When Hunting Was Cheap And Simple
November 17, 2009
I didn’t grow up normal! I know that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to some of you but by normal, I mean I grew up dirt poor but happy – a case of you don’t know what you don’t have if you’ve never seen it.
I was the youngest of four boys so you can imagine that growing up poor your “hand-me-downs” where at least three generations old and most of the time older than that because my oldest brother got someone else’s hand-me-downs.
When it came time for deer hunting season, the biggest argument was who got to carry the shotgun and who got to carry the single-shot Remington .22 bolt action. Let me tell you a brief bit about each.
The shotgun, a 12-guage, was an ancient relic from Montgomery Ward. It was mostly held together with black friction tape and shooting the blasted thing was always a mystery. Never, ever shoot up over your head while bird hunting. There stood a better than even chance the barrel would fall off beyond a certain point. There were no sights. You simply looked over the top of the barrel and hoped that was good enough. I did shoot my first deer with than blunder bust.
The .22 Remington was a beauty but none of us young boys had the strength to pull the bolt back so it could be fired. It didn’t matter much as nothing less than a precisely placed shot would do little more than annoy a Maine whitetail deer. In most states now it is illegal to hunt deer with a standard .22 caliber rifle.
If all us boys wanted to go hunting on Saturday, which I’m sure my father hoped wouldn’t happen, two of us had to walk along and carry lunch.
My father had traded his way into the ownership of a Winchester Model 94, .30-.30, lever action, saddle rifle. He got it for $8.00 and he gave the guy a haircut to boot. The owner said no one could hit the side of barn with that gun but my father proved that statement wrong many times over.
Ammunition was also a bit of a mystery come hunting season. Most of the time whoever got to take the 12-gauge got one 00 buckshot, one 0 buckshot, a slug and some number six shot that I think Christopher Columbus brought over with him. We had a 1/2 dozen rounds of .22 long rifles. It was what we could afford. If you wanted to live, you did NOT waste ammunition.
For hunting garb we wore whatever we had. No special pants, shirts or jackets. Back then hunter orange wasn’t even heard of but a few “rich” people were wearing red hats and jackets.
Fast forward about 47 years and my how things have changed. A quick visit to the Cabela’s web site and you can quickly see that only a few thousand dollars and you can have the very latest and greatest in the long line of gimmicks and gadgets to increase your chances at bagging a trophy buck.
Here’s what it now available for the “average” hunter, to name only a few:
1. Scent elimination, clothing and soaps
2. Scents and lures. I think they even now have scents for each day a doe is in estrus.
3. Radios
4. GPS
5. Binoculars
6. Riflescopes
7. Laser sights
8. Spotting scopes
9. Range finders
10. Game finders – special lighting to help you track wounded game (a good thing)
11. Night Vision
12. Trail cameras
13. Specialty ammunition for every occasion
14. Black Powder – It isn’t so primitive anymore
15. Game calls
16. Shooting sticks and by-pods
17. Blinds
18. Tree stands
19. Grow your own food plots, feed and special minerals to grow your own herd of trophy deer
20. Game feeders
21. About 2 gazzillion Cds, DVDs, books, magazines, etc. to tell you exactly how it’s all done.
22. Or, hire a guide and have everything set up for you.
And this only scratches the surface.
While at hunting camp this fall, a brief discussion was started about all this stuff. This discussion quickly turned to one of ethics. For those that know me, I don’t like to go down that road because ethics is something that I believe shouldn’t be legislated but taught.
So, ditching any discussion on ethics, the one question I do have is whether all this stuff actually gives a hunter that big of an advantage? And, if so, does one’s financial status provide more of a hunting opportunity than someone who can’t afford any of this stuff? And is this right? (I hate to use the word fair because nothing is fair)
Does anyone know of any hard data that can support any hypothesis about success rates due to gadgets and gimmicks or is it really just a negligible difference? Isn’t tried and true hunting knowledge, scouting and knowing the terrain you hunt and the habits of the game you chase a better way to seriously improve your chances of success?
What do you think?
Tom Remington
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Oh, how I can’t wait to see the comments left for this post.
I’m a firm believer that scouting, preparation, and deer know-how are what makes a successful hunter. I don’t consider myself an expert deer hunter in any way, shape form, but I do know that there isn’t a gadget out there that will teach you how to scout, how to be still, or how to stay warm after hours in the woods.
I think if a lot of the “gadget” prone hunters returned to and practiced some actual woodsmanship, that would go along way in improving their odds, long before any gadget would help them.
With all of this being said, though, I have fallen for a few gadgets myself. I think it’s just part of being a hunter.
Hopefully someone can come up with some solid data evidence they can share on this topic. That would in interesting.
I like my optics, this country I live in was made to be glassed, I use the Swarovski 20×60 Spotting Scope, and the Leupold 12×40 Spotting Scope. Leupold 10×28 Binoculars and the Leupold 10-20×40 Spotting Scope. I make my own bows and arrows, build my own Muzzle Loaders. I also shoot the WSM7MAG and the 7mm Ultra Mag, as well the 454 Casull Hand gun, all wearing Leupold Scopes. Horses and mules and various tack, saddles and packing in deep gear.. I wash my hunting clothing in the creek I am going up, other than I never messed with hiding my scent, I just use the wind to my advantage. I’m hunting through November with my compound bow right now.. Took a cow elk, but still hunting deer. I watched a couple nice bucks a couple days ago, but they were having none of my action… That’s about it for my gadgets, except I reload everything I shoot..The hunt below was some time back now.
http://candidconservatives.com/the-queens-river-canyon-buck/
What many of us don’t realize is the vast differences in hunting style and technique that is driven by the geography we hunt in. Where I grew up in Maine, the overwhelming majority of huntable grounds offers a visibility of only a few yards and at times a few feet. All those optics don’t help us but in Greg’s terrain it’s a must.
For Florida, it’s hard to do without a treestand. Not that I haven’t killed my share of bucks without one, but the older I get, the more careful I have become, and the last time I climbed a tree, I looked down, and wondered how on earth I was going to get down….For some reason climbing up was so much easier.
Used to shoot deer in front of the dogs, which is what most people did back then, and still do, where there is enough land open to dog hunting…The dogs are the only thing that will move the deer out of the thickets, where you can get a shot, if you can hit a running deer….and most people can’t hit flip if it moves…Back then, we’d practice at moving objects, and any good deer hunter would hit a moving deer without any problem. ..(at least within their range)
If you ever tried to crawl in the thicket with the deer, you were a fool, since the deer would hear you coming a quarter mile away, and smell you at half of that. You ever crawl in the brambles, you will come out looking like you were in a wrestling match with a bobcat, and the bobcat won!
I use a scoped .308 for some places where deer will come in the open, but they are few and far between….and usually just a lever action .30-30 is all that’s needed, and I have one I ordered from Sears and Roebuck back in 1961…and it’s taken it’s share. And if I had to kill all the deer in Florida, it would do the job…with open sights.
Mostly all the newfangled stuff is pure unnecessary… you can do without it all, but you kid yourself into thinking it will help you get more deer, so you buy it anyway. Having patience and being able to hold still on a stand, is more important than 90% of the garbage they sell to hunters who think they’ll try anything if it helps them get a deer.
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