Technology Creep

[Cornell2012]

I don't mean to pick on you, but still wondering where your coming from.

The smart bullet has been invented. All you have to do is get the target identified in the scope and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. Clean kill with no skill.

If allowing average hunter to make clean kills is the consideration then that should be OK>

Making animals harder to find will happen because technology will make killing too easy. WE might have already reached that point.

No worries, I'm not the best on articulating my thoughts. Plus, hey, everyone is allowed to disagree.

About the smart bullet thing: I wouldn't really have a problem with it (we'll see how much heat I take for that statement). It might remove a fair amount (or most, or all) of the skill in the shooting portion, but in my mind, that is a very small portion of what it takes to hunt an animal between research, scouting, tracking, glassing, calling, stalking, and a number of other skills.

It isn't just the physical tools that are improving either, but the distribution of information. The techniques and methods that people use to find game have improved substantially over the past few decades, and the internet has only accelerated that. It is now easier than ever for someone who has never hunted before, or someone who is very casual about the endeavor, to find information about how, when, and where to find game. This means the barrier to entry is lower, and the success rate for that group of people is probably better than it would have been otherwise. (This does bring up something that is interesting to me: We always say that we need more young people hunting, that we don't want the sport to die out, but at the same time we complain that areas are overhunted or that game numbers are down. It seems to me that there is both a lower and upper limit to the number of hunters this place can support. Too few and it dies out, too many and it implodes upon itself. If we are concerned that we are killing too many animals, there is a hard limit that wildlife agencies can enact: limiting the number of tags. This entire idea is kind of jumbling around in my head and I might expand upon it once I can lay it out in a more coherent fashion.)

Back on topic -
I'll agree that advancements of technology have made it easier to kill animals, but I have a hard time identifying an arbitrary line of "we should use this technology on a gun or bow but this other one should not be allowed". There are multiple steps in the process of hunting an animal, and I would prefer one of the ones in the middle of the process more difficult, instead of the one at the very end.

 

[Gerald Martin]

I'll throw a little bone into this mix to chew on. Good hunters are going to kill game regardless of the technology used. Limit the season to one week in Montana, iron sights on a 30-30 and turn Greenhorn, Psinclair, BuzzH, and BigFin (if he leaves the camera at home) loose for that season. You will have 4 dead elk.

It isn't just the physical tools that are improving either, but the distribution of information. The techniques and methods that people use to find game have improved substantially over the past few decades, and the internet has only accelerated that. It is now easier than ever for someone who has never hunted before, or someone who is very casual about the endeavor, to find information about how, when, and where to find game. This means the barrier to entry is lower, and the success rate for that group of people is probably better than it would have been otherwise.

I agree with this totally. The technology that I use to make a killing shot has not changed much since I've started hunting. My ability to learn where game is and how to hunt has changed dramatically. I 'm pretty certain that I could pick a species I've never hunted before in an area I've never been to and with contacts from this site and info I can glean from the internet, I am confident I could fill my tag in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Big Fin]

This is a very interesting discussion. We recorded a podcast today and this topic came up. It took us a lot longer than I thought it would to frame the sideboards of the discussion around technology.

Even after reading all of these posts, I'm still not sure where I am at.

I'm guilty of it. If you tried to take my onXmap chip and my CDS scope from me, I would offer you many other items in my pack in order to let me keep those two pieces of technology.

One helps me find more places to hunt that other people overlook, so what once may have been a sanctuary that a bull/buck could count on to escape hunters during season now has guys like me chasing them and making them more vulnerable to my bullets or bullets of other hunters if I displace the bull/buck from his formerly safe haven.

The other has made my shooting much better and reliable under hunting conditions. I can justify it based on the premise of the CDS making me more likely to make a lethal shot at a distance, compared to my lethality without the system at the same distance. And now I ask myself, do I make the distance the fixed part of the equation and my technology the variable, or do I make the technology the fixed part by not using a CDS system and calibrated range finder and therefore the distance is the variable and I exercise the self-discipline to take shorter range shots?

The interesting part of the discussion is that concerns over technology are not a new topic to hunters. Back in the day when hunting was all about food, technology improvements were welcomed ideas, the same as drought resistant wheat technology. Now, the focus is less on subsistence and as a result we have people gravitating toward supposed short-range weapon seasons to increase the challenge and increase their days afield.

I doubt hunters will ever find a common place to draw the technology line in the sand. It is just too much of a personal preference to expect we will ever find agreement. If we start impacting the resource with our increased lethality, agencies will have not choice but to look at reduced hunter opportunity as a primary mechanism to reduce impact on the herds.

 

[Elkmagnet]

Fyi most of Idaho's general season tags are any weapon. So we should keep our primitive seasons primitive. Want to get your crossbow bolt wet? Get some. Do you want to see a big buck in the scope of that new muzzleloader? Have at it.

Idaho went with traditional muzzleloader seasons for a few years and I loved every minute of it but there was too much crying and they switch back.
If they had a meeting tomorrow and said 2017 archary seasons will be trad only guess who would be proficient with trad archery equipment by next fall.
Would my success rate go down? You betcha. Would I complain? Not one word.

Obviously increasing Hunter numbers is leading to increased harvest but I'd really love to see game departments figure out a way to decrease hunter efficiency without limiting the amount of hunters or days that a hunter can spend in the field.

I would much rather spend lots of days in the woods seeing lots of animals with a feeling of having one hand tied behind my back then to get to spend one day out there with some bad ### high powered rifle and only see one animal that's just my perspective though.

 

[shoots-straight]

I doubt hunters will ever find a common place to draw the technology line in the sand. It is just too much of a personal preference to expect we will ever find agreement. If we start impacting the resource with our increased lethality, agencies will have not choice but to look at reduced hunter opportunity as a primary mechanism to reduce impact on the herds.

I believe we have already passed that stage. Places where game are accessible, and close to human populations, have had to go to unlimited permits to hold the hunter trips down. If we had liberal seasons in place hunters made the day hunt and took game. With restrictions in place many of the opportunist hunters that didn't plan ahead don't have the paper. We were up to 16000 hunters trips in the upper Bitterroot in the time frame between 2003 and 2008 in 5 years there were around 5900 elk killed in those two hunting districts alone.

When I was just starting out in Hunting, my family was one of the few that had 4 wheel drive vehicles. We also had winches on them (PTO) types. It was a major advantage over other hunters when snows came. Now with all the new machines available we all can still get to the game, even in the worse of conditions. There isn't much of a break anymore from hunting pressure. So after limiting hunter trips (through permits) we brought some of the game populations back in some areas of Western Montana, we have to be very careful not to end up right back where we started. I see many long rangers sitting up on ridges overlooking places that 10 years ago you just spotted from. They have their rifles sitting on tripods at the ready. Not a fan!

 

[jryoung]

I agree with this totally. The technology that I use to make a killing shot has not changed much since I've started hunting. My ability to learn where game is and how to hunt has changed dramatically. I 'm pretty certain that I could pick a species I've never hunted before in an area I've never been to and with contacts from this site and info I can glean from the internet, I am confident I could fill my tag in a reasonable amount of time.

Winner winner, prime rib dinner. I have a 900 yard rangefinder and a CDS that goes out to 700 or so yards. I'm not going to take a shot over 350-400 because that's where my experience lies. Same thing with archery, I've got a fancy pants bow, but after shooting at the "pig of truth" (a steel pig silhouette with an 8" circle) I'm not taking a shot over 30yds.

But, how I use onxmaps, google earth and the internet has completely transformed the way I hunt. Much of that is due to who my mentors were...one being an extremely obese man who I can still hear saying "I don't know if I'd tell you if I saw an elk down there" looking out the truck window at a nasty draw as we commuted to our hunting grounds.

Now, I'm looking for that spot. And while I could do that before, now I can order a FS/BLM or MyTopo map and have it here in a couple of days. I can mark water, open areas, and dark timber in an hour on the internet. I can email the biologist, or other local authority and get the low down. Every one of those technological advances has and will make be a better hunter every year, and allow me to get out of state...all of these items has already been done within the last two weeks since I drew my Idaho tag.

There will always be bad actors, there will be guys patrolling private property fence lines hoping the elk move off, there will be guys shooting too far, trespassers, and poachers.

Walk-in/roadless/wilderness areas are a great equalizer. But, much of success comes down to effort. How much time you're willing to research, how much time you're willing to commit to your physical health, and how much time you're willing to put in to getting to good grounds. I'm sure there's some movement at the fringes, but for the most part that 20ish % of hunters who are successful year over year are because of their effort.

 

[cowboy]

I will throw a little twist into the debate of technology versus hunting opportunity and say that you can have both. Our future lies in the younger generation meaning the Cornell's of this world, my 2 sons and a handful of their hunting associates. They are not killing any more game than if you sent them out with open sight 30-30s. They are just doing it more humane and efficiently than we did at their age.

They are passing animals we would never have at their age.

I have been involved with a hunting camp that is 17 miles off a road that we have to pack in to, wall tent has been set up in the same place for 34 years. I am the last of the 2nd generation and now hunt with 3 young men who flat have their chit together. The first generation hunters thought it was just part of hunting to not recover a wounded animal. The generation below me have not left one wounded animal in the mountains - I know it's a matter of time but I will flat predict that every swinging _ick will be in recovery mode for the rest of the week if/when it happens.

If we put all our heads together and keep fighting for better habitat, keep predators in check, and keep promoting proper hunting ethics we will be a lot better off than trying to decide what technology should be legal or illegal. We all want to limit the technology as long as it doesn't affect us personally.

Taking away some technology that we currently are accustomed to will go over about as well as your boss coming in and telling you that you that you still have the same job but he's lowering your pay scale.

 

[cowboy]

When I was just starting out in Hunting, my family was one of the few that had 4 wheel drive vehicles. We also had winches on them (PTO) types. It was a major advantage over other hunters when snows came.

I see many long rangers sitting up on ridges overlooking places that 10 years ago you just spotted from. They have their rifles sitting on tripods at the ready. Not a fan!

Shoots: This is a prime example of technology advancements that people will be in favor of or dead against. In your first analogy I get the impression that you felt it was very ethical and helped you immensely. Your second example shows that you are not part of this type hunting and are dead against it.

I'm not saying you and your family were wrong but in the day if you blew by me while I was huffing and puffing through the snow drifts on foot I might just think that what you were doing was as you say "Not a fan".

 

[shoots-straight]

Shoots: This is a prime example of technology advancements that people will be in favor of or dead against. In your first analogy I get the impression that you felt it was very ethical and helped you immensely. Your second example shows that you are not part of this type hunting and are dead against it.

I'm not saying you and your family were wrong but in the day if you blew by me while I was huffing and puffing through the snow drifts on foot I might just think that what you were doing was as you say "Not a fan".

Things have changed a bunch sense those days. It was to show how far technology has advanced in every aspect of hunting.

Now I'm older and can see the writing on the wall. We want to perpetuate hunting but because of our own success will see it lose it's zest

. Less opportunity means less participation. We can't have it all. I think you will see some major problems arise in the next 10 years for sure.

 

[teamhoyt]

I Wonder if the same technology creep affects fishing the same way? Maybe that's why it's harder to catch a limit of walleye. To many people with boats, braided line, fish finders and 5:1 gear ratios on the reels. We could go back to pushing the critters off of cliffs and throwing rocks at them. Early settlers wiped out the buffalo and drove the elk and grizzlies to the mountains with old lever actions and open sights. We have way more animals now supposedly than they did 100 years ago. We do because of regulations and seasons, because we know we have to too stay sustainable. If we are taking to many animals with our technology to remain sustainable then we should maybe get rid of our b tags. Just for clarification I do fully agree that technology is no substitute for good woodsman ship and just cause you can doesn't always mean you should.

 

[1_pointer]

FWIW, I just wanted to point out the provincialism of this thread. Many folks, and IMO rightfully so, are concerned about limited opportunity to being able to hunt due to technology. Most of these folks are in the Western US. In other parts of the country things like whitetails and hogs have almost reached biblical scourge numbers. Not much tech is being left and opportunity is being increased.

Though Indiana did not pass the rule allowing all centerfire rifles, we can use a limited type of them. Crossbows are now legal all through archery season where before you needed a Dr.s note. Multiple doe tags can be had per county. The county I grew up in you can now take 8 does, but when I started you couldn't take any. Seasons are longer and we now have a special firearms doe only season in Dec/Jan. Lots more time, equipment, and places to take deer in IN than when I started in the '90s.

Almost like two different worlds.

 

[fowladdict]

Agreed that it is about the number of people hunting. Why have we seen a 25% increase in archery participation since 2005? Some might argue that it is the fact that folks can "pick up two sticks and a string a week before the season and zip an [elk] at 54 yards no problem."

I would like to see the numbers back another 20 years.

What was the population of the elk herd in 2005 v 2014? Has the elk herd population been growing, staying steady or decreasing during this trend of increased archery hunters?

 

[greatwhitebuffalo]

Safety is a bigger part of the equation for me these days when I consider going "primitive". The best example that I can cite is an archery trip about eight years ago.

While I was shooting a compound instead of a longbow or recurve, I'd made the compromise of forgoing the use of sights and a release. When I drew my bow to shoot, the deer temporarily stepped behind some cover and took away the shot. I made the mistake of holding at full draw for several minutes; several minutes too long.

By the time I released the arrow (and I missed) I had lost all feeling in part of one of my fingers from holding the draw too long. I thought it would go away in a couple of hours, but it actually took several days to regain any sensation/feeling and it still hasn't fully recovered. I never got it checked by a doctor, but I'm guessing I've got some type of minor nerve damage. Now it's about 85% recovered and serves as a reminder of when to draw the line with being a purist and what equipment I select.

 

[Oak]

What was the population of the elk herd in 2005 v 2014? Has the elk herd population been growing, staying steady or decreasing during this trend of increased archery hunters?

The herd has pretty much stayed steady. I wasn't very clear in my first post that archery technology likely will not make a great impact on population numbers in CO, but rather on management of hunters and opportunities for hunters. As technology improves and more hunters choose to pick up a bow, our OTC archery hunts become more crowded. In many areas of the state that can lead to elk herds being pushed onto private lands earlier in the season, making them inaccessible for rifle hunters. Since CPW manages elk herds primarily with rifle harvest, it is important to them that those elk are available during the rifle hunt.

The two largest elk herds in the state are the Bear's Ears Herd and the White River Herd. Both populations are over objective. Yet both of these herds have restrictions on OTC archery hunting, with 3 of the 7 units comprising the Bear's Ears Herd being limited quota for archery, and 4 of 12 units comprising the White River Herd being limited. This was done solely to reduce the number of hunters pushing elk to private lands in September. It now takes a NR 2 points to guarantee an archery tag for BE, and 3 points for WR. These are areas that used to be OTC.

As a member of the CO sportsman's roundtable, I can tell you that one of the more common complaints I have heard recently is increased crowding during the archery season. It is just a matter of time before CPW begins to consider another "fix" for this problem. I guess my point is that technology can negatively impact hunter opportunity, even if it's not resulting in a substantially increased harvest. Like I said before, I think that if the stats went back another 20 years you would see a substantial difference in the number of archery hunters between 1985 and today.

 

[fowladdict]

Thanks Oak. I was curious if an increase in elk numbers is leading to more hunters in general. I remember back in the 90's it seemed like CO was all about mule deer and very little was said about the elk populations (what little I paid attention to back then). I guess my point being trends come and go. My guess is if CO left the archery hunts alone we may start seeing a decrease in archery hunters over time, many get fed up with crowds and lack of game (that is seen with minimal efforts) and move on to the next thing.

In many areas of the state that can lead to elk herds being pushed onto private lands earlier in the season, making them inaccessible for rifle hunters. Since CPW manages elk herds primarily with rifle harvest, it is important to them that those elk are available during the rifle hunt.

As a member of the CO sportsman's roundtable, I can tell you that one of the more common complaints I have heard recently is increased crowding during the archery season. It is just a matter of time before CPW begins to consider another "fix" for this problem.

May be apples to oranges, but just a few years ago Idaho "fixed" an issue of too many archery hunters by adding a second archery season. What was once an unlimited over the counter archery hunt (two week season, I think) became a two season affair. First a two week LE hunt and followed by a a two week unlimited hunt. Personally I think it fixed the hunter encounter problem in the field, but the extended archery pressure has affected the rifle hunt.

 

[smalls]

Just wait guys, infrared attachments are an available and somewhat reasonably priced addition to your latest smart phone.

I can't wait for the first time I come across some hoser in the woods scanning for heat signatures.

 

[Nameless Range]

Just wait guys, infrared attachments are an available and somewhat reasonably priced addition to your latest smart phone.

I can't wait for the first time I come across some hoser in the woods scanning for heat signatures.

It's going to get crazy, which is why I absolutely agree with Shoots-Straight when he says this:

I think you will see some major problems arise in the next 10 years for sure.

Just wait. In the next decade or two we will see the arrival of publicly available near live aerial imagery. Imagine some bastard waking up and sipping his morning coffee, flipping open his laptop and finding out where the herd is, or at the very least was yesterday.

Problems are here now, and will only become more available to the public. Just the other week it was announced that Telescopic Contact Lenses have been developed. Sure, we can have binos and spotters now, but imagine having those built into your flippin corneas. The potential issues of techno creep are accelerating.

It will only be a short matter of time until machine olfaction is built into smartphones. Image having technolgy that exceeds the scent-tracking ability of a bloodhound in your pocket.

These may seem far-fetched, but some are here now and the others are on the way. Combine these things with others mentioned, like heat sensing apps in your pocket, smart bullets(imagine smart bullets at 1000+ yards), and a whole host of other things coming down the pike. The time to define hunting and possibly limit technology is now, if it is possible at all.

Of course we will always want a clean kill. But is hunting chiefly about management? Is it about meat? I almost think we need to define it chiefly by it's challenge if it is to survive the coming decades resembling anything it has historically been to mankind. From speed limits, to voting age, to current caliber restrictions, we set arbitrary limits for all sorts of things. We just consider the average of the aggregate and pick something close to our acceptable thresholds and move on. I think we could do that with technology as well.

I hope my kids get to experience the satisfaction that comes from the challenge, uncertainty, and frustration of hunting that I have experienced in my own hunting career. I wonder how it will pan out for them.

 

[The Hedgehog]

I hope my kids get to experience the satisfaction that comes from the challenge, uncertainty, and frustration of hunting that I have experienced in my own hunting career. I wonder how it will pan out for them.

I've been toting about 15 grand worth of glass/rifle etc for about 4 days a week since April, with no success. I think there's a lot of over hype on this thread.

 

[noharleyyet]

I think there's a lot of over hype on this thread.

...guilt minutiae.

 

[Oak]

I think there's a lot of over hype on this thread.

Well, you live in MT, not CO. Funny and true story: Dink likes to say that CPW is anti-hunting. I had a meeting with a couple of CPW biologists 2 weeks ago, and after the meeting we were talking about the state of affairs in CO. One of them said that they had attended a conference the week before, where a MT FWP biologist asked them, "Why does CPW hate hunters?"