Another in our latest series, "Shit Frylock doesn't care about so he never posts threads about." Civilised people like myself know that all food comes from the local Safeway, so that's where we get it. However, there are still some barbarians out there who practice an ancient sport of orphaning innocent animals like this one: For their own personal amusement or food or whatever. It's unconscionable, I know, but it's true. FOCUS: Hunting! Do you hunt? Where did you learn to hunt? What do you hunt with? Good hunting stories?
I hunt for a variety of stuff around Minnesota and have also hunted in South Dakota and Illinois. I have mainly hunted pheasants, deer, and small game. Occasional waterfowling and coyote hunting too. I like the taste and different varieties of wild game, and also trust my own butchering more than where chickens come from. Hunting is very rewarding after a challenging or difficult hunt and bottom line it's better to be outside with a gun than being inside about 99% of the time. I learned from my father, who grew up in one of the best deer hunting areas in the nation. When he moved my family up to Minnesota, he stopped hunting for awhile until me and my brother were old enough to hit the fields. We had been shooting sparrows and starlings with my cousins around my grandparent's or uncle's dairy farm since we were 7 or 8, but had never been hunting for game animals. The farm is where I learned how to shoot little targets that don't sit still and I still bring my accurate .22s down there for fun shooting. I first got a gun in 7th grade... I got a used 12 gauge and in 8th a new .22 and I was set. My dad has never taught me any complex hunting methods but deer and pheasants aren't the brightest animals around. He also never taught me anything about stockmaking or gunsmithing either. That being said, I use the rifles that I've customized to a varied extent and they are well suited for their uses. I like having full confidence in what I'm shooting and it comes with taking some extra steps to ensure my hunting rifles are damned accurate. I know where the bullet will go because testing tells me so. There's a lot of photos of my stuff in the G&A thread. Hunting stories? I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of pheasants pile out of one small field once in South Dakota. There were too many to easily pick one to shoot. I've also made a few very long shots on small animals with my .22s, but they don't make very impressive trophies. The only ToyToy/Samr stuff I've ever done is bird hunting at night on the farm. Ever swatted at sparrows in the rafters of barns at night with a tennis racket?
First time I went out was when I was 11 with my dad. I didn't carry a gun until I was 12, of course. I've been hunting everything from squirrel to black bear ever since. So far at 25 years old I have only 2 buck and 1 turkey, but 1 black bear and a few dozen squirrel and rabbits. Savage 30-06 for big game and a 16 gauge break action for everything smaller. We eat everything we kill. Meat is always shared with our big family so nothing goes to waste. We have a camp in Somerset County, PA that we gather at for each season. Best story I have is for my second buck. It's a long one so I'll try to keep it short. I was 16 and my dad and I were walking out of the woods mid-day for a break when 4 deer ran across the path in front of us; the last being a buck. I pulled up my rifle and fired but only clipped it in the leg, but I slowed it down enough that I could follow it at a jogging pace. So that's what I did, followed it and it's blood trail through Appalachia at a jog for 3 FUCKING HOURS! I had blinders on and left my dad in my dust but kept in touch through walkie-talkie. Finally, I caught back up to it .... just as it crossed into Posted property. I just thought "oh, fuck no." I stood in front of the Posted sign, pulled up my rifle again, and fired. It dropped straight to the ground. A perfect shot. I ran full speed over and drug the thing back over to the other side of the sign, which happened to be right on the game lands' road. I radioed my dad and he pulled the truck up. An 8 point rack hanging in my garage and all the venison I could eat were my rewards. *edit* I've never missed a buck I shot at but I have missed 2 black bear. We don't use dogs or anything that chase them into tress (that's for pussies). The first time I missed I was walking out mid-day again and the thing came crashing through the brush about 50 yards away behind me. I spun and fired twice but missed completely. Never found it. The second time was last year. At day break, one came running through the sapplings behind me while I was sitting down. I stood up and spun around again, but the thing was so fucking close to me, I had to no-scope 3 shots, missing completely every time. Someone else got it down the line. I am convinced now that no-scope sniper kills in CoD are bullshit, because it fucking hard to hit anything doing that.
I've been hunting for only the last two years, but have shot guns all my life. Stupid things like college got in the way of me going with my father sooner, since the trip happens in the days and week following Thanksgiving. We hunt duck, goose, and deer on multiple properties. I use a Remington 870 with a 30in. barrel that's older than me for waterfowling, and swap barrels over to a 26in. rifled slug barrel with a cantilever scope mount when deer hunting. I've got a Bushnell Trophy XLT 3-9x40 on top, which for the money, has been a great scope. I use the 2 3/4" Remingotn Accu-tip slugs and I think I'm going to try out the Black Cloud shot (from Federal, I think) for birds this year. In the two seasons I've been going, I've only laid down one deer (spike buck--2nd season), but have dropped a bunch of ducks and geese. My first year out I didn't have the slug barrel, so I relied on the bead sight when deer hunting, which didn't work out too well. My eyes apparently suck in low light conditions, which was the only time I saw anything. On the second day out--probably just after 6am--I saw a buck walk maybe 25-30 yards from my stand and I thought it was a done deal--he was too close to miss, right? I pulled the trigger, he bucked back kind of weird, but then took off, so I couldn't tell if I hit him or not. As he ran down the tree line, I got off two more shots before he ducked back into the woods. Shortly after, another guy on the other side of the woods fired and dropped my deer. When we found him, I went over to see if I had made any connection with my shots. Just my luck...the first one skimmed across his chest, and one of my follow-up shots carved a little canal in the bridge of his nose. Just a couple inches to the right with either of those and he would've been mine. Oh well. Question for the deer hunters, do most of you guys hunt from stands, or do you prefer to be on the ground and stalk? Or is it a mix of both, depending on where you are? For the stand hunters, do you use ladders or climbers?
I have been wanting to make this thread for months. After seeing the gun thread though I was pretty sure I would get banned just for suggesting that hunting is... not cool. I didn't know people still hunted until a few years ago. In my area, there is no hunting. No cabellas, nothing. But when I traveled to the midwest, I saw that hunting is pretty much the main hobby in some states. I fail to appreciate the "challenge" of shooting an animal with a high powered rifle. I fail to appreciate the "fun" value of taking life for sport. The only thing I can understand somewhat is eating what you kill. I do currently still eat meat. As I grow older, this bothers me more and more. I don't want to be that ass hole in the group that makes us go to a restaurant with a veggie menu though so even if I go full blown vegetarian one day, I'll probably still eat meat casually. Sadly, I don't think my consumption of meat will change the 10 billion land animals we kill in the US each year for food. I can't listen to "hunting" stories. They're like fairy tales come from a different time by a different people. Hearing about momma dear being shot and baby deers coming to cuddle its dead body while the hunter tries to shoo them away is just an unfathomable experience. We are such a destructive species. Edit: I'm not saying all hunters are animal abusing fucks. But I do see that quite a few of them don't give a shit about "lesser" species. Now excuse me while I go hug a tree. Edit 2: Shooting them with a high powered rifle isn't for pussies though, am I right?
This will be my third year hunting, or having anything to do with firearms at all. Honestly though, hunting season is more about drinking and playing poker as far away from civilization as possible, then it is about procuring meat. About half of any given day is spent wandering from tree-stand to tree-stand, and the rest in the stands. If I hunted in an area that had a decent amount of whitetail traffic I would probably be content to stay in one place, but moving around is a requirement if I hope to see anything.
Hey Frenchfry, you know we have a hunting thread right? I loooove to hunt. I am very excited for hunting season this fall. I have only been seriously hunting for the past 2 years. I am proud to be a female hunter. You would never know it if you saw me though. I do hunt out of a climbing tree stand. It makes me nervous, because I am not real good with heights. During my first hunting season, the bottom part of it, fell. Not cool. I do eat wild game. Deer, turkey, hogs, squirrel, dove, gator, frog legs, and even armadillo. Wild game is so much healthier for you. I have a Mossberg atr 100 .30-06. I have only shot it a few times, and have not hunted with it yet. It has a Simmons 3.5x50 scope on it. I have a Remington .270 bolt action. I love this gun so damn much. This is my still hunting gun. I've shot deer, hogs, coyotes, and bobcats with this gun. It has never let me down. I have a BSA 3.5x50 scope on it. I have a Marlin .22 magnum. It stays in my truck with me. I've shot squirrels, raccoons, birds, and turkeys with it. I have a scope on it, but I can't remember what kind. My newest addition to my gun family is a Winchester 1400 semi auto shotgun. I got it for my birthday. This will be my dove and turkey gun. I am fixing to buy a Mathews Passion bow. I want to start bow hunting. It is alot more challenging. I also have a female Black Mouth cur named Sassy. She will track down and catch a hog. She is pretty badass. So far, my best kills have been: a 7 point, a spike, 2 does, a turkey with a 4 inch beard, a turkey with a 10 inch beard, and a boar hog with 3 inch teeth. Not bad for a beginner.
I wanted to be a vet so my dad hooked me up with an internship with a farm vet who did domestic animals at his clinic and "house calls" to farms. One day at 7am, we went to a cow slaughterhouse to test some brains for disease. Some of the stuff was unreal like how they peeled off the skin of the animal as if you were watching a cartoon. I'm not at the edge of my seat waiting for my next visit though. As to somewhat, I don't mean that I'm a hypocrite that can't appreciate that animals die so I get meat at the market. I meant that I don't have that urge to go kill my own food but I can imagine that some people do.
I think it was Ron White when describing why he didn't go deer hunting as "it's early in the morning, it's cold, and I don't want to go." That pretty well sums up my opinion of deer hunting. I used to hunt dove a fair amount. It's takes some skill to hit those little bastards, you don't have to do it when it's 3AM and freezing, and those are tasty little things. But, I haven't done it in years. My opinions on guns in the house altered pretty substantially once the oldest one started walking. (Yeah, yeah, you can lock them up, blah, blah, I don't want to hear it.)
I understand the desire to hunt. I have nothing against it, I'm just not particularly fond of the idea. I love animals more than I love people (I think mostly just because I hate people) - and the idea of being responsible for something's last breath just sort of fucks me up. That being said - my husband is from Minnesota and hunting over there seems to be a religion. We drove to visit his parents last year right smack in the middle of hunting season. I still have nightmares about pulling off the highway to grab a bite at Culver's and parking between two massive SUV's with dead and bloody deer strapped to their roof. I looked at my husband in shock, waiting for an explanation, and he says, "Well what the fuck did you expect, being in Minnesota smack in the middle of hunting season? That shit is normal." All that being said, I have no problem eating the venison steaks, summer sausage and other various meats that are a product of his family's successful hunting trips.
Being a country girl, I grew up around guns. I've shot animals that were injured with no hope of recovery. I even shot the family dog, which was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever done. That being said, I can't hunt. If it were a survival situation, no problem, but I can't bring myself to kill anything that isn't suffering for the sake of sport. The boys at the slaughterhouse will have to do my dirty work for me. The writing of this post is making me crave steak.
Well then, why the fuck are you in this thread? You're obviously here to antagonize those of us who, unlike your pussy little ass, can provide for ourselves and don't need to go to a store to buy meat that's been pumped full of shitty chemicals from the day it was born. On that note, I hunt but I fish a hell of a lot more than I hunt. I'm primarily a bird hunter (ducks, geese, pheasants, bald eagles, etc) but my in-laws have recently got me into deer hunting. I have tons of cool/funny stories, but they're too long to type up here. I have had one hunting brush with fame. A while back, Phil Robertson of Duck Commander fame was doing a seminar at Herters. Long story short, he gave me the call off his own lanyard and told me "You call pretty good fer a nawthin' boah. Good 'nuff to hunt with us."
That is just irresponsible - one of the biggest things they emphasize in Hunter's Safety courses is to keep everything low key and to minimize the shock to the public. Hunter's get a bad enough rap as it is (case in point: vex), and we don't need people like Grizzly Adams making it any worse by wearing the same pair of bloody jeans that they used when they gutted to dear, when they go into town to register with the DNR.
Yes. "Where" depends on what you're hunting. But, you don't just "learn to hunt" once. There's a first time, which was with my Dad, on a dove field in South Georgia. But, I've also learned things from my Grandfather, Uncle and friends over the years, in places all over. Depends on the sport, but it's always a gun of some sort. (I've never been bow hunting. I have been flounder gigging, but I'm not sure if that's hunting or fishing . . .) I have three different shotguns that I would choose from for dove hunting, depending on the field, the time of the season, etc. I have two different shotguns that I would choose from for quail hunting, depending on if it's pen-raised plantation hunt or wild birds at a farm. Mostly, though, I have a Mossberg 12 ga pump that I use for turkey hunting. It takes a three inch shell, and I've added camo to it. I used to use it goose hunting in Texas, too, because I can drop that sucker in a canal, and take it apart and clean it up pretty quickly. Yes, it's a pump, but it never jams. I wouldn't ever take one of my Browning Golds out in the mud. I have several different ones I might use for sporting clays or skeet (one of the Berettas or Weatherbys), but I haven't been in a while - just depends on feel that day, really. (But, that's not hunting, that's shooting . . .) For armadillos in the yard, I've got an old single-shot .22, no name brand. (Although, I did empty a magazine from my .380 into a family of those MFers one evening; but, I wasn't really "hunting" - I just jumped out of the truck on the way home.) I have a couple different Remington 700's that I've taken deer hunting. I've only been a few times, and it's always been hunting and never killing. Deer aren't really my thing. This is obviously asked by someone who doesn't hunt. Good hunting stories aren't usually able to be told on a messageboard. You tell them around the camp, at church, or in the parking lot at Walmart. They take a long time, and the reaction and questions from the listener or what make the story a good one. imho.
I've walked through walmart with blood on my jeans from skinning a deer out. I needed ice. For my deer. I have also driven through town with a dead hog strapped to my tail gate. Why? Because I was taking it home. Have we become that much of a tree hugging society? This goes along with censoring. It's bullshit. Why the fuck should I have to sugar coat anything just because of someone else's feelings? I guess the population has forgotten that grocery stores didn't always exist.
I've been hunting for about 9 years now (since I was 12). I try to hunt everything, deer and turkey on my farm, bear in Thunder Bay, moose in Manitoba or Quebec and waterfowl all over Southern Ontario. I have to say I'm a waterfowler first and foremost, and the majority of my top of the line gear is for that. My favorite gun is my Browning Citori, and that thing has followed me into the bush for everything from duck/goose to grouse to pigeon. I was a big Browning rifle guy for awhile but when I bought my first Weatherby Mark V in .257 wby everything changed. The shittiest gun I have is my Remington 700 SPS ss in .300 wsm. I'd highly reccommend everyone avoid this shit caliber. it has most unaccurate and clumsy round on the market. Since I was 18 I've gotten more into bow hunting to even the playing field a bit more. IMO bow hunting anything is ten times harder then rifle hunting. You have to call the animal within 20-25 yards, which makes you way more easily seen and smelt. My favorite animal to hunt though are cats at my friends farm. At any given time he's got over 65 cats just in his milk house. Those cats fuck like rabbits, my friends mom puts a 50 pound bag of cat food out and it's gone in a week. With that many cats alot die on their own, you'll go to run the shit trough and a few cats will get dragged through. Winter will kill off half the population too (that's funny, you go to get something off the top shelf in the shop and a frozen stiff kitty comes falling down on you), but in the spring their number come right back up. Anyways, once or twice a year when the cat level gets unmanageable, I get a phone call to come clear those fuckers out, and that day is the best day of the year for me. I get a few friends together and we just have fun. It's the perfect time to test out new guns too. .416 Rigby to shoot at a 3 pound cat? Yes please. 10 guage shotgun loaded with #4's equals vaporized kitty. Trying to kill more then one cat with one bullet takes patience. It's amazing fun.
Isn't that like a rite of passage? I'm 35 and I have been hunting since I was 10. Killed my first deer when I was 16 and my first buck, of significant size, when I was 18. I also hunt turkey, dove, squirrel, beaver and coyote. Depending on where I'm deer hunting, I use either a Savage 112BVSS in 25-06 or a Knight KP1 in 30-06. For the coyotes & beavers I have an AR-15. And for all of the little varmints I have a Marlin 17 HMR. Deer hunting is the hunting that I love the most. I may only kill one deer, this year, but I will have fun doing it. Every few years I luck up and get on a good buck that I can hunt for the season. Best so far is a 153 3/8" 10 point.
Yeah, what the fuck is up with this? I mean I have to laugh at the irony of eating at a Culver's and being freaked out about seeing a dead deer tied to the roof of someone's vehicle. They really teach that stuff in Hunter's Safety courses? In Minnesota? Since when do hunters get a bad rap in Minnesota? And where do people think their meat comes from anyway? Honestly I'm flabberghasted they would say/teach something like this. It would make sense if they taught you to cover up & secure your kills so when you're driving down the highway at 70mph parts/blood from your kills don't fly off from the wind and splatter on someone driving behind you, but to spare peoples' feelings? Huh? Focus: I'm too restless to hunt and fish; I've tried it before but the thought of sitting around on a boat or on a stand for ten hours would make me bored out of my mind. Is there something you [hunters] do to pass the time or do you just have to have the right temprament?
I think it's impossible to drive through a small town in most parts of Minnesota during deer season and not see a truck with legs or antlers sticking out of the bed.