Wow. Sorry to the OP here, because I totally understand the dislike of hunters actually!..but an off topic response is in order
I have no deer on the wall. Happy to say, I’ve only ever shot does, and a few spike bucks with three legs thanks to car accidents. In western CT, the healthy deer population that the suburban landscape can handle is around max 20 deer per square mile. At one point Fairfield County was over 100 per square mile. Right now, I think it is down to 40-60 per square mile. That is a lot of desperate deer, a lot of Lyme disease, and lot of damage to both the natural and the garden landscapes. Yes. I hunt from a stand. It is called population management in a highly man made environment with dense forest. Unless you think that the management ought to be somebody’s car? Yes, the deer are habituated to humans, and fed by humans (not me), and loved by humans, that is why they can often manage twins each year. I want white tail deer in my backyard, a healthy population. Right now, in southern CT because the ‘edge’ ie suburban habitat is perfect for reproduction, they have three predators: cars, starvation, and ticks. Those are Ugly, Ugly ways to die.
I am never going to come to Idaho to shoot deer for sport. That sickens me.
yeah, really a ‘sport’ except oh…well…the clover seed they spread after they’ve cut down a few trees so they can get a good shot. Or the damn cornfields they planted and left only partially harvested. Or the field of alfafla they didn’t take the last cutting on… and on and on and on. Not to mention that the deer population is used to cars driving by, tractors, AVs…people.
‘are you vegan’ is sooooo predictable.
Lets talk about your dear hubby putting food on the table…
Try raising your own meat why don’t you. Learn that animals (even deer) have individual personalities. Learn the value of a living breathing prey animal before you put it on the table. try keeping animals safe and dewormed and alive long enough to feed your table.
I see ‘Hunting’ as self-satisfaction of bloodthirst.
As a hunter, I agree with you actually. I care about the deer that live in my woods and my fields. Just as I care about my chickens or other livestock.
@eightpondfarm, I’m with you. I’m surrounded by hunting properties. Rich dudes have literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on land for their exclusive use, not to mention the money they spend on seed for seed plots, feeders, feed, mineral supplements to grow bigger racks, 4 wheelers, side by sides and the new thing, drones to locate downed deer. I’ve got no problem with old fashioned deer stands where the hunter scouted out deer trails and built a place to sit in a tree. These dudes have heated huts. They sit in comfort waiting for the deer to come to the feeders so they can kill it.
There’s a guy about 1 mile up the road from us who sells to recreational hunters. He has a fleet of 8 Polaris ATV, cabins, molded plastic ‘deer stands’ (they’re stand alone and appx 6x6 ROOMS on stilts). I assume there are heaters in those suckers. ‘food plots’ is an understatement of what they do to bait the deer. Well todo men from all over the country come there. Think there are about 300 acres to that particular property (the guy owns another 600 a few miles away that he also transports his hunt customers to) and we have a fenceline of perhaps 1/2 mile in common with them and i cannot feel that we can safely use that particular pasture during hunting season, even though these men probably would respect our fence and our posted signs. (the other neighbors…the ones with the young boys/men have zero respect for property rights) All of them…They disgust me.
I have a more nuanced view. I know hunters that I respect; they are good woodsmen and outdoorsman, ethical hunters that use what they kill and don’t trophy hunt. I also know hunters who abuse the land they hunt, take cheap shots, waste game and generally give hunters a bad name. I hate that all hunters are tarred with the same brush.
I am not a vegan or vegetarian. We have raised beef, pork and chicken on our property for our own table. We have processed the chickens ourselves and send the beef and pork out for processing, though my husband grew up with processing beef and pork as a big family affair.
I do not hunt, because I do not enjoy it. (I went dove hunting a couple of times, and while the doves were delicous, they weren’t good enough to offset the other icky parts of the experience.) I will fish and clean and eat the catch; because the deliciousness/ickiness ratio works out better on that enterprise.
I could hunt, and would hunt, if I was hungry and that was the best way for me to feed myself and my family. But we’d all have to be pretty hungry.
The thing that bothers me most about these pro and anti-hunting conversations is horsepeople who fail to realize how much common cause we share with hunters, and how much better it would be if we could join forces.
Open land, landowner relations, conservation, habitat loss = these are issues that affect both of us and threaten our sports. We should join forces on those issues.
I have permission to ride an enormous portion of open land nearby. I am the only horseperson who has permission, BECAUSE the land is leased for hunting by a very good hunt club. They pay serious money to lease the land for deer and turkey hunting, and they do an excellent job maintaining the property, clearing trails, improving creek crossings, etc. I am very mindful of the fact that they pay to use the land, and I get to use it for free. I am friendly, cordial and helpful to this group of hunters, because if they complain about me, I’ll lose my privlege to ride the land. I once misread the calendar and trespassed during a hunting season (potentially spoiling their hunting); I apologized profusely and bought them a case of beer.
I was following foxhounds this week and the field encountered a deer hunter in a blind. The encounter was marked by civility. We apologized for affecting his hunting, he answered our questions about the territory and game, and he enjoyed watching the foxhounds work. That’s the way it should be: we don’t have to endorse deer hunting to be respectful to someone else. I can only imagine how the encounter would have been different if one of our party had been spouting ill-informed anti-hunting rhetoric.
@eightpondfarm is a landowner, and she has the right to put whatever restrictions she wants on the property she owns, no question. If she doesn’t want hunting on her land because of all her previous bad experiences with hunters, that’s her right.
However, any of us that enjoy riding outside our own arena would be wise to try to understand the hunter’s point of view and join forces with the good and ethical hunters to preserve the open spaces that we both cherish.
McGurk, that is a beautifully written post. You touch on two of the biggest hurdles in land use and land conservation: a) that land conservation has to be paid for by somebody, which means making the land profitable; and b) that one size fits all doesn’t work, whether it is in how land is conserved or in how the land is used.
You also touch on something that is a challenge for so many of us, how do we have conversations civilly and respectfully? (maybe working on that should be my New Year’s Resolution? 
)
B_and_B,
Thank you for the kind comments. It’s an issue I am passionate about. In my area, there was a problem with the local Wildlife Management Area, a gorgeous 4,500 acre parcel open to hunters, walkers, fishers and riders. The state closed many of the trails due to increased erosion and wear and lack of state dollars to repair them. Horse people were up in arms about the closures and protested; but were not willing to pay a fee to use the trails or otherwise financially support it. Hunters and fishers were outraged that the horsepeople expected to use the property but not pay for it, as they did.
Hunters and fishers have long had to pay for their privlege; they expect to have to by licenses or state forest stamps or permits for certain game; horsepeople have not.
The ingenious solution? Requiring anyone using the facility to buy a hunting or fishing license; because the license fees pay to maintain state owned WMAs. I cheerfully paid for a lifetime license and keep it in my hauling vehicle.
Another point for the anti-hunting/anti-hunters crowd - do you know what pays for most of the conservation efforts state and nationwide? Yup. Hunting and fishing licenses, as well as all those special game stamps and permits. Seems like an oxymoron, but it’s not - hunting PAYS for the majority of conservation programs.
Money? Well, where men are, money is. With very few exceptions, ‘sports’ is pretty testosterone-y. My problem with killing animals for fun is that it hurts my psyche. The idea of it makes me feel bad. To me, it is not about money, it is about life…more specifically, what disgusts me, my problem with the people who do it, is their ENJOYMENT of taking an animal’s life. I find it sad to kill an animal, and i have to do it pretty often. That men (mostly men) go into it with enjoyment, call it ‘sport’ is gross.
this
@eightpondfarm I can give you a little different view on renting. My sister and I took over my Dad’s rental properties after he passed. If you get good long-term tenants it can work out well. We have one who has been in his place 10 years. We pay for material and he does his own repairs. He stays because we allow him to raise dogs. He pays his rent on time because he knows we’ll evict him if he doesn’t.
huh…
if i could find someone like that it’d be great~!
Actually, this is not really true, although it an old refrain that refuses to die. Conservation funding sources are extremely diverse & there are plenty that have nothing to do with consumptive users (like hunters). There is a whole mix of grants, legal settlements, private individuals, legislative allocations, nonprofits, and more. License & ammo sales are only a very small part of an extremely complex puzzle.
McGurk has met reasonable deer hunters. I didn’t know they existed. In my area, deer hunters be crazy. If the hounds had disturbed a hunter here, you’d have dead hounds. Several years ago, the company that had the reverse mortgage on my parents house tore down the fence and 3 of my horses got out and on to the surrounding hunting property. I never saw them again. I asked for permission to go on the property to look for them and was denied. I have no doubt they were shot by hunters for grazing on their food plots or getting into the deer feeders. I have set through pretrial hearings where a murder was committed over a deer stand. Murders and assaults over hunting properties aren’t uncommon. Reasonable hunter is an oxymoron.
Sandysmom,
I am very sorry that’s been your experience. We have horror stories here too. A neighbor recently found fences cut, two dead deer and two dead heifers, one with a dead calf and one live and in distress, now being raised as a bottle calf.
Apparently the yahoo hunters shot from the woods into the pasture, not caring about the backstop, and killed the heifers as well as the deer. They then cut the fence to retrieve the deer, saw what they had done, and just left.
The waste and the cruelty are appalling. Hell’s not hot enough for the people who did that.
Doesn’t change the fact that there ARE responsible, ethical hunters. You just don’t hear about them, because they’re unremarkable - they don’t trespass or destroy property or cause trouble.
It also doesn’t change the fact that horsepeople and hunters have common cause when it comes to conservation and preserving open space, and that we ought to seek out cordial relationships with responsible hunters.
PS - more hunters you’ll never hear about. I used to work at a large farm with significant crop acreage. We had a whole crew of guys come out 2 - 3X a year to help put up our hay. They were deer hunters, and they put up hay to pay for the privlege of hunting the property. They were great guys (who must’ve REALLY loved their hunting, because …putting up hay!) We always had a conversation about where they were on the property and where it was safe to ride. On the last day of the season, I kept all of the horses up and cancelled lessons and they’d bring me a haunch of venison. They cared deeply about keeping their hunting privleges, so were communicative and cooperative. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
I support responsible hunting, because, like McGurk, I recognize that hunters have a shared interest in land conservation, and wildlife preservation.
However, like eightpondfarm, the fact that there are people who ENJOY killing things bothers me. Guns make me uncomfortable. It has 1 purpose- to kill things. The fact that people do it because the LIKE it is some kind of messed up human development.
I have a lot of respect for responsible hunters that hunt to feed their families. Responsible hunters don’t drink while they’re hunting, they have a purpose, they follow the laws and rules in their area, they know where the land boundaries are and property lines are, etc. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the hunters I’ve met like to sit in the woods with some beers, shoot at things, and don’t really have a plan for what to do if they actually kill something. And they have NO IDEA where any of the property lines are, which is problematic in small state like MA, where you might get permission to hunt “out back” on 5 acres and quickly end up on someone else’s property. That drives me bananas. Either know where the property lines are or don’t hunt on such a small parcel.
So it is possible to find a middle ground on this.
Right after thanksgiving we had a note in our mailbox from the caretaker of the hunting ranch up the road (the one that sells sports-packages to visiting hunters…incl dressing the deer and making sausage/jerky etc) and he asked if i knew that we had feral pigs on our property!!!
I took a photo of our rams and side by side copied a stock photo of feral hogs. We have four rams, Two brown, one white and one black that we’re not using in the breeding pens this year that i’m keeping on a 10 acre pasture that is INLAND… And by inland i mean that there is no way anyone outside our property could possibly see them. The hunting property is alongside the next pasture up the hill…which is about a hundred acres (that i absolutely will NOT use during hunting season because of all the stupid city men who pay for their hunts).
So…i asked the caretaker with a scrawled note on the photos: “How would you know about our rams without someone having walked onto our property? Tell your clients that our property is marked and they do not have permission to cross the fence for any reason.”
I can match story for story…probably even more. For every ‘good hunter’ i’ve got a couple ass-hunter stories.
What if, we as horsepeople, were always judged by the worst among us?
What if when I told someone that I owned horses, their first reaction was “How many have you killed for the insurance money?”
Or if I mentioned show jumping, and they asked if I had the electric spurs set up, ala Andy Kocher, or sored legs like Devin Ryan?
Or hunter showing, and they asked how many teenagers I had sexually abused?
Would you get tired of explaining that all horse people are not like that, that the ones that make the headlines are the exceptions, not the rule? Would you get tired of defending your own standards?
We, as horsepeople, expect to be judged by our own standard of horsemanship, not by the standard of the worst among us. I am just suggesting that we apply that same rule to others, including hunters, and judge them by their own standards and actions, and not by the worst of them.
for me, again…it’s not quite as much about how horribly the bad ones behave (and there are so.very.many.examples i have personally experienced in my life. Plus, in general terms an exponentially growing amount as humans expand and multiply…and move out into wilder land). It’s more about my personal revulsion to people who enjoy killing animals.
