Trophy Hunting?

jzeck2

I think we are on the same page. I certainly meant market hunting because that is what most antis associate modern hunting with. It was market hunting that pushed species to near extinction. And they believe that any form of hunting will lead to extinction.

Most of my comment was in reference to pre-columbian native hunters and prehistoric cultures around the world because they were truly "meat" hunters. Antis and enviros tend to idealize those native cultures as the epitomy of land and animal ethics when in fact the methods used by ancient cultures to procure food would not live up to our modern ethics of fair chase. Not sure how you missed that considering the part of my post you chose to highlight contains 3 references to ancient cultures and subsistence hunting methods.

I was just trying to illustrate how antis misunderstand the terms that hunters use. One of the reasons that we have so much misunderstanding with antis is because many hunters don't realize that the words we use mean different things to the antis and vis versa.

As James Riley said it's semantics and I tried to be careful in how I described my point. In an attempt to be more clear:

A true meat hunter is as I described when referencing the hunting and trapping practices of ancient peoples. They did not care how they obtained meat as long as they got it.

A modern hunter who describes himself as a meat hunter but follows our modern ethic of fair chase does not fit the description above. If you follow fair chase then you care about the "how" of your kill and there is a trophy in that whether it is physical in the form of antlers or whether in a sense of accomplishment for having done it a certain way. I believe that most of us fall into this category. When we hunters hear the term meat hunter we know it means someone whose primary focus while hunting is to kill a legal animal and harvest the meat; we also understand that they will be following all applicable laws in relation to that activity.

When an anti hears the term "trophy hunting" they envision someone killing an animal, cutting off it's head and leaving the rest to rot. They don't understand that scenario sends us hunters into fits of rage as much as it does them.

My wife grew up in Portland, Oregon and until she moved to rural Idaho in high school she had been taught and believed that modern hunters would chase down animals in their trucks and shoot as many as they could with semiauto and automatic firearms, then cut the heads off the big ones and leave all else to rot. That is the anti envisionment of trophy hunting. Whereas to us the term trophy hunter means a hunter who rather than shoot the first legal animal he sees, hold out for a more mature animal and when killed will not only put the antlers on the wall but also every piece of meat in the freezer.

Antis hear the words we speak, they just understand them to mean something entirely different than we mean.
 
When you go to many of the 'hunting' organizations events when the talk of 'trophy hunts' they are talking about the size of the horns, antlers, skull in relation to the record book scores.
 
Here's a thought.
Shoulder seasons begin in 11 days.

Obviously 'meat' hunters will be the ones on this hunt.

They will be shooting elk in 90-100 degree weather, and killing cows with 7 week old spotted calves.

There are people who think thats all fine and dandy,but will berate me as being an a-hole because I will either kill a 300+ bull or kill a meat elk on the last day or two of season. If I'm lucky enough to kill a big, mature bull like I have the last few years, they'll either say to themselves or actually out loud/ on social media 'I only hunt for meat' 'you can't eat those antlers' 'real hunters don't...'etc. etc... You all know what I mean, I'm sure.
This isn't just anti-hunters either, but often people that preface their statement with 'I hunt but...'
 
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We get bogged down in semantics. I would let hunters actions be the defining factor rather then words that the use to describe them. The internet and all the information we are fed daily makes that difficult however it becomes easier if we can all at least agree to sit at the same table rather than think we needing to eat off the same plate.
 

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