Bill Loser
5 year old buck +
If its illegal in your area i can agree. But if its not then there is nothing unethical about it.
A story of frustration, and a less than awesome solution
- Thread starter roymunson
- Start date
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Legality doesn’t equal morality. I’ve said this before, it’s legal to cheat on your wife in every state, that doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
Bill Loser
5 year old buck +
Baiting deer is not anywhere close to cheating on your wife.
If you dont like baiting then dont, but you have no right to tell anyone else they cant or shouldn't, if its legal to do so.
A more realistic comparison would be liberals not liking guns so they dont want anyone to have a gun.
If you dont like baiting then dont, but you have no right to tell anyone else they cant or shouldn't, if its legal to do so.
A more realistic comparison would be liberals not liking guns so they dont want anyone to have a gun.
Bill Loser
5 year old buck +
100% agree. Your ethics are yours.
I know a local group right now who have 8 or 9 hunters at the most. They currently have 13 deer hanging and are still doing drives and shooting fawns. Do i agree with that? No, how many deer do you "need" ? But i have no right to tell them they cant as long as they are within the law.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Ethics define who you are. They are what your character is made up of. If you take shortcuts or cheat in sports, hunting, etc are you more likely to the same in professional and personal settings?
The literal definition is-
moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity.
They are open to interpretation. So as I said the law matters none to me in defining morals. They are also exclusive to each individual. My ethics say baiting is wrong. Yours may say differently. To your original point, I don’t have to be happy for a neighbor who kills a deer sitting over 200 lbs of corn.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
I don't consider bait as unethical where legal. Nor do I consider it fair chase legal or not.
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
When I first bought my property, which was a camp owned by people that lived 2 hours from there and was historically unposted, I had a lot of trespassers. Most notably from the farm to the north of me. I never caught anyone but I got plenty of trail camera pictures. I ended up getting videos of them carrying AR's, which is illegal here. I debated turning them in but ultimately decided not to because I didn't want to face any retribution from them. Our trespassing laws are pretty weak, the state police are spread so thin they don't want to be bothered with hunting trespassers. Not sure how the Game Commission would've handled it but I didn't really want to make enemies in my first year there. So I went a different route. Put up a bunch of dummy cameras in obvious locations where they accessed my property and have been planting the access areas with the thorniest shit I can find. Raspberries, blackberries, black locust. So far it's worked out. I haven't gotten any pictures of trespassers since.
Bill Loser
5 year old buck +
No you dont have to be happy. But your ethics are yours, not everyone elses.
Bill Loser
5 year old buck +
Why would it be any less fair chase than lureing them into a "kill" plot? No difference really
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
My ethics are mine, they don't have to be anyone elses.
roymunson
5 year old buck +
by your analogy, if I'm willing to bait deer, i'm more willing to cheat on my wife, cheat on my taxes, and do whatever it takes to promote myself?
Wow, that's a level of arrogance I hope I never obtain.
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
That way of thinking is just silly rationalization. Some thoughts & observations ...
A food plot requires mother natures cooperation (rain, temps, etc) for success, baiting does not.
A food plot requires regular effort, knowledge, and management to support it, baiting does not.
You can't move a food plot without a lot of work and there are limitations to where you can move it, baiting can be dropped pretty much everywhere and even on a daily basis with little or no effort.
A food plot requires some level of good soil quality, baiting does not.
A food plot spreads deer out, often times out of bow range, baiting does not.
A food plot encourages moving and grazing similar to a deer's naturally tendency for browsing & moving, baiting does not.
Food plots more consistently represent a deer's natural diet (green vegetation, fibrous starch based materials, etc.) it fits in more with the natural ecosystem and a deer's diet, while baiting can lead to unnaturally high survival and birth rates, particularly in northern deer.
Food plots are subject to normal feeding patterns, baiting can disrupt feeding patterns with timers for feed distribution.
Exactly right. I bowhunt public a lot. I see a couple guys on that land who use longbows and call my compound a “cheater”. A couple years ago I had a back operation and Dr wouldnt let me use a compound all fall so I got a crossbow so I could hunt and my own business partner said he would rather not hunt than use a crossbow. My property backs up to some public and I know guys who think it is a chip shot hunting on private. I killed the biggest deer of my life last year and one of them said that deer doesnt count because you killed him on private.
I guess the purest, most challenging realistic form of deer hunting is with a longbow on public ground. All other methods are downhill. Not just hunting with bait on private, but just hunting on private is considered cheating by some guys I know - so yes, each to his own ethics. I know other folks who are pure and simple big buck bow hunters. They would like nothing better than to see a one day statewide modern gun season with a five points on a side antler restriction - creating a more target rich environment for themselves.
It is easy to become selfish in the hunting world. I used to wish baiting wasnt legal and all my ten acre neighbors would be lucky to ever kill a deer - and it would make it much easier for ME to kill bigger bucks. It took me awhile to get past that - I realized that baiting was part of the game in my state. I could not like it - but I couldnt do anything about it.
I started putting out some bait, and while we dont typically hunt over it - it is out there. I am lucky to have the land I have and work it like I want.. Not many folks I know are going to starve to death if they dont have deer meat. If you want to hunt with a long bow over nothing but acorns - great. If hunting over five bushels of corn in your state is legal, and that is what you want to do - I hope you kill a big one. Life is too short to fret over it.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
It was a hypothetical. Maybe maybe not
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
Haha I know. I just got back from a week in WV hunting private ground over bait and I saw 1 deer. It may be easy some places but certainly not all.
