Recreational Fishing-Hunting - Do You and What's Your View on It ?

EveryDayAmnesiac

Well-Known Member
This is the way I go fishing:

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Stupid fish! God I hate 'em! :lol:

Christ I am fucking stoned as shit today. Like all fucking day. :ko:
 

herbivore21

Well-Known Member
A recent post in the Official Pets and Animal Thread (My all time favorite thread) is what got me curious about this.

I'm an avid fisherman. Love being on or near the water and love catching and eating shrimp and fish. I'm also big on conservation of our natural resources. I don't know that I'd consider myself a full out tree-hugger, to coin a phrase, but I do have some rules I adhere to such as if you kill it you gotta eat it and leave the area cleaner than how you found it.

Hunting...I'll be honest...I don't have the heart for it although I don't fault those who do as long as they treat mother nature with respect. A buddy of mine is into hunting and when I told him 'I couldn't kill Bambi' he suggested we do a little test......he staged two pictures on a computer and brought them up separately. First pic was a wide eyed doe and my immediate reaction was 'never happen'. Second picture was a big buck with a huge rack and it kind of caught me by surprise when I had to think about it before coming to the same conclusion that I'd rather not.

I'm not talking about those who have to hunt and fish for subsistence purposes.....just curious about everyone's take on the recreational.
Fishing for food and hunting for food is not something I could hold against anyone. You gotta eat, and in some places, these may be your only choice of getting vital nutrients.

I don't consume anything from animals at all, I live in a major world city and have absolutely no need to do so. Still, I am a vegan, not a judgy vegan. I don't really have any friends who eat like I do, and don't expect others to live my lifestyle. I understand it won't yet work for everyone in every context.

However, recreational hunting - I just can't see how it is justifiable. It entails literally killing things for fun - not for any specific need. Animals suffer when we shoot them, stab them, whatever we might do. The extent varies of course and in some places, this killing may arguably need to take place to feed people, but for fun? That is something I'd stay right away from!

It sounds like your original view on the topic is pretty reasonable my friend - you kill it, you eat it (unless it was about to kill you lol). No judgement on you either way though bro!

EDIT: @grokit articulated a number of my thoughts quite well also!
 
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His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
I tried that by getting on all fours and beating the shit out of all of the neighborhood dogs and then peeing on the next door neighbors mailboxes, fences and front doors. It ended up that my dogs really respected me but I couldn't say the same thing for my next door neighbors. :shrug:

Rescued a male 3 yr old Brittany Spaniel who had never been in a house - pure bred hunting dog who went gun shy and the owner didn't want him anymore. Dog could hunt his ass off until the sound of a shot rings off. Dog had a great temperament and was completely non-aggressive but turning him into a house dog was a bitch. I finally hired a dog trainer. The trainer let me know right off the start that he was training me to train the dog and not training the dog. Worked great! Dog learned hand signals and a slew of other things. Here's the funny part....at the beginning he said I wasn't being forceful enough to establish my dominance and I needed to stop treating the dog as an equal. One of his suggestions, and he wasn't kidding, was to take the dog out to his favorite tree, and once he peed on the tree he wanted me to force the dog to watch as I peed way higher on the tree and then allow the dog to pee on the tree again. Something about the higher you pee on the tree the more dominant I would be perceived. My response to that idea was 'what else you got'? That's when he suggested 'I mount the dog'. No, he wasn't kidding either. His explanation for this technique was...ever notice a male dog hump a human leg or another male dog? It's not about sex...its about dominance. I again countered with 'what else you got'? We moved on to an aggressive form of 'stay' where I would have to constantly put the dog in a corner, wait till I knew I had his attention. Point to his head and with a deep commanding voice say 'Stay'. Each time he would try and leave the corner I would have to push him back into the corner more aggressively until he stayed for 30 minutes. Within a week the dog was a good citizen. Not sure which of the unused techniques I would have gone with if the 'stay' technique hadn't worked.
 

seaofgreens

My Mind Is Free
I woulda just tried peeing on a tree myself. I think seeing the look on my dog's face would be priceless.

Anyways... I've fished my whole life. Almost all trout fishing though. I will throw the little guys back, but I will keep anything over 15 inches and eat all I keep. My favorite is a ten mile hike to a little secret mountain lake teeming with these pink fleshed rainbow. They must eat some sort of alpine krill up there, and I've never seen/tasted a trout like it before or since.

I got my hunters safety card from way back when I was 9 or 10, which is, in my state, good enough to mean I'm safe to hunt for life. Don't remember anything from the class, but I can tag a deer if I want.

I still haven't, but I might give it a shot this year. Going to be preserving/canning like a mofo from the garden this year, and it would definitely save me from needing to go to town a fair bit this winter if I had a freezer full of meat to go along.
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
Well, I hunt waterfowl and I fish and frankly, I do not submit these activities for anyone's approval nor do I care about anyone's active condemnation or criticism of hunting/fishing....particularly from non-vegan, grocery store, meat and fish eaters. Yeah.

Sorry, I know that's opening with an in your face statement, but as far as I can tell none of my hunting and fishing buddies ever self-righteously get in animal rights protection people's faces while the opposite seems to happen to us with some regularity.

Now, with that said...its my personal decision to not kill anything I do not eat. Just don't do it and trophy hunting is not one of my interests at all. E.g., I will hunt puddle ducks, but not divers or sea ducks (which are uneatable IMO).

I enjoy the experience of hunting, I believe that the challenge in water fowl hunting is less the shot than the preparation and decoying/calling in of your birds. This takes understanding the prey, its behavior and life cycle, and its environment, often in quite a bit of detail.

I enjoy having the understanding of where animal food comes from and personally find it hypocritical to eat package meat but be unwilling to confront the reality that an animal was killed to provide it.

I also belong to a number of gun clubs as I'm a avid clay target shooter (well, less avid as I get older...sigh LOL). My home club is an Issac Walton League...if not familiar with this national organization, it is dedicated to conservation and preserving the outdoors for future generations of sportsmen/women.

I do fish, we do keep and eat for table fare appropriate fish while returning fish which are not as appropriate. e.g., fishing in Tampa Bay's mangrove islands you generally catch Snook, Red Drum (red fish), and Mangrove snappers. We keep the Reds and Snappers but release the Snook as they are a very slow reproducing fish that is part of the backbone of the sport fishing industry in that area.

We (I) NEVER poach, exceed bag limits, use illegal shells, keep undersized or illegally obtained game, and we will all walk miles and spend hours in search of a crippled but not killed clean bird (and have done so many times). We don't sky bust, we only shoot birds when in the decoys and within reasonable range. Personally, I'm happy with the ethics that I and my hunting buddies follow.

Oh, for those who empathize with "Bambi", I often wonder how those people's views would change the first time a deer came through the front windshield of the car being driven by their 16 Y.O. child? My last visit to a Volkswagen dealer's body shop, the manager told me that 50% of the cars in his very busy shop were deer strikes. I live in the Washington, DC suburbs (near suburbs). There are no predators, its a very anti-hunting area, and deer are an at infestation levels. I have seen someone hit and cripple a deer and drive on. I got out and put it out of its misery (which wasn't pleasant but was someone's responsibility and needed to be done). This is what happens when emotions overrule good game management.

@macbill - dem' boys up for the Darwin award, perhaps? Certainly seems like the gene pool would be cleaner without these geniuses.
 
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VAPEHUNTER

Well-Known Member
I agree with everything you said especially about going to the "end of the earth" to find your crippled birds.

But this right here, "We don't sky bust" ,that line right there hits it home for me. Living in the desert I have to travel for a while to get to the birds. I can tell you stories of hunts ruined because other hunters get greedy and just don't want to let the birds work anyone else's spread.
It makes me crazy when I wake up at around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, drive to the spot, then walk for about a mile in 4 layers of clothes and chest waders carrying gear bags and a gun while pulling a cart full of decoys. Then setting out the decoy spread and setting up the blind all to be ready an hour before sunrise just to have a guy pull up 15 minutes before shooting time with no decoys or calls stand on the dike and take passing shots at birds that are way to high. I FUKIN HATE SKYBUSTERS:rant:!!!
I may have to take this rant to the FUCK YOU thread.:mad:
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
I agree with everything you said especially about going to the "end of the earth" to find your crippled birds.

But this right here, "We don't sky bust" ,that line right there hits it home for me. Living in the desert I have to travel for a while to get to the birds. I can tell you stories of hunts ruined because other hunters get greedy and just don't want to let the birds work anyone else's spread.
It makes me crazy when I wake up at around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, drive to the spot, then walk for about a mile in 4 layers of clothes and chest waders carrying gear bags and a gun while pulling a cart full of decoys. Then setting out the decoy spread and setting up the blind all to be ready an hour before sunrise just to have a guy pull up 15 minutes before shooting time with no decoys or calls stand on the dike and take passing shots at birds that are way to high. I FUKIN HATE SKYBUSTERS:rant:!!!
I may have to take this rant to the FUCK YOU thread.:mad:
hehehe...yeah, there are a lot of people out there with guns who have no idea how to shoot, have no idea what their effective range is with their load/choke, and don't seem to give a damn.

I sometimes see in the distance at another pit a party that I KNOW is guided and I have seen that pit take shots at birds that had to be 50 yards up, minimum, on blue bird, nothing flying days. They had NO chance of hitting these birds but I think the guide must have called the shot just to let them shoot (they probably don't know any different) even if they are going to get skunked.

I shoot 3", 1 1/4 oz loads mostly. I think the 3 1/2", 1 5/8, hypervolocity loads just encourage inexpert shooters to take shots that they just can't make.

Also, and I think this is very funny....most of these guys who say that they drop birds at 50-60 yards must have NO idea what 50 yards looks like. Sort of like that old juvenile joke about why women are such bad judges of distance.....because they have been told their whole lives that this is nine inches (while holding your fingers 2" apart! LOL).

Where you at...pothole country in WA maybe?
 
Baron23,

VAPEHUNTER

Well-Known Member
Where you at...pothole country in WA maybe?

Me? I'm in the beautiful Desert of Las Vegas, Nevada. You know where the ducks are plentiful:rolleyes:.
There are a few spots within a 2 hour driving distance that have some birds but they have been getting pretty crowded over the years.
 
VAPEHUNTER,
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Baron23

Well-Known Member
Me? I'm in the beautiful Desert of Las Vegas, Nevada. You know where the ducks are plentiful:rolleyes:.
There are a few spots within a 2 hour driving distance that have some birds but they have been getting pretty crowded over the years.
Wow....never thought of NV as waterfowl country...but it is full rec legal country for sure!! Whoot! Whoot!

I mentioned the WA pothole area as I just recently (and for the first time) drove across WA state to ID and once well on the other sides of the Cascades its surprisingly arid....not sure I would call it desert, but maybe.

Best of luck to you.
 
Baron23,
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