Category: Opinion

Huglu 20ga SxS – Review after two years of use

For years, the urge of owning a nice side by side shotgun in 20ga has floated around in my brain, briefly resurfacing from time to time, but never becoming overwhelming. Mostly because I didn’t hunt birds very often, and more importantly, because the price tag on most of these guns caused heartbeat irregularities and sudden surges in blood pressure every time I looked. Spending some time (days) in a hospital bed, waiting for a surgery spot to open, slightly delirious with hunger, I decided the time had come. And I knew which one I wanted: the CZ Bobwhite G2.

Contacting a local dealer, it quickly became clear that getting one ordered and imported from the US would come with very uncertain timelines. Months for sure, many months perhaps. But the dealer had an alternative. Apparently, the Turkish company Huglu makes the gun that CZ rebrands and sells as the Bobwhite model. And they had several Huglu shotguns in stock. Just not in the same finish, and not with the same barrel length, but cheaper and available immediately. So, a few days out of the hospital, we made the 5-hour road trip, one-way, to have a peek, and maybe bring one home.

First impressions

Honestly, I was not impressed by the looks of the gun, but my intention was to buy something that I would not be afraid to use. I wanted to drag this up mountains and ridges to look for blue grouse and ptarmigan, and put in the kayak when paddling for ducks, and drag through coulees and marshes, without having to worry about denting or scratching it. This one would probably fit that bill. The case colour hardening looked “thin”, and lacked the characteristics of a quality finish of that nature. It almost looked like a spray-on job, the colours vibrant, the pattern oddly regular. Hard to imagine this finish would last very long. The opening lever had a gold-coloured double-headed eagle, acceptable if stand alone, but rather boldly contrasting with the case colouring.

But the little gun fit! Eyes closed, shouldering, and finding the bead sitting right where it needs to be, was a pleasant surprise. Just shouldering the gun a couple of times had me sold, and forgiving it all the finish gaudiness. For a cost of just under a thousand Canadian dollars, it was not hard to justify this purchase. You wanted a gun over which you wouldn’t cry if you hurt it? Well, here it was.

After two years of use

The front trigger proved a bit heavy, and opening the gun requires a little downward tug on the barrels. The latter will likely improve with time, the former might require a polish, but in the field, it doesn’t seem to bother me. Hard to recall how many rounds went through this gun, or how many times I have taken it out into the field. Wild guesses would be 500-600 shells, and maybe thirty outings: hunting days, range visits and shooting during dog training and NAVHDA trial events.

The gun has not disappointed in terms of fit. If I do my job, don’t rush the shot, shoulder the gun cheek-first, keep my eyes on the birds, and don’t think, good things happen. I’ve made some amazing (in my world) shots, and had some events where I shot way above my pay grade. I attribute that mostly to the fact that my body and the guns dimensions just mesh. There are, however, a few things that need mentioning. It’s not all puppy dogs and rainbows.

The finish. I knew it. It started coming off within months of using it. Around the grip and trigger guard it is completely gone, similar on the bottom corners of the action; any place where your hands regularly touch it.

That was not the first issue. After shooting a few rounds of trap on the range, pins started coming loose. The pins that hold the cocking levers, and the one on the forend. As it happened at the end of the first season, I sent it back for a warranty repair. Months later the gun came back, with new pins installed, reportedly. The next range session, it happened again. Instead of sending it back once more, I used some epoxy to set them in place. So far so good. Time will tell.

Unfortunately, there is more. The forend has started to wobble. There is side-to-side movement, where there should be none. Easily remedied for now, by putting some electricians tape inside the barrel channels, but in time this may need gunsmith intervention. For just two seasons of fairly light use, that is disappointing.

Conclusion

Since I am the worrying kind, I worry about what issue might arise next. Clearly, the quality of this firearm leaves something to be desired. Or should I be fairer, and say: you got what you paid for. The next step up in price would easily put five thousand devaluated Canadian dollars on the credit card, and likely one or two thousand more. Such a price difference would have to show itself somewhere, in this case a finish that doesn’t deserve the name, poorly fitting pins, and (perhaps) improperly hardened or lower quality steel on the forend lock.

Maybe it is time to start counting my pennies, regularly putting some change into an old tin, and investigate what options are out there on the right side of affordable, without getting cheap. In the meantime, I’ll keep taking this gun up and down ridges, through swamps and coulees, and hope that magic keeps happening, every time the operator doesn’t get too excited and messes things up. Unfortunately, that still happens way too often.

Frans

Ruffed Grouse – The King?

“They like thick cover.” “Edge habitat.” “Undergrowth.” “Clover and berries”. “Young aspens”. “Cut blocks.” Advice on where ruffed grouse live is not hard to find. “Shoot them with a twenty-two on quad trails!”, and the best one: “They come wandering into my backyard when I’m outside barbecuing. I go inside, grab a gun, shoot them, and add them to the grill”. Hardly a bird worthy of the title “King”. Or is he?
  
 Finn’s bell tingled somewhere behind me, as I was pushing through a dense forest of young pines. They had grown so thick that the lower branches had died, letting through enough light for an understory of leafy shrubs, and even a low-to-the-ground plant with red berries.Kinnikinnik, I think. Bears like them, as demonstrated by a few piles of scat that were full of them. Why do bears even eat berries? It appears most of them pass through their system untouched. I hoped grouse liked them too.
My musings on the inner workings of a bear were rudely interrupted by a rustle and the drumming of wings! A grey ruffed grouse exploded from under my feet, and was out of sight in a second. Finn drew up behind me, and solidly pointed the spot the grouse had just left. We had found grouse! The dog needed no more encouragement, and dashed off looking for more encounters. I dashed off looking for a place to breathe. Grouse might live here, but short of clubbing them to death, there was no way I was going to get my hands on one. The thickets were claustrophobic to a man of the mountains and prairies.
By following the flushing birds we managed to push some into terrain where a gun could be shouldered unimpeded, more or less, and we managed to shoot two. Finn found a lot more of them, and I even saw some that he found, but mostly I heard an excited bark, the wings through the vegetation, and then Finn’s bell as he was off again.
Hunting these these birds is not an easy task, if you don’t want to “shoot them from the quad with a twenty-two”, something that would be severely hampered by the fact that I don’t own a quad, nor do I like being on one much. We never found them in open cover where a guy (or girl) would have a decent chance to get off a shot, and where we did find them, we couldn’t move. Ruffed grouse, The King of Upland Birds? Definitely the King of Hide and Seek.
F.

Shooting a limit, or the art of restraint

I stared writing this post a few months ago, but got sidetracked. Now A.J. DeRosa published a thoughtful article on Project Upland I will limit myself to a condensed version.

“Did you get your limit?”

What goes through your mind when you hear that question? I am appealing to the bird hunter here, or perhaps broader, the small game hunter. For big game, the limit often is one (I’m ignoring Eastern states in the US where whitetails are thicker than mosquitoes), but for birds limits are common. Daily limits, possession limits, how many birds can you shoot in a day, and how many can have in your truck and freezer combined.

“Did you shoot a limit?”

Tips and tricks to “get your limit” are prevalent on the web. Photos of hunters with a limit of birds on their tailgates are a dime a dozen on Instagram. Full disclosure, I have done the latter myself. A limit of
pheasants in Alberta is two birds, and you will not have to go back too far in my feed to find those two birds proudly displaced. And nothing wrong with showing some pride in accomplishing a good day of hunting: the dog worked great, your shooting was on par, you had a good time out.

The potential problem lies in the fact that a lot of the hunting takes place on publicly accessible lands, with no control over who hunts, how often it gets hunted, or how many birds are taken other than the daily and possession limits. And as DeRosa points out, in many cases those limits were set long ago, and may not have been scrutinized in a while. What really got me agitated about this “getting a limit”, was an Instagram post a year or so ago, where the poster and friends proudly showed their limits of chukar, that were obtained in the valley, the birds driven down by snow, huddled together waiting out the storm. “We didn’t even have to climb!”

I realize I have mixed up two arguments here: the notion that we have no real control over hunting pressure on a limited resource (the number of hunters chasing the same coveys), and the lack of restraint that some of us display regardless of circumstances. Chukars under normal circumstances live in terrain that is difficult enough to make them fly further than the average hunter wants to pursue them, but it is not very hard for a few guys with half decent dogs to decimate a covey of huns, shooting a few from the initial rise and following up singles, till they reach the imposed limits. That covey may not recover. Especially not, if the next day another couple of guys hunt the same area and come across the stragglers. How much nicer would it be to just shoot a few from the covey, and move on to find a new one. You see more terrain, you can stay out longer, enjoy more fresh air, and  pressure the birds a whole lot less. You may get a limit of birds, or you may not. But who cares if you have enjoyed a great day out?

It is a fine line between hunting smartly, and taking unfair advantage of circumstances. When it has been hot and dry, we might hunt near water. If it has been bitterly cold, we will look for pockets of open water to find migrating waterfowl. If the snow fell deep in the high country, we kill the huddled birds in the valleys. Somewhere along that spectrum, we went from smart to unsporting, or even to detrimental to survival of local populations. State or provincial/territorial agencies cannot control our actions at that point, it is up to the individual hunter to do a little soul searching and find that point when enough is enough.

Frans

#huntingisconservation

When Emory announced a podcast episode on the topic of the "hunting is conservation" slogan, and if perhaps a new one is in order, I typed up the following e-mail to him. I thought it might be of interest to a broader audience. You can find the info about Emory's By Land Podcast here: https://byland.co/podcast
Emory,
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Do we need really a slogan or a hashtag?
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As far as slogans go “hunting is conservation” is pretty catchy. It is supposed to drive home the fact that hunter dollars pay for a lot of the wildlife management that is going on, both on this continent and on others. The maligned trophy hunters’ dollars pay for poaching control in Africa, and keeps habitat away from sprawling development by allowing people to make a living off the land that doesn’t involve cutting and planting. Projects in Asian countries, like the markhor projects in Pakistan, have shown that hunter dollars provide more value to local remote communities than the meat of a wild goat in the pot, and the population of markhor is rebounding. The story on our continent here is well-known (to us anyway).
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The question is, does the intended recipient, the non-hunter, know how “hunting is conservation”? Perhaps they align with the notion that conserving something cannot mean killing it. They may not buy into the thought that it is OK to kill some individuals for the long-term survival of the species. They may not instinctively agree with the science that says that population reduction is required to keep things in balance (like with snow geese that are eating themselves out of a summer home).
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It is very unfortunate that in today’s fast-paced society we need slogan. The complexity of hunting, of what drives us, and of our contributions to wildlife management, are hard to fit into 3-5 words. I have a hard time explaining it in 3-5 paragraphs, or even pages, and nobody reads that much anymore.
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Perhaps the problem is that we have two messages to convey, and “hunting is conservation” only tackles one. Many non-hunters are likely interested into personal motives for hunting. Nobody is buying it when I tell them I went out duck hunting to help conservation. I went out duck hunting because I love to be out on the water, love to challenge myself by doing things that are difficult, love to see ducks and geese fly, love it when I make a good shot, love it when I pick up the bird, love the feeling of self-sufficiency when plucking and converting a bird to a meal, love the fact that during all of it I forget about COVID, work, relations, future, and so forth. I’m just there, in the moment, making all the decisions and living by the outcomes of them. “Put that in a slogan, Mr. Marketing Guy”. The non-hunter may think I’m a pervert who just likes to kill innocent birds.
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A defining moment in my past, involved a small bird and a BB gun. My uncle hunted, my cousin too, and I wanted nothing else than to follow in their footsteps. Being way too young to legally hunt I would roam their little forest plot with a BB gun trying to kill birds. Some would call it blood lust, I would rather call it a desire to do something similar to what my role models were doing, even though wanton killing of little birds without any intent of eating them is not a cheerful matter.  Good thing I couldn’t hit anything anyway. Till one day, I managed to clip a little house sparrow’s wing. It came fluttering down out of the tree and crawled away in leaves. I was distraught obviously and started to walk away. Then I realized that I needed to finish what I started, the bird would not survive on one wing. I found the bird and killed it outright with the next shot. I didn’t shoot too many song birds after that. But I think it did show me that I could carry the responsibility of life and death of an animal, in a way that many people cannot or will not. And that divides the masses. How can I explain what I just described to a person who has never felt the last breaths of a dying duck in his hands, or who has never looked into the eye of a deer that seconds ago was still alive, or who has never felt the warm heart inside the chest cavity of a moose (or less poetic – who has never struggled to get a pile of guts that would fill a wheelbarrow out of an elk).
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I don’t know. And to me, there lies the essence of our communication problem.
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I encourage you to also read Why I hunt and BC closes the grizzly hunt - what went wrong? for a broader perspective on my personal motivations and some thoughts on how we as hunters are failing in the public relations department.
F.

String walking or fixed-crawl for hunting?

 

Traditional bows are not known for producing blistering arrow speeds. Shooting at anything beyond 20 or 25 yards creates a beautifully arched trajectory that we can follow with our yes. One of the reasons I love shooting a longbow. It does however create a dilemma. Not for those fortunate few that can just look at target, pull back without thought, let one rip and hit the ten-ring, regardless of distance; but for those without that talent, the aimers and gap-shooters. At close distances we generally need to aim pretty low to get good center hits; so low sometimes that the connection with the animal is lost and it becomes awkward and difficult, resulting in poor shots.

Enter string walking. String walking is a method of shooting and aiming that creates smaller gaps at the shorter distances. By sliding your string hand down the string, grabbing it s short distance below the nocking point, at full draw the arrow will be closer to your eye. The change in perspective makes that you can aim closer to the animal or target. At longer distances, you go back to the traditional method, where you grab the string immediately below the nocking point (string walking usually means you are shooting “three-under”). When you create one defined point where you grab the string at shorter distances, it is also referred to as a “fixed crawl”.

The guys at The Push Archery created a movie a few years back that explains all this in detail: The Push – A Traditional Archery Film

Sounds good? Sounded good to me when I first learned of it. Who wouldn’t want to have the best of both worlds: aiming point close to the point of impact at all distances. But wait; all distances? Just how far are we shooting in hunting situations anyway, and does this approach really have practical value?

Lets examine. I have read claims of archers whose “point-on” (the distance where the point of the arrow at full-draw covers the point of impact) is 50 yards or so. This has to be a result of one of two, or a combination of two things: a high-poundage bow, and a light-weight arrow.  From a hunting perspective a point-on this far makes little sense to me.

How many of us can consistent hit the ten or nine ring at 50 yards? How realistic is it to expect that you can hit a whitetail deer consistently at 50 yards, when your arrow speed is such that it has time to hear your string drop, locate the source of the sound, look you in the eye, do a pirouette, flip you the middle hoof, and duck down, all before your arrow gets there?

I’ll pause here and say that the above is based on my own limited view of the world, and for every generality postulated above, there will be plenty of exceptions. However, most people probably have no business shooting at an animal beyond 30 yards with a longbow or recurve. Accepting that as fact, I really see no need for string walking or setting up a fixed crawl.

The solution: shoot a heavier arrow. Why inconvenience yourself with large gaps at short distances, for the idea of having a flatter trajectory out to distances at which you will never shoot during hunting? Find your maximum distance (and for most that will not be 40 or 50 yards), and build an arrow with a “point-on” around that. Obviously your arrow will drop quickly after your point-on distance, but practically you will still have another few yards where you can keep the aim on hair (depending on the size of the critter), and for closer shots your gaps will be a lot smaller. You won’t have to remember to grab your string lower (I am sure I would mess that up in the heat of the moment), and you can create a better-penetrating arrow: higher arrow weight, and more opportunity to put more weight towards the front. All advantages for a hunting set-up.

That was my approach anyway, once I realized that shooting at 40 yards or more was not for me (yet?). I’m getting to the point where I’m getting consistent out to 30-35 yards, and I built my arrow around that.*

Disclaimer: This is just one guy’s opinion, and in my small world it all makes sense. Feel free to tell me I have it all wrong in the comments. I am here to learn and get better, and have fun doing it.

*since I wrote about my arrow set-up my technique has changed a bit, and my point-on increased to just below 30 yards.

BC closes the grizzly hunt – what went wrong?

On December 18th, 2017, the NDP/Green coalition government of British Columbia closed the hunt for grizzly bear all across the province, except for hunting by First Nations.

It was a decision that had nothing to do with science, nothing with wildlife management. It was a decision based solely on a perceived public opinion that grizzly bear hunting is unacceptable. Unacceptable how? That is unclear.

In the summer the BC government announced plans to close grizzly hunting for “trophy”, meaning that the meat would have to be recovered and the hide, skull and claws would have to be left in the field. There was to be a period of public consultation. It appears that the hunting community’s indignity focused around the incomplete utilization of a resource, that leaving inedible parts of the animal in the field would be disrespectful, a waste in fact; and of course around the science of wildlife management.

Reportedly the government received some 4000 emails, of which 3/4 expressed a negative opinion towards hunting grizzlies altogether. That was enough for the government to change their plans, from allowing the hunt for meat collection only, to closing down the hunt altogether.

What can we learn from this? Because learn from this we should if we are to avoid the same thing to happen again in the near future.

It’s not about the science!

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, politicians use science only when it supports their ideology, or when they think they can gain popular support (read votes). The government admitted that the science was solid, that hunting grizzly bears is sustainable, and still they closed it.

It’s not about wildlife management!

No matter how often we say we hunt because we need to manage wildlife, people are not buying it. The average voter at best has a hard time understanding the concept of killing animals to save animals. More often, the average voter doesn’t care. The non-hunting public does not accept the image of the altruistic hunter who goes out to do his part for conservation when he loads up the truck with gear and heads for the fields or mountains.

Hunting is not a right!

Hunting lives or dies by the acceptance of the general public, or rather, by the perception of acceptance of hunting by a really small group of elected officials. You can claim it is your right to be allowed to hunt as often as you want, but last time I checked I didn’t see it listen in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hunting is your “right” until the next elected government tells you it isn’t. Then you have the right to speak out against it and it is your right to vote for the other guys. But hunting is not your right.

They are much more dedicated than we are!

When it comes to exercising the one right that we do have, freedom of speech, the people that are vehemently opposed to hunting are much more active than we are. Look at the numbers. 4000 emails, 3000 of them oppose hunting (of grizzlies this time, just wait and see what comes next). Of roughly 100,000 hunters in British Columbia, just 1% could be bothered to send an email.

So, what do we do?

There are a few take-aways from the observations above.

We need to come up with a rationale for hunting that goes beyond wildlife management, one that can be understood and accepted by non-hunters (forget about the anti-hunters, they will never be convinced). I don’t know what that story looks like. I do know what it doesn’t look like.

It is not “hunting is my right, it is legal, so get over it” attitude. It is also not the animal carcass shown on Facebook or Instagram, unceremoniously deposited on the garage floor, with blood and gore oozing out. It is not the photo of four of five does piled up in a truck bed. None of that does any good to help secure the future of hunting. None of that will be understood by the non-hunter. Remember that anything you put on the internet can and will be used against us. There is no such thing as privacy.

It is also not the argument that we hunt for the sake of wildlife management. Many individuals and organizations are up in arms right now reiterating the science, once more elaborating on how the grizzly hunt is sustainable, how grizzly need to be hunted to help the numbers of other wildlife, or to curtail human-grizzly interactions. It is a non-argument at this point. The politicians have thrown out all those arguments in favour of what they feel is the voters’ opinion. They even admitted to it.

Unless we get better at rallying the troops, and stand together as hunters irrespective of our how we hunt or what we hunt or where we hunt, we will lose these battles every time. Let me put it differently: until YOU get involved, educate yourself, and get active socially and politically, we will lose. It doesn’t matter if you do not hunt species X, or you do not hunt with weapon Y. Stand together for hunting, or risk losing it.

What is your story?

Everybody has his own story when it comes to hunting. Mine started on a different continent, with different traditions, centered around family, valuable time spent together, working to improve habitat, looking after a small lease 12 months of the year, and shooting some of the surplus in a few short months at the end of the years; sharing meat with friends, cooking a hare for Christmas, training and working gun dogs, and being outdoors in weather that keeps most people inside. When I think of those days, I do not remember the shooting, I remember the people.

Right now hunting for me is about finding the simplicity and satisfaction in hunting with a traditional bow, spending time in the mountains alone or with good friends, staying fit while the body protests, providing food for my family and others if ever I can succeed in getting close enough with the bow, stories shared by a campfire although some have been told a few too many times already, and waking up with the desire to look over the next ridge, to see a new valley. What is yours? Let’s hear it.

Why I Hunt

When in casual conversation with strangers or other people that don’t know me well the topic of hunting comes up, inevitably I get asked the question “Why do you hunt?” This can quickly be followed by other, often intentionally provocative statements, such as “Can’t you buy meat at the store?” or “Are you one of those trophy hunters?”

There are many ways of answering these questions, assuming you have the gumption for a potentially lengthy and volatile conversation, each with a different angle: wildlife management, food acquisition, and personal motivation being a few of them. And though invariably the asker wants to know about the latter, I like to start from the broader perspective and talk about the role that hunting plays in the conservation and management of wildlife, and maybe follow that up with the healthy food angle. If we can get through that without calling each other names, there is a chance that the more nebulous drivers behind my motivation to hunt will find an open-minded audience.

Conservation and Wildlife Management

Wildlife needs to be managed. The concept of all animas living together in a dynamic equilibrium stopped being a reality when humans started expanding their footprint across the globe by other means than just their feet. Increasingly large tract of wildlife habitat was lost to development, and what is left is often fragmented by infrastructure such as roads, railroads, intensive agriculture and so on. Some species have adapted (whitetailed deer), other species suffer (grizzly bears). There is no room for predator-prey relationships to play out like they did centuries ago except for in the most remote regions. Animals are no longer free to migrate away from predator pressure, and often already live in habitat that is far from optimal for the species. Some people seem to think that if we humans just keep our distance, things will be OK. They are not in touch with reality. Hunting is an indispensable tool for managing wildlife numbers of both prey and predator species, to minimize damage to crops or reduce the number of collisions with vehicles, or curb disease outbreaks or starvation by keeping populations in check with the carrying capacity of their living environment, and avoiding excessive reduction in numbers by unchecked predation. It is not the only tool. Management of access for development or recreation, as well as attention for conservation or restoration of habitat is equally important. But it is an essential part.

Healthy Food

If the individual that asked the original question is still listening, and maybe even nodded a time or two, I like to bring up the food angle. Getting meat has been the predominant reason for hunting for time immemorial. The taste and quality of wild meat beats anything store-bought. The wild animal lived a life of freedom, and its death is swift and without the stress that cows, pigs and chickens are exposed to before they are killed and butchered. Nobody who eats meat, or uses animal products of any kind should have any argument against hunting. If you buy a steak, you pulled the trigger on the pin gun that killed the cow. Eat McNuggets, and you hung the chicken in the butchering facility. Your leather shoes did not grow on a tree; it used to be the hide of an animal that was killed for you. Even if you are a vegetarian or vegan, your hands are not clean. Many animals are killed on your behalf, accidentally most likely, but still killed, during the production and transport of your vegetable and meat alternatives. We all leave a footprint. The only difference is that the hunter doesn’t delegate the responsibility for the killing to someone else.

Personal Motivation

Most often however the poser of this question is probing into personal motives. “Why do you hunt?” There are many facets to my motivation for hunting, and not all are equally easily explained. Donnie Vincent, in his short video “Who We Are?” (https://vimeo.com/105686970) gives it a genetical spin. The fact that you are here on this planet, means that you are a descendent of strong hunters. If your forebears hadn’t been good at hunting, your line would have ceased to exist. It’s in our blood, there is no denying.

Despite the venomous attempts of the anti-hunting crowd to convince the world of our bloodlust, hunting has little to do with the desire to kill something. If that were the case, everybody would always use the most efficient weapon available and shoot the first legal animal they encountered. While I have certainly done that, I have also let animals walk that were mine for the taking, if only I had pulled the trigger.

When I am hunting, away from our digitally connected world, I am a part of nature, not a mere observer. The purpose becomes singular, the mind focused, relying on experience and skills; decisions are mine, the burden or pleasure of having to live with the outcomes of those decisions is also mine. There is a deep satisfaction in traveling wild country, relying only on your wits and the gear you can carry on your back. You are not just camping or hiking, you are searching for prey. Movements are determined by the necessity to stay out of sight, by the seemingly erratic but sometime predictable patterns of the wind, by your knowledge of the terrain and the needs of your quarry. It is a puzzle, and successfully solving it will put me in the same place at the same time as the animal that I am after.

Whether I kill anything or not is of lesser importance. It has to be, because the killing only happens a few times per year in a good year, but seeking those few moments goes on year-round.

Working out to stay in shape, optimizing gear, practicing shooting, visiting new places or old haunts to check for sign of animals when no hunting season is open, learning about animal behaviour, studying maps and satellite imagery, planning time off to hit best seasons; there is not a day in the year that hunting is not on my mind. It’s is not a hobby, it is not casual, it is something that is part of me, like breathing.

“So are you a meat hunter or a trophy hunter”? This seems to be a popular question these days, a loaded question, and judgement is looming. To me, there is no such distinction. The animal is the animal. Some parts are edible, and everything that leads up to putting the meat on the table is something I enjoy doing. A glimpse at the neatly stacked freezer makes me feel very accomplished, happy even. And I feel a little proud when I can cook up and serve this meat to my family, and share some of it with friends.

Some parts are not edible or no longer have the function that our ancestors were able to give to it. Some of it stays in the field, for other creatures to feed on. Some of it comes home with us, alongside the meat. Often I clean the skull and antlers or horns or fur, and sometimes those find their way onto a wall. Only when the experience was something special I pay a taxidermist and the animal’s head and shoulder become a permanent part of my home. They bring the mountains or the woods into my daily life, they help me remember the good times spent outdoors, the smells and the sounds and the friends, the effort and sometimes physical hardship that went into the hunt, and they brighten up my day over and over with their beauty. Is that a trophy? You call it what you want. To me it is all just part of hunting.

F.

 

Tradbow vs Compound – Why are we fighting?

 

Every self-respecting podcaster these days seems to have an episode about the “controversy” between tradbow shooters and compound shooters in his line-up. It is a big deal right now. The compound shooters call out the traditionalists that they can’t hit the broadside of a barn from the inside, and the traditionalists blame the compound shooters for taking irresponsible shots at unethical distances. The debates are laced with with sweeping statements such as “Compound shooters are substituting hunting skills with technology!” or “For a tradbow, the hunt begins at distances where it would end with a compound!”, an observation that, by the way, is also often used by compound bow hunters to disparage rifle hunters, and my favourite from a tradbow hunter (if I hear it one more time, I may smash my iPhone): “I could have shot it with a compound!” (Sorry Aron). In the process of trying to get on the victorious side of the debate, there is also a lot of talk about wounding: “If you are going trad, expect to wound a lot more animals than with a compound!” or “How often do you think those compound shooter wound an animal at 80 yards?”

What on earth are we doing?

We are not having this discussion around the campfire in the woods, with nobody listening but the birds and the trees. Have we become so entrenched in this debate that it is OK to use every argument, even arguments that could easily shine a less-positive light on hunting as a whole? Apparently it is not a problem to confess on public media to having wounded not-insignificant numbers of animals , without providing some context about the circumstances, the follow-up, the (hopefully) happy ending. It makes me cringe.

Let’s step back for a bit and analyze the issue. Killing animals with a bow (among other less discriminate killing methods) has kept our ancestors alive for a long time. However, when rifles appeared on the scene, the bow became a lot less popular quickly. It is probably safe to say that towards the end of the 18th Century not too many white men ran around the woods trying to get dinner with a bow.

Generally Saxton Pope and his buddy Art Young are credited with reviving the lost art of hunting with a stick and string. Pope’s book “Hunting with the bow and arrow” published in 1923 is an interesting read (https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/pope/hunting-with-bow-and-arrow/). There are earlier publications though, by fellows who took to hunting with a bow, such as “The witchery of Archery” by J. Maurice Thompson published in 1877 (https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/witchery/). All their equipment and materials used were what we now refer to as traditional or primitive.

In the 1940s one Fred Bear initiated his bow company, and towards the end of that decade started incorporating fiberglass in his bows. It wasn’t until 1953 that he patented the recurve bow limb. Fred and his contemporaries used these bows on all matter of game. They shot at distances that would make even the most open-minded traditional shooter these days scratch his or her head. Some old footage of Fred Bear’s hunts even shows an archer using a “traditional” bow with a sight pin! (http://www.3riversarchery.com/fred-bear-dvd-collection.html).

This little journey back in time goes to show that what some so lovingly refer to as traditional, is only about a century old, as far as use by non-native North Americans is concerned, and the recurve bow made with modern materials is even younger. It is, in fact, only about two decades older than the first compound bow, which emerged on the scene in 1969 when a fellow by the name of Holless Wilbur Allen was granted a US patent for a bow with pulleys at the end of the limbs.

Though I have no numbers to back this up, I would argue that the majority of bowhunters that would claim they hunt with traditional equipment, in fact use technology that was patented exactly 16 years earlier than the patent that kickstarted modern archery equipment. I own several rifles that are older than that.

So now that we have filled up some trenches, knocked over some pedestals, and we are looking each other in the eye, what is the commotion really all about? We all hunt with a bow. The technology that we use was developed within two decades of each other. Even most individuals that build their bows from trees often use modern tools to get things done. And what does it all matter, really?

Unfortunately, the trend of pitching one kind of hunting or hunter against the other started early. In Saxton Pope’s book already you can read: “For by shaming the “mighty hunter” and his unfair methods in the use of powerful destructive agents, we feel that we help to develop better sporting ethics”. The “powerful destructive agent” in this case was the rifle, and “we” were the emerging breed of bowhunters, in Pope’s mind clearly having the moral high-ground.

In the end, we are all hunters. Long-range shooters, regular rifle hunters, muzzleloader enthusiast, crossbow people, compound shooters, traditional-method hunters, the primitive guys, the gap-shooters and instinctive aimers, and even the poor fellow with the spear, we all get out into the field to follow our passion. We don’t have to agree on our choice of technology, but it would be nice if we could agree to not criticize each other on every imaginable media outlet at every opportunity.

If we could put only half of the time and effort we put into fighting each other over frivolous things towards conservation initiatives, promoting hunting as an essential wildlife management tool, educating ourselves about what is happening to our public lands, and writing to our elected officials about our issues that affect us, we would be in a much better place. Yet we take to the keyboard with vitriol in our fingertips ever chance we get, and bash the ones that do not exactly do as we do, or think as we think, or use the equipment we feel is superior. “We have met the enemy…”

Frans Diepstraten

(this article, with some edits, has also been published in the May 2017 issue of the Journal of Mountain Hunting