longrangehunterII
Well-Known Member
Rightfully so..... Arrests need to be made. And yes Judge of Character is when faced with right from wrong, and knowing the difference.
This type of BS has been going on for as long as I've been hunting big game, and I remember it all too well. As a young kid I had a "friend" whom decided it would be better to hangout in his car and drink rather then go into the woods to hunt deer. As luck would have it he saw a group of deer crossing the open field out in front of him. So he ran out around the other side to get his Browning BAR and decided to shoot into the herd, but since he was intoxicated he couldn't hit the buck but did manage to wound a doe.
I had heard these shoots from where I was sitting, only to come back later in the evening to find him still in his car, and asked what had happened? His answers had me so furious I was just dumb founded how someone could be so stupid with their actions?
I had to tracked the deer to where it had gone and found it still alive. This dumb *** was standing behind me when I asked him why didn't you put it out of its misery? He just stood there with a stupid look on his face, and I shook head in disbelief as I shot it in the head. Lucky for him I had a doe tag, but the whole incident had left a bad taste in my mouth.
This friend and I had it out a few years later during another deer season in the U.P. That incident was a turning point in his life and he has never drank another drink since then, that was 30 years ago, but our friendship had ended as well.
I left Michigan because of those bad apples and "if it's brown it's down" mentality. They all wanted to shoot big bucks but couldn't see far enough into the future to "let them go and grow". Look at what happened in Pennsylvania and how Gary Alt in the end had death threats against him, when he wanted to help PA with producing a better deer herd.
Even when I lived in Montana during an Antelope hunt in the late 1990's I saw two different groups of guys in two trucks do just what Jeff had witnessed chasing Prong Horn around, shooting wildly at running Antelope not making any hits but jumped back into their trucks to "give chase again". I had enough and had to leave that hunting area thinking what kind of hunting is that?
That same day I once again saw some more road hunters and decided to tell these guys "Are you aware you're on private property"? They all looked at each other, glanced down at a map and drove off! They didn't have a clue where they were and frankly didn't care who's land they were on?
It's the same for 4-wheelers and hunting off them, very few people will venture off into roadless terrain anymore. It's one thing to use them to get from point A-to-B, but that's not the case the vast majority of the time. Someone just road up to me a few weeks ago, and thought nothing more then to just drive right through an area I was glassing. I shouted out Hey! I told this guy " Are you aware the trail you're on is closed to ORV's", and pointed North to the spot he had left legal to ride FS lands and he should look at his FS MVU map for which roads are open!?!
This happens to me a lot around where I live, I gotta hike into this area to hunt yet every year I come across someone whom doesn't want to abide by the law, and it takes away from my hunting in an area closed to ORV's. They'll go around closed gates, cut barbed wire, cross posted lands and even poaching exists out of season. Those folks are law breakers and take away from our sport as a whole.
I can remember in Utah I drew a deer tag in a great area, only to have some Yahoos drive up to unload their horses and spot me stalking a group of Mule Deer. Well sure enough those A holes started shooting! I thought what the hell, they're over a mile away, needless to say those deer took off, and so did I. I did manage to get a deer but nothing that truly represented the area and with so many hunters I was ready to pack it up and go home.
A true sportsman would respect the laws and the ethics of fair chase, yet there always will be those that wont for their own self interests. They'll go above and beyond the law or ethics, and like a thief, a thug, a rapist, drug dealers and pimps, and even white collar criminals justice needs to be handed down. It's a shame our sport has people willing to go so far as not to see there actions as morally and ethically wrong....... and a society blind from doing right from wrong.
