Caribou Gear

Hunts you consider unethical and why?

What hunts would you refuse to participate in due to personal ethical concerns (cost no object)?

  • 'Target'-based shooting (e.g., prairie dogs, woodchucks) where the game is not utilized

    Votes: 50 22.0%
  • Competitive Hunts (e.g., coyote competitions)

    Votes: 59 26.0%
  • Species significantly diminished &/or threatened by human activity (rhinos, elephants)

    Votes: 85 37.4%
  • High fence operations

    Votes: 159 70.0%
  • Very long range shooting situations (arbitrarily defined by me as >800 yards)

    Votes: 153 67.4%
  • Game where consumption was only fur, no meat harvested (e.g., grizzly for many, most furbearers)

    Votes: 27 11.9%
  • Hunts where the game is 'cornered' (e.g., treed mountain lion, raccoon)

    Votes: 23 10.1%
  • Broadhead testing with Stay Sharp

    Votes: 70 30.8%
  • Female species hunts (cow, doe, ewe, etc)

    Votes: 3 1.3%
  • Other (please specify in comments)

    Votes: 15 6.6%

  • Total voters
    227
  • Poll closed .
Ethics is a personal thing, some don't mind harvesting animals for just the hide, some don't like deer drives, some like harvesting an animal at 1000 yards or better. To each his own, because in the end you have to make peace with yourself. For myself I feel if any hunter takes a shot, that they are have not prepared for and wound and have the animal needlessly suffer, ( i.e., have only practiced shooting a rifle at 200 yards and then decide to take a 500 yard shot on a game animal resulting in a wounded game animal), to me this is probably the most egregious.
 
I voted for the 1st 5, but that’s just me personally not wanting to do those things - don’t necessarily object to them being done by others in some circumstances.

Appreciate the StaySharp chuckle
 
High fence hunting is not hard and basically just shooting livestock, but definitely not unethical, you could walk for days inside some of those places and never bump into the fence. Besides, you gotta do something in Texas besides watch the Cowboys...
The truth of this statement is what brought me to this website. I nearly quit hunting because in Texas, it’s either big money for a lease with big money lease problems, high fence, or public land with every yahoo and knucklehead you can imagine. Or, become a landowner, which is even bigger money.
 
High fence is probably my first check on the pole, long range is just because I don't have the ability to shoot at that distance regularly in se WI, so wouldn't take the shot.
Wife & I eat mainly Venison and definitely would not hunt what I couldn't take home.
 
Other: Not into the deer drive thing. Just doesnt jive with me. Pretty common though. Big family camps, buncha people stomping through the woods purposefully spooking every critter there, getting them to run up into a gauntlet of shooters. No thanks. Just doesnt pass the smell test to me i guess. To me, doing your best NOT to spook animals is really the biggest part of hunting whether youre spot and stalk, calling, sitting in a treestand etc. Of course our dfw recommends drives for hunting whitetail.
I have some issues with drives as well, but they're very situational. I will sometimes do little 2 or 3 person pushes, where someone strategically lets their scent go through an area to get deer moving towards standers. I have no problem with that. And, in the big, big woods, I don't have a problem with larger drives. What does bother me is large drives on smaller properties. In the Champlain valley, public land parcels are smaller and when one family drives them with 10 or 11 hunters, every weekend, it only serves to ruin the hunting for everyone else, on those properties.
 
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As many or few that would be “unethical”, I find it hard to condemn any on the list as it becomes a point of contention among those of us engaged in hunting. The demise of our choice in hunting is brought about from within and embraced by those without.

It doesn’t take much research to find that division already exists on this site and I don’t see how it is healthy for the future of hunting.
 
I dislike wild hogs as much as the next guy but dang, hunting them down from a helicoptor just doesn't sit right with me. Neither does hunting them with dogs, having a pack of dogs ripping at them while you go in and stab them to death. Kind of blood thirsty and brutal display for the antis in my book... or the undecideds.
Drives are another peeve of mine.
 
The long range one is my #1. I get it that there are guys out there that practice at that distance everyday and they have all the technology to get the perfect ballistics but I just feel like there is just too many variables that are out of your control. A sudden wind change or different wind at distance, a sudden movement by the animal etc. I understand things can happen at any distance but the probability of something going wrong drastically goes up when you are shooting that far.

The second I'll add is hunting over bait. I understand that it's used in places with higher populations of animals but it just doesn't really feel like hunting to me. I won't die on that hill but it personally doesn't feel real ethical as a hunting tactic.
 
No baiting for me (for anything) and no wanton waste of native game. Hogs are a different story. Gator hunting has no appeal for me, but that's not really an ethical issue. I just don't appreciate being in a swamp with 15 foot death lizards all around me. Grizzly bears don't give me the heebie-jeebies like gators do.

If I bought a Gov's tag/conservation tag then it wouldn't be a mossback hunt, but more like what the HT crowd did with a member's goat tag. Just guys having fun in a fair chase method.

Driven hunt for boar in Europe would be a blast though. Same with pheasant drives in England. Not so sure about deer in SE America though.
 
I dislike wild hogs as much as the next guy but dang, hunting them down from a helicoptor just doesn't sit right with me. Neither does hunting them with dogs, having a pack of dogs ripping at them while you go in and stab them to death. Kind of blood thirsty and brutal display for the antis in my book... or the undecideds.
Drives are another peeve of mine.
I don't care if you use Na-pom. heat seeking missles from fighter jets. Hogs should not be where they are and deserve no quarter! The Antis have enough stockyard video to yell about now and have no clue what a Boar can do! John
 
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