The Technology Problem

[LopeHunter]

Many layers to this onion. Technology adds complexity and points of failure. Just because a rifle will shoot 1000 yards does not mean the shooter will hit anywhere near where thinks will hit at 1000 yards. Open sights are reliable for most shooters out to 100 or so yards yet never fail to pair with a mobile phone or have a battery fail or a gasket seal leak. I have been on a lot of hunts and my shots beyond 300 yards are a very, very small portion of shots I took and yet filled a lot of those tags. Maybe shooting out to 1000 yards I could have filled the tag an hour or so sooner or a day sooner or actually filled a tag on a hunt I had tag soup. That extra hour or day or days also became part of the adventure so having a 1000 yard rifle might have short-changed me.

Now, if a position is needed on technology then I support no attached electronics to your weapon. Put the GoPro on your hat. Put your range finder in your hand. Put your ballistics calculator in your hand. I also would prohibit motorized decoys. I would prohibit electronic calls for game animals. I would prohibit baiting and feeding of game animals. I would prohibit hunting behind high fences. If you draw blood then your tag is punched.

Of course, if I got power to do all this then point systems would also be eliminated. I would eliminate any tags that were not part of the draw system other than one lottery tag where are limited to one entry and one auction tag per species per year per state. Non-residents would get 20% of all tags and pay no more than 5x what the resident pays for any license, tag or fee. No landowner tags, no outfitter tags, and no tags for any subgroup. Put the tags in the draw. You get one choice per species in the initial draw then one choice in the leftover draw. If you draw a tag in the initial draw then the total applicants for that tag divided by the number of tags is the number of years you wait to apply again for that species. No wait period for a tag drawn in the leftover draw.

 

[Gut Shot]

I think about this a lot too. When I first started hunting deer here in Illinois which is slug gun and muzzleloader only no rifles, no.1 you had to draw a tag. No. 2 a long shot was 75 yards with a smooth barrel slug gun 100 was almost unheard of. Now tags are otc for all seasons with two extra gun seasons that now a 150 or 200 yard shot is no problem which I'm guilty of taking myself. Not to mention some guys are shooting deer at 60 yards with a bow and crossbows are allowed the entire archery season. All this while our deer herd is a fraction of what it used to be. So we went from a 7 day gun season with a max range of around 70 yards with limited tags, to 105 days of archery season with guys shooting 60 to 70 yards and now 13 days of gun hunting with a max range of 200 all while being able to buy all the tags you want. Never seems to be taken into account.

Gun deer tags are still by drawing, left over tags are sold OTC. 2 extra gun seasons? Only in counties with too many deer and/or CWD. 20 counties still have a late doe season, 15 have a CWD late season. That is out of 102 counties in the state. Harvest has been mostly in decline, following the decline in deer numbers, despite the advances in weapon technology and the addition of crossbows to the archery season.

I'm betting people are still screwing up shots at 20 yards with a bow, let alone 60 yard shots. And not everyone is embracing new technology, there are plenty of guys who still go out with grandpa's old A-5 and Foster slugs and kill deer.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Now, if a position is needed on technology then I support no attached electronics to your weapon. Put the GoPro on your hat. Put your range finder in your hand. Put your ballistics calculator in your hand. I also would prohibit motorized decoys. I would prohibit electronic calls for game animals. I would prohibit baiting and feeding of game animals. I would prohibit hunting behind high fences. If you draw blood then your tag is punched.

Of course, if I got power to do all this then point systems would also be eliminated. I would eliminate any tags that were not part of the draw system other than one lottery tag where are limited to one entry and one auction tag per species per year per state. Non-residents would get 20% of all tags and pay no more than 5x what the resident pays for any license, tag or fee. No landowner tags, no outfitter tags, and no tags for any subgroup. Put the tags in the draw. You get one choice per species in the initial draw then one choice in the leftover draw. If you draw a tag in the initial draw then the total applicants for that tag divided by the number of tags is the number of years you wait to apply again for that species. No wait period for a tag drawn in the leftover draw.

Lots of good ideas here - I will add one many will hate, but one tag per species per hunter in the US (except leftover tags). Getting 4 bull elk tags in a year is overkill when a lot of guys don't draw at all. (but of course Randy's HT show would get an exemption)

 

[rideold]

Rinella had a good discussion some time back on his podcast about technology. He brought up a good point that boots are technology and compared to what people wore 100 years ago they give us an advantage. The point being that it really depends on how you look at it. The argument I've heard is that as technology progresses and if that technology yields greater success rates then the tag allocations will go down. In the end, the management of the wildlife is in some ways separate from the hunting technology. I guess I see the technology question as a personal one. If someone wants to use every technological aid and it isn't banned then that's their choice. Banning technology in the hunting laws seems useful if said law pushes hunters closer to fair chase but that's my opinion that all hunts should be one way and not another. I'm sure there are others that have the opposite opinion. It isn't just hunting where the technology discussion exists. Take sports and doping vs detecting that doping as a corollary.

 

[BrentD]

Somehow equating boots with 75% let-off compounds with lighted sights is pretty bogus, if you ask me. VERY bogus actually.

 

[rideold]

Somehow equating boots with 75% let-off compounds with lighted sights is pretty bogus, if you ask me. VERY bogus actually.

I agree. His point was more about where and how you draw the line on what constitutes "too much technology".

 

[Nick87]

Gun deer tags are still by drawing, left over tags are sold OTC. 2 extra gun seasons? Only in counties with too many deer and/or CWD. 20 counties still have a late doe season, 15 have a CWD late season. That is out of 102 counties in the state. Harvest has been mostly in decline, following the decline in deer numbers, despite the advances in weapon technology and the addition of crossbows to the archery season.

I'm betting people are still screwing up shots at 20 yards with a bow, let alone 60 yard shots. And not everyone is embracing new technology, there are plenty of guys who still go out with grandpa's old A-5 and Foster slugs and kill deer.

Very good and yes it is still draw but every year at least in the northern part of the state there are leftover tags that never get bought. Hence it's otc. We have a late doe season plus cwd season follow along that's 2 and yes they are cwd counties. And your probably right not that many guys are shooting new boss or guns these days. Do you think the decline in deer harvest is because there's far less opportunity because of the low deer numbers?

 

[Gut Shot]

Very good and yes it is still draw but every year at least in the northern part of the state there are leftover tags that never get bought. Hence it's otc. We have a late doe season plus cwd season follow along that's 2 and yes they are cwd counties. And your probably right not that many guys are shooting new boss or guns these days. Do you think the decline in deer harvest is because there's far less opportunity because of the low deer numbers?

I think the lower deer numbers are resulting in a lower harvest. The closest public hunting area to me is over 2300 acres and last year only 35 deer were taken there. That's about one deer per 65 acres of land that is managed specifically for wildlife. If you put 65 acres of that ground anywhere else in the area and had it all to yourself you could easily kill 3 or 4 deer if you were a decent hunter. I just think that the average deer hunter isn't really all that serious about it. They don't get up early enough or stay out until dark, they don't sneak in and out, they won't get away from the road, and they aren't very good shots. New technology isn't going to help those guys.

It isn't a secret that Illinois' deer tags are easy to come by. I also think the DNR does have a pretty fair read on deer population. We had the late season in my county. I really liked it, I could hunt all year for a big buck, if I didn't get one and needed meat I could always plug a doe at the end of season. We no longer have the late season because deer numbers plummeted, not because hunters were killing more does, but because the deer got sick and went into a hard winter in poor health.

One thing you didn't take into account is the availability of land owner tags (non-transferable in Illinois). Between me, the wife and two kids we have 16 deer tags, and a couple of turkey tags to boot. We aren't taking 16 deer off of my place, I'm perfectly happy just getting my kids a couple. So every year I know we will throw away over a dozen tags, I know I'm not alone in this. The big problem I have with tags in Illinois is the money that they make for the state and where that money goes. But the number of tags issued doesn't correlate well with the amount of deer killed.

 

[Nick87]

So you think that technology isn't affecting herd numbers/ hunter success, Because of unfilled landowner tags and the idea that hunters don't hunt hard anymore?

 

[BrentD]

Imagine what the seasons could be or the tag numbers could be if we only had 300 yds rifles, traditional bows, or patched-roundball muzzleloaders.

 

[Dan O]

Imagine what the seasons could be or the tag numbers could be if we only had 300 yds rifles, traditional bows, or patched-roundball muzzleloaders.

LOL there would be panic in the hunting world. But I think it would lead to longer seasons and easier to get tags. Plus a greater appreciation of the animal when you harvest it. But heck that's just my opinion and it's only important to me

Dan

 

[VikingsGuy]

Imagine what the seasons could be or the tag numbers could be if we only had 300 yds rifles, traditional bows, or patched-roundball muzzleloaders.

Probably the same, as I would guess the vast majority of kills happen under those parameters, our would have if required too.

 

[Gut Shot]

So you think that technology isn't affecting herd numbers/ hunter success, Because of unfilled landowner tags and the idea that hunters don't hunt hard anymore?

I don't think technology has much of an impact on overall harvest in Illinois. I'm sure it helps a few hunters. I just don't think that the number of tags issued has a lot to do with amount of animals killed.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

I agree. His point was more about where and how you draw the line on what constitutes "too much technology".

My personal definition of too much technology is when technology improves harvest rates to the point where heard age structure and size are effected necessitating the reduction of tags.

As western hunting becomes more popular and point creep continues I think that it behooves us to handicap ourselves in order to maintain opportunity and herd health. For instance Colorado is reviewing there 5 year plan, I wonder if breaking archery into two different seasons with separate tags the last 2 weeks of September being a traditional archery only season (no pulley's, sights, pins, releases other than thumb rings) would help improve age class. Obviously, you would need to probably get ride of 1st rifle season and drop muzzy season in it's place in order for this to have any effect.

 

[lastlight]

Man, I'm too lazy or technology-adverse to ever be interested in a scope like that. I don't even know what half the apps on my phone do.

Hunting is fun because it rights us with our genetic code--we evolved doing it. The fun is in it's singular focus--it's one of the only things I've ever done in which the noise of everyday life completely vanishes. Especially on a stalk. Stuff like that scope brings the noise to the perfect silence, muddling the experience. I'd bet most hunters would agree.

Agreed! Especially the noise of everyday life part.

Thanks OP for bringing this subject up, Ive been pondering these thoughts a lot lately. I think there eventually needs to be a line drawn in the sand but also find it difficult on the where to start part. I could right a page long list of things I do not think should have a place in hunting, but that would be coming from a guy who shot a deer at 480 yards this year using a scope with turrets and digital range finder. Oddly enough my most memorable hunts are when the quarry is within close eye sight, however, in this instance of my deer there was no possibly way to get a yard closer as I have tried and failed many times on the same mountain thus my reasoning for upgrading my rifle & scope. I feel uneasy and annoyed with those taking 600 -1200 yard shots but many could feel uneasy about my shot at 480, and I understand that. I worry that there are less and less woodsmen in the field with the recent astronomical advances in Technology. It feels like we are advancing at a pace that feels much more rapid than ever before in human history and I wonder if we will only suffer through less and less opportunity of holding tags every year.