Giving him till morning

[wolftalonID]

Steakhunter!!! Nice buck buddy! Thats two great harvests with that Mathews this year!! Congrats on knowing how and when to make that call on letting that buck go overnight. Not an easy call but it was well worth the efforts to do so as the pictures shows!!
Looking forward to seeing it mounted!!

[Fink]

I think what elkoholic was trying to say is he is surprised that giving the attitudes of people around here they would say you are unethical in harvesting a deer with a bow(less chance of a clean kill).I am not saying that neither is he. Some peoples thoughts on here the only ethical way of hunting is pulling a trigger and the animal flops over right there . (thats what we should all strive for and has been ingrained in all of our minds but sometimes that is just not the case. . It has been brought up in the past about long range hunting being unethical due to more chance wounding an animal to people on this site and resulted in a lot of people getting bent out of shape. he was just saying how people love to argue over stupid stuff on here when we should be more worried about our hunting heritage and right to bear arms, we have to fight each other on different ways of hunting rather than staying strong together and not weaken our union as hunting brothers and sisters. If we seperate then we are more vulnerable to anti hunting groups. I don't want this to start anything but it has raised a few people's interests.

Again very nice harvest. I'm jealous and I nor elkoholic or anybody else for that matter think you did anything unethical. He was just pointing out he is surprised someone didnt talk crap and try to get everybody yelling at each other behind a keyboard.

Sorry you have thought this was an attack against you if you did. I know elkoholic did not mean that at all.

I wasn't trying to bust elkhunter out or anything like that, I was just wondering what could possibly be considered unethical about it... We all have our limits, and should feel comfortable within them, if someone else considers that unethical..... Well, whatever

Congrats on a nice buck! You'll have to post the final mounted pics of him.

[Bitterroot Bulls]

Well,

I have kept out of this squabble until now, but I guess this is as good a place as any to put in my 2 cents.

First off, I couldn't agree more with Drhorsepower on hunters finding common ground rather than divisive issues.

I, for one, am not interested in debating the merits or demerits of long range hunting, whatever that means to different people. I appreciate all varying types of hunting and having some arbitrary range number that is ethical or unethical does little to settle any such debate. My opinion is hunters should be reasonably certain that they are going to make a fatal hit at whatever range they make a shot - that goes for bow or rifle. I understand that misses and bad hits happen at all sorts of ranges with all sorts of weapons.

There are some people that have an opinion that long range harvests are unethical. They are entitled to that opinion, and I think they can post that opinion, as long as they are civil about it. I also think that long range hunters are entitled to post about their harvests, as long as they are civil.

The history that Elkoholic posted about earlier, was a different sort of problem, in my opinion. Here is how I saw it: A former forum member posted a long-range harvest. The poster wrote about having the animal at a shorter range, but then left the animal and went a substantial distance simply to increase the difficulty of the shot. Many forum members took issue with this. The posting member then attacked other forum members, myself included (even though I had not posted anything on his thread), personally in his posts, bragged about violating game laws, and finally posted insults about the hosts of this forum and their family before being removed from the forum.

As Drhorsepower proposed, we should find common ground, and bringing this issue up in a 21 yard bow harvest thread is counterproductive to that goal. Comparing this incident to the long range harvest thread that sparked the issue, is incongruent, unless the facts in this thread included having the deer at 21 yards and spooking it to 150 yards, to increase the difficulty of the archery shot.

To Steakhunter,

I think you did a great job on a great buck.

[BigSurArcher]

Thats a cool looking buck. Surprised he toughed it out so long with that hit too. Nice work on not pushing him. Some critters seem to have a tougher will to survive than others of the same species.

[Steakhunter]

Hijack the heck out of this thread if it means we can all get a little better view of the problem, argument, or whatever it is thats gettin in our crawl, thats what these kind of forums are for.......gettin us (hunters) together and talkin about whatever it is we need to that has to do with our sport. As for me I am happy to have killed a good deer and let some stuff "air out" that i wasn't around for earlier. I did the best I could and it did the job, next trip out I will do the best I can again. I hope to watch a doe fall within sight of my stand, but I can not promise anything. I will practice, I will buy what I think is the best equipment I can, and I will try hard to make a good shot. But I cannnot guarantee you anything except this one thing.................I WILL KILL MORE DEER THIS YEAR AND I WILL ENJOY DOING IT!!!!!!! I also will eat a boatload of deer jerky, steaks, and burger, drink some cold beer, and gain a few pounds!!! Heck I may even show you guys a picture or two.......hopefully they're not just me drinking, but who knows.

[Drhorsepower]

Hijack the heck out of this thread if it means we can all get a little better view of the problem, argument, or whatever it is thats gettin in our crawl, thats what these kind of forums are for.......gettin us (hunters) together and talkin about whatever it is we need to that has to do with our sport. As for me I am happy to have killed a good deer and let some stuff "air out" that i wasn't around for earlier. I did the best I could and it did the job, next trip out I will do the best I can again. I hope to watch a doe fall within sight of my stand, but I can not promise anything. I will practice, I will buy what I think is the best equipment I can, and I will try hard to make a good shot. But I cannnot guarantee you anything except this one thing.................I WILL KILL MORE DEER THIS YEAR AND I WILL ENJOY DOING IT!!!!!!! I also will eat a boatload of deer jerky, steaks, and burger, drink some cold beer, and gain a few pounds!!! Heck I may even show you guys a picture or two.......hopefully they're not just me drinking, but who knows.

I like your outlook!!! I heard whitetail is sum good eating. That's one of my goals in life.

[Elkoholic307]

Hijack the heck out of this thread if it means we can all get a little better view of the problem, argument, or whatever it is thats gettin in our crawl, thats what these kind of forums are for.......gettin us (hunters) together and talkin about whatever it is we need to that has to do with our sport. As for me I am happy to have killed a good deer and let some stuff "air out" that i wasn't around for earlier. I did the best I could and it did the job, next trip out I will do the best I can again. I hope to watch a doe fall within sight of my stand, but I can not promise anything. I will practice, I will buy what I think is the best equipment I can, and I will try hard to make a good shot. But I cannnot guarantee you anything except this one thing.................I WILL KILL MORE DEER THIS YEAR AND I WILL ENJOY DOING IT!!!!!!! I also will eat a boatload of deer jerky, steaks, and burger, drink some cold beer, and gain a few pounds!!! Heck I may even show you guys a picture or two.......hopefully they're not just me drinking, but who knows.

Even though he didn't address any of my points, this post would make a lot more sense to people if they could see what I wrote.

[westernwannabe]

Elkoholic307 if you don't want to bicker about this stuff why did you post the comment to begin with?

[Elkoholic307]

My first post wasn't meant to start an arguement. I stated that I was surprised that noone brought up the ethical card. And I still am.

-Antelope gets shot at 1,010 yards and dies instantly. People throw a fit.
-Deer gets shot at 21 yards and suffers all night. Nobody says a word.

[Elkoholic307]

And I just saw that another one of my comments from this morning has been deleted.

What an awesome and fair forum! Yeah, that's sarcasm.