table connectivity. To me, it’s a stretch to think nonhunters learn anything profound that revolutionizes their views on hunting when we post dead deer followed by a recipe for venison osso buco.
 

What Should We Do About It?

My brother Dan has joked about developing an internet-enabled rifle scope that automatically uploads kill shots to a hunter’s social media feed. His joke illustrates how hopelessly entangled social media is with hunting. Prospects for disentangling the two seem dim. Once before, however, hunters did abandon a common practice that wasn’t serving them. Through the 1980s, visibly transporting big game on vehicles was common. Then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, sportsmen’s groups, hunting magazines, and game management agencies began encouraging hunters to conceal carcasses to avoid offending nonhunters. The campaign seems to have worked some because I don’t see as many predominantly displayed deer on the highway as I used to.

If we unfollow hunting social media, we’ll do much more than avoid further public relations problems. We’ll be better, happier, and more successful hunters. In addition to no longer completely wasting time and suffering other downsides of staring at phones, we’ll stop contributing to a system that:

• Incentivizes hunting for the wrong reasons
• Diminishes draw odds
• Crowds public hunting grounds
• Makes wildlands uninhabitable for wildlife
• Pays landowners to lock out the public
• Degrades our reputation among nonhunters

The solution to all this is simple. I’m appealing to hunting influencers: Stop posting it. I’m appealing to hunting content consumers: Stop following it. I’m appealing to all hunters everywhere: Get on board with my New Year No Post Challenge. Keep on hunting, but post nothing in 2022. This will prove you’ve moved past the attention-seeking toddler stage in your development as a hunter and now go afield for mature reasons. More importantly than proving it to others, you’ll prove it to yourself. Is hunting still fun without the likes?

When it comes to hunting, we should take our lead from the Ju/’hoansi people of the Kalahari Desert, a hunter-gatherer tribe that the anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee studied in the 1960s and 1970s. Ju/’hoansi customs strongly encouraged humility, as quotes from a tribesman illustrate:

“Say that a man has been hunting. He must not come home and announce like a braggart, ‘I have killed a big one in the bush!’ He must first sit down in silence until I or someone else comes up to his fire and asks, ‘What did you see today?’ He replies quietly, ‘Ah, I’m no good for hunting. I saw nothing at all…maybe just a tiny one.’ Then I smile to myself because I know he has killed something big.”

The contrast between Ju/’hoansi hunters and social media hunters couldn’t be sharper. These humble tribesmen were reluctant to tell their closest friends and neighbors they had killed something. Conversely, social media hunters tell the whole world. The Ju/’hoansi had the right idea. The proper attitude for the hunter is one of understatement and humility. Hunting is about seeing without being seen. Hunting is best done quietly.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Belo

[Five Seasons]

I agree with some of what he says about dishonest hunters, those who do it for money and to sell gear. I agree with the concern that some of these guys shoot so much game that they can't possibly consume it all... and I've long struggled with donating it to the food bank, because lets be honest you could donate money too and probably provide more.

I also very much agree with not posting of grip and grins. You all know I don't do it. This is a public forum for everyone to see and what are the motivations? Look at the post about the new dec laws. Wolc is in there showing his big buck to prove the laws are fine. Look at the thread where nomad boasts about not using irish spring and offers us to look at his kills as proof that he's a good hunter. I'm not trying to personally attack either of you, and I hope that's understood as sincere, but simply as a bit of proof about what Matt talks about when we "post" pictures. We do it for cred. If nomad mentioned he washes his clothes with tide and we didn't see some of those bucks, we'd assume he was a clown right? Please understand that I take pictures... plenty of pictures. Only that I share them with close family and friends. 

 

What I do NOT agree with him about is his outspoken opinions about hunter recruitment. He has a history of noting how more hunters is bad for current hunters. Something we all grumble about of course but I think we all understand that we are stronger with more. So his brother's influence in recruiting new hunters, or helping traditional deer hunters like me expand our hunting into other game with his cookbooks and podcasts is absolutely a good thing. He fails to mention that those license sales and the fundraising they've done has added tons of public land back to the pie.

Finally, I obviously don't know Steve, but I do believe him when he says him and his family only eat, or mostly eat wild game. I don't see him as an excess killer. Hell they cooked crow and ate it. And while I understand the whole essay wasn't just aimed at him, I don't recall the meateater crew hunting private lands other than a few celeb hunts. Those guys are out in the west on public lands backpacking, often filming episodes where no success is achieved. Hell, when I found meateater it was because at least 10 minutes of the 30 minute episode was the butchering. I'd never seen that before on the outdoor channel and I loved the idea. Show the whole damn thing for once. On the flip side THP does a great job of showing all the prep. You can watch 50 minutes of their shows before a deer even shows up. And another 50 minutes tracking a wounded deer from a bad shot and not the condensed 30 seconds you see on the outdoor channel. That's real hunting.

[Five Seasons]

meateater brought Matt onto the podcast. If I'm honest it wasn't a very good segment. Some good points made, but not a very professional back and forth with too much interrupting and obvious family tension that sort of ruined what is an excellent topic and debate.

 

https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-304-the-fish-shacks-revenge-a-tiki-christmas-family-feud-extravaganza

[Moho81]

meateater brought Matt onto the podcast. If I'm honest it wasn't a very good segment. Some good points made, but not a very professional back and forth with too much interrupting and obvious family tension that sort of ruined what is an excellent topic and debate.
 
https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-304-the-fish-shacks-revenge-a-tiki-christmas-family-feud-extravaganza

I’ll have to give that a listen. I’ve kinda stopped listening to the meat eater podcast. Something about it changed. Seems like they BS about random stuff now and less about hunting I don’t really know how to explain it but it doesn’t seem the same as it use to be.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[phade]

33 minutes ago, Belo said:

meateater brought Matt onto the podcast. If I'm honest it wasn't a very good segment. Some good points made, but not a very professional back and forth with too much interrupting and obvious family tension that sort of ruined what is an excellent topic and debate.

 

https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-304-the-fish-shacks-revenge-a-tiki-christmas-family-feud-extravaganza

Don't fall for the business model. Look at WWE, the Kardashians, etc. for the model. 

Drama, stir and shake, and profit. Rinella's sell their soul to the highest bidder. Their Christmas dinners were no drama. Just counting the dollars.

And, yes they do hunt not just private, but highly managed private. One non-hunting NYC writer wrote a piece about his experience hunting with Steve on a private farm...it kind of gives you a POV of the real person who isn't in front of the camera. I don't remember which publication it was in, but it was not a hunting one.

Edited December 29, 2021 by phade

[phade]

8 minutes ago, Moho81 said:

I’ll have to give that a listen. I’ve kinda stopped listening to the meat eater podcast. Something about it changed. Seems like they BS about random stuff now and less about hunting I don’t really know how to explain it but it doesn’t seem the same as it use to be.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

$$$.

[Five Seasons]

23 minutes ago, Moho81 said:

I’ll have to give that a listen. I’ve kinda stopped listening to the meat eater podcast. Something about it changed. Seems like they BS about random stuff now and less about hunting I don’t really know how to explain it but it doesn’t seem the same as it use to be.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

yeah there are for sure some filler episodes. They just brought in the guy that was the inspiration for the character on jurassic park. But to be honest i found it interesting. 52 weeks and several hours each episode and it gets tough for them i'm sure. 

15 minutes ago, phade said:

Don't fall for the business model. Look at WWE, the Kardashians, etc. for the model. 

Drama, stir and shake, and profit. Rinella's sell their soul to the highest bidder. Their Christmas dinners were no drama. Just counting the dollars.

And, yes they do hunt not just private, but highly managed private. One non-hunting NYC writer wrote a piece about his experience hunting with Steve on a private farm...it kind of gives you a POV of the real person who isn't in front of the camera. I don't remember which publication it was in, but it was not a hunting one.

The thought crossed my mind. I know you're not a meateater guy, and that's fine. I would recommend you listen to this back and forth though. You can tell when there's a quiver in someone's voice that it's more than an act and I don't think this was an act for attention... and if it was a couple of country boys from the upper peninsula in Michigan deserve an award. 

Lets just say this, whether genuine or manufactured the topic of overcrowding is very real and social media isn't helping. I have personally lost and and leased land in the last few years alone. They're not making more of it, it's more and more expensive and public land is receiving more and more pressure. 

The topic of showing every deer you wound just like you show every deer you kill is another good one. Show too much and it's fuel for the anti's. Show not enough and you risk being dishonest with new hunters. 

[phade]

34 minutes ago, Belo said:

yeah there are for sure some filler episodes. They just brought in the guy that was the inspiration for the character on jurassic park. But to be honest i found it interesting. 52 weeks and several hours each episode and it gets tough for them i'm sure. 

The thought crossed my mind. I know you're not a meateater guy, and that's fine. I would recommend you listen to this back and forth though. You can tell when there's a quiver in someone's voice that it's more than an act and I don't think this was an act for attention... and if it was a couple of country boys from the upper peninsula in Michigan deserve an award. 

Lets just say this, whether genuine or manufactured the topic of overcrowding is very real and social media isn't helping. I have personally lost and and leased land in the last few years alone. They're not making more of it, it's more and more expensive and public land is receiving more and more pressure. 

The topic of showing every deer you wound just like you show every deer you kill is another good one. Show too much and it's fuel for the anti's. Show not enough and you risk being dishonest with new hunters. 

The problem is people want to apply inherently good or inherently bad monikers to a whole - or in this case all of hunting. There is good and bad with nearly everything in hunting, work, family, life, etc. 

But, what there almost always is, is room to make money in the middle. Selling shovels to miners.

[Five Seasons]

1 minute ago, phade said:

The problem is people want to apply inherently good or inherently bad monikers to a whole - or in this case all of hunting. There is good and bad with nearly everything in hunting, work, family, life, etc. 

But, what there almost always is, is room to make money in the middle. Selling shovels to miners.

that was kind of his brother's whole point by the way. That they're making money off of something that isn't meant to be for profit since they banned market hunting in the early 1900's. 

The argument then goes back to cave paintings of hunting, to field and stream magazines in the 60's to primos hunting videos in the 80's/90's to what is now social media. Beginning with magazines and books, we have been using grip and grins to sell product. What better way to sell a product than showing your big ass buck you killed with it. 

[phade]

1 minute ago, Belo said:

that was kind of his brother's whole point by the way. That they're making money off of something that isn't meant to be for profit since they banned market hunting in the early 1900's. 

The argument then goes back to cave paintings of hunting, to field and stream magazines in the 60's to primos hunting videos in the 80's/90's to what is now social media. Beginning with magazines and books, we have been using grip and grins to sell product. What better way to sell a product than showing your big ass buck you killed with it. 

Yeah but that isn't a thing unique to hunting. Look at other product spaces. Cars for example. Drivers holding trophies, or actors acting cool with their cars. A broken down car on the side of the road isn't selling them to people.

[Nomad]

8 minutes ago, Belo said:

What better way to sell a product than showing your big ass buck you killed with it. 

 Bingo ! If I ever killed a giant buck that I could make $ off , rest assured I’d take photos with a few  different bows, a mess of different coats, why with out fill in the blank , I never would have got him . The blanks will be soaps , sprays , cameras, stands and on and on ,” why he came right to my Primos ,super master king of the woods grunt tube ! “ 

Then research which of those  pays the most in sponsorships .

yes it’ll never happen, but if it does it took every worthless piece of camo junk they sell ! I’m also available for personal appearances  and book signings .

 

[left field]

The thread on rokslide is interesting and lengthy - some 1000 responses and 86 thousand views. Rinella as well. Maybe because it's more western oriented.

Aron Snyder gets thrown in as well as he went on a few podcasts to counter but then got into a "I could kick his ass" thing which was a little disappointing. He talked about killing so many animals that his wife gives the meat away to house buyers (I think she's a realtor). That got lost in the shuffle but maybe if you're shooting so many animals that you, your family, and your neighbours can't possibly use it all so you have to give it away to strangers, you're shooting too many animals.

[wolc123]

46 minutes ago, Nomad said:

 Bingo ! If I ever killed a giant buck that I could make $ off , rest assured I’d take photos with a few  different bows, a mess of different coats, why with out fill in the blank , I never would have got him . The blanks will be soaps , sprays , cameras, stands and on and on ,” why he came right to my Primos ,super master king of the woods grunt tube ! “ 

Then research which of those  pays the most in sponsorships .

yes it’ll never happen, but if it does it took every worthless piece of camo junk they sell ! I’m also available for personal appearances  and book signings .

 

Did you use Irish spring prior to killing that big buck this year ?   I am confused, because Belo claims that you boasted of NOT using it.  
 

That’s the brand I normally use, but I switch to this stuff when I am going to be hunting the next day:

 

[wolc123]

On 12/9/2021 at 9:28 AM, Belo said:

 Wolc is in there showing his big buck to prove the laws are fine. Look at the thread where nomad boasts about not using irish spring 

I didn’t think it was all that big and neither did FSW.  Didn’t you see that there were a couple points broken off ?  I’d throw up a couple more pics, but some have seen enough.  Maybe high 70’s to low 80’s, after the required drying period.

Whats not to like about the new laws ?  I am still waiting to cash in on the Holiday season. 3 more days.  Good luck to you, if you go out and take advantage of that special Christmas present that NY state DEC gave us this year.

[The_Real_TCIII]

Did you use Irish spring prior to killing that big buck this year ?   I am confused, because Belo claims that you boasted of NOT using it.  
 
That’s the brand I normally use, but I switch to this stuff when I am going to be hunting the next day:
 

Whose hairbrush??


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[WNYTRPR]

This draws them in ,don’t ask me how I know .

[Dinsdale]

44 minutes ago, left field said:

 

Aron Snyder gets thrown in as well as he went on a few podcasts to counter but then got into a "I could kick his ass" thing which was a little disappointing. He talked about killing so many animals that his wife gives the meat away to house buyers (I think she's a realtor). That got lost in the shuffle but maybe if you're shooting so many animals that you, your family, and your neighbours can't possibly use it all so you have to give it away to strangers, you're shooting too many animals.

I should know better then get involved, but I’ve seen this thought on here before so just curious; I don’t know who Aron Snyder is…..

If someone buys the tag thats issued by a gov’t agency as part of a quota, and as long as the meat isn’t left in the field to rot……

What does it matter what that hunter did with the meat? Kept it for them selves, family, or a random stranger on the street. Again if nothing is wasted.

The quotas accounted for, the fees have been paid.

And I’ll provide a personal bias; that 90% of the hunting and shooting I’ve done in say the last 15 years or so, I don’t keep the meat. Might take a meal or two, never waste anything, it all gets consumed by someone. I pay for tags, the hunts are 100% legal, and I’m there enjoying the hunt, the meat is consumed; what’s so distasteful about that to another hunter?

Or since I don’t need to, or care to live off game meat; should I not hunt at all? 

Interesting topic, happen to somewhat agree to the original topic; and don’t post anything in the way of pics and share very little even to friends hunting related. Just a few things in private as I don’t think anything good comes of it.

[left field]

Snyder is the owner of Kifaru.

I don't disagree with you. His hunts are all legal and a mix of private and public. Mostly private I think. I also believe he said he shot somewhere around 75 animals a year which probably includes nuisance animals.

I'm just musing, but to tie it into what Rinella was saying, if there are too many hunters exploiting a diminishing resource, could there be a future of not only yearly limits but lifetime as well?

[DirtTime]

Social media hunting sites are a double edged sword. If they aren't pushing ads or selling sponsored products you are left with the backbone of what hunting is, hunting talk. When it's all about the endorsements they aren't all that great. They also loose merit when they are turned into a mass flood of nonsense and flaming wars.

 

I'm searching for a hunting forum to join, anyone have any suggestions?

[Five Seasons]

18 hours ago, Nomad said:

 Bingo ! If I ever killed a giant buck that I could make $ off , rest assured I’d take photos with a few  different bows, a mess of different coats, why with out fill in the blank , I never would have got him . The blanks will be soaps , sprays , cameras, stands and on and on ,” why he came right to my Primos ,super master king of the woods grunt tube ! “ 

Then research which of those  pays the most in sponsorships .

yes it’ll never happen, but if it does it took every worthless piece of camo junk they sell ! I’m also available for personal appearances  and book signings .

 

I'm not sure if you're serious or being sarcastic, but that's not for me. My buck is mine, I have no desire for the fortune or fame unless it was truly a record breaker. I think Matt Rinella's point is that some people are motivated by the wrong reasons as to why they hunt and for that I agree.

[Five Seasons]

16 hours ago, Dinsdale said:

I should know better then get involved, but I’ve seen this thought on here before so just curious; I don’t know who Aron Snyder is…..

If someone buys the tag thats issued by a gov’t agency as part of a quota, and as long as the meat isn’t left in the field to rot……

What does it matter what that hunter did with the meat? Kept it for them selves, family, or a random stranger on the street. Again if nothing is wasted.

The quotas accounted for, the fees have been paid.

And I’ll provide a personal bias; that 90% of the hunting and shooting I’ve done in say the last 15 years or so, I don’t keep the meat. Might take a meal or two, never waste anything, it all gets consumed by someone. I pay for tags, the hunts are 100% legal, and I’m there enjoying the hunt, the meat is consumed; what’s so distasteful about that to another hunter?

Or since I don’t need to, or care to live off game meat; should I not hunt at all? 

Interesting topic, happen to somewhat agree to the original topic; and don’t post anything in the way of pics and share very little even to friends hunting related. Just a few things in private as I don’t think anything good comes of it.

I appreciate the levity that you approached this with, so hopefully my return question is understood to be inquisitive and not disrespectful. IIRC, you do a lot of African hunting so I think that your donation of meat is a little different than the average NY whitetail hunter. So for arguments sakes, lets just stick to local deer with my question.

I have not donated meat. On good years I almost always give away some packages to family, but not because they were needy, but because I could and it's never been a whole deer's worth. Meaning I never killed with the intent of giving it away. 

For those that hunt and donate a whole deer to a friend or to a food kitchen... why? I've never understood killing something that I personally didn't need. I've never understood the thought that you were fulfilling the government's quota. I swear some of the guys here are the same guys who wont get the vaccine the gov't is begging them to get and yet they're out there trying to knock the deer numbers down for them.

At what point is it just "killing" and an excuse to kill and no longer pursuit?

Honest question and again, no disrespect meant I just don't get it. 

[The_Real_TCIII]

8 minutes ago, Belo said:

I appreciate the levity that you approached this with, so hopefully my return question is understood to be inquisitive and not disrespectful. IIRC, you do a lot of African hunting so I think that your donation of meat is a little different than the average NY whitetail hunter. So for arguments sakes, lets just stick to local deer with my question.

I have not donated meat. On good years I almost always give away some packages to family, but not because they were needy, but because I could and it's never been a whole deer's worth. Meaning I never killed with the intent of giving it away. 

For those that hunt and donate a whole deer to a friend or to a food kitchen... why? I've never understood killing something that I personally didn't need. I've never understood the thought that you were fulfilling the government's quota. I swear some of the guys here are the same guys who wont get the vaccine the gov't is begging them to get and yet they're out there trying to knock the deer numbers down for them.

At what point is it just "killing" and an excuse to kill and no longer pursuit?

Honest question and again, no disrespect meant I just don't get it. 

I kill a deer for my cousin every year. Hes got twin 11 year old boys and they all love venison. I hunt a tract thats got more does than any woodlot should ever have and Im happy to do my part!

[phade]

16 minutes ago, Belo said:

I appreciate the levity that you approached this with, so hopefully my return question is understood to be inquisitive and not disrespectful. IIRC, you do a lot of African hunting so I think that your donation of meat is a little different than the average NY whitetail hunter. So for arguments sakes, lets just stick to local deer with my question.

I have not donated meat. On good years I almost always give away some packages to family, but not because they were needy, but because I could and it's never been a whole deer's worth. Meaning I never killed with the intent of giving it away. 

For those that hunt and donate a whole deer to a friend or to a food kitchen... why? I've never understood killing something that I personally didn't need. I've never understood the thought that you were fulfilling the government's quota. I swear some of the guys here are the same guys who wont get the vaccine the gov't is begging them to get and yet they're out there trying to knock the deer numbers down for them.

At what point is it just "killing" and an excuse to kill and no longer pursuit?

Honest question and again, no disrespect meant I just don't get it. 

I hope this also goes the right way but both replies give me the impression you look at it from a "me" POV only.

The ability to bring in money to improve a family's quality of life - over a single deer? I'm sure at some point there is a balance, but I don't begrudge anyone of the few "lotto" winners who make money off of a deer they killed. I wouldn't prefer to advertise out a buck if I were that lucky, but at some point it becomes too greedy to not think about your family. Does $50K change lives? No, but place that in a 529, custodial retirement account, etc. and it becomes meaningful for a child. Or other various examples.

Second, helping others isn't about the killing. If you've never understood why killing something that you don't personally need can still be "good," then you shouldn't be eating meat from the store. Because, someone killed it for you. 

We all hunt for different reasons, many of which we all struggle to articulate. That said, killing something to be used by others is as old as human existence.

Edited December 30, 2021 by phade

[steve863]

9 minutes ago, Belo said:

I appreciate the levity that you approached this with, so hopefully my return question is understood to be inquisitive and not disrespectful. IIRC, you do a lot of African hunting so I think that your donation of meat is a little different than the average NY whitetail hunter. So for arguments sakes, lets just stick to local deer with my question.

I have not donated meat. On good years I almost always give away some packages to family, but not because they were needy, but because I could and it's never been a whole deer's worth. Meaning I never killed with the intent of giving it away. 

For those that hunt and donate a whole deer to a friend or to a food kitchen... why? I've never understood killing something that I personally didn't need. I've never understood the thought that you were fulfilling the government's quota. I swear some of the guys here are the same guys who wont get the vaccine the gov't is begging them to get and yet they're out there trying to knock the deer numbers down for them.

At what point is it just "killing" and an excuse to kill and no longer pursuit?

Honest question and again, no disrespect meant I just don't get it. 

 

Completely agree.  Killing something in a far away place doesn't make it feasible to bring back the meat but if one is hunting in their home state I don't get why one would be donating or giving away most if not all the meat.  I travel 4 hours to my hunting spot and I sure as hell won't be going all that way to shoot a deer and then give it all away.  I may give a few pieces to relatives and friends who might like it but in general I hunt to put meat in my freezer in the limited time I have to hunt.  I honestly have a hard time understanding why someone would even hunt if they didn't like the meat.

As far as donating meat to these places that feed the needy, I sure hope it all goes to good use.  The saying goes that beggars can't be choosers but from my life experience I have discovered that they very often ARE choosers.  I often wonder how many of them even like to be fed venison.  I don't think the percentage of needy who wouldn't touch venison is too different than the general population.