It's about discretion. Minnesota is an open carry state, yet they encourage us to carry concealed. Same with seeing dead critters. Some people are pussies and get scared by it. That's fine, they can go on being useless, sensitive sissies who are ignorant of how the real world works.
I think if I'd grown up exposed to it, it might have been different. I'm a city girl and it was hard for me to see for the first time. So what if I was being a sissy!
Pretty timely as I just made 6 lbs of breakfast sausage out of venison from my last deer (half and halfed it with pork). Ive hunted since I was little. Mostly have hunted deer, pheasant, and ground hogs. When I was too little for a shotgun I just walked along with my family pheasant hunting. I was tasked with wringing the all of the birds necks to make sure they were dead. No pussy tree huggers in my family. Honestly killing animals for sport or food never bothered me. It is hard to explain and it sounds barbaric but, during deer hunting particularly, there is a fucking HUGE adrenaline rush leading up to the moment of truth. It's up there with the lead up to sex, seriously. Your hands shake so bad that it's known as "buck fever" which you got to practice getting under control. It's not from some sadistic urge to kill but the build up of hours of quite patience and luck of having a deer get close to you. The last deer I shot was a two year old buck. The first day I saw it, it came out of the woods right next to me with a doe. Before a I could get a clear shot the doe started running and the buck ran to cut her off, by this time they were out of range. They were playing the old courtship game. The buck was probably laying some serious pipe to that bitch. The next day they came out and he gave me a nice broadside shot no more than 30 yards away. They both bolted, he fell about 40 yards later and she ran and joined up with another group of does. The group stopped short of going into the woods and his little girlfriend started walking back out towards his lifeless body with a "hey why is he laying down like that?" look on her face. It actually struck my heart strings a little. Anyway, at least he got to live free and lay some pipe to a doe, much better than standing in shit piled stockyards your whole life until they blow your brains out with a bolt gun. But I also vowed to only shoot mountable bucks. He was only barely a six pointer. I almost favor the rules some states have about shooting bucks that have a certain diameter or larger antler. All of my guns were passed to me when my dad died. For deer hunting I have a Ruger .44 mag Super Redhawk. I also have a cross bow that Ive never hunted with but want to try out this year. Since my dad wasn't around to maintain the permanent deer stands we built they all fell apart. I got a climber stand and love it (except it is heavy as shit). I'd actually like to know what tips anyone that bow hunts has for a newb.
The guy who owns the property where I hunt, is also the insurance guy for most of the strip clubs in northern Minnesota. We have a metric fuckton of Playboy's and other assorted nudie mags sitting around the shack and stored in waterproof buckets in each of the tree-stands. My dad brings Readers Digest, and a couple of the other guys swap dime-store western novels. Me? I nap; sort of drifting in and out of consciousness as I hear twigs cracking and leaves rustling - most of the time it's only a squirrel.
You could ask the same question about anything. It's called common courtesy. Obviously there are limits to how far you should censor yourself, but let's not pretend like the same thing that's normal in northern Minnesota is going to be fine and dandy everywhere, and dealing with others' fears about hunting is not only part of "not being an asshole" but also probably better for your own interests in the long run. I imagine there are hunters out there who look at the guy with the bloody deer jeans or whatever and go, "That guy's making us look like nutjobs..." That said, the examples you gave sound pretty reasonable to me given the setting. Essentially.
Common courtesy? Okay, let's go a little bit deeper. Let's discuss: the mechanic, construction worker, landscaper, any person that works doing manual labor. Do they take a shower and change their clothes before they go to walmart? How about before they come in my office to buy insurance? Fuck no. They will be covered in dirt, oil, grease, and reak of sweat. I completely respect that. Why? One, there is no fucking dress code when walking into a store. Except for the stores that have no shoes, no shirt, no service. Secondly, they are doing what they have to do. Let's go even further. The 250 pound buffalo wearing spandex and no bra offends me a whole lot fucking more than someone with blood on their clothes. How about those imbeciles have some common courtesy. At least I am providing food for myself and my family. If they don't like it then I guess they shouldn't be living in a hunting area. Last I heard they weren't shooting deer in the middle of New York City.
So it's kind of a sleep with one eye open kind of thing? Hell I'd bring a book too but I'd be afraid I'd miss my chances because I was too engrossed in my diversion. Also, what do you do with game birds to prepare them for dinner? I've seen videos of deer being dressed and it looks pretty straightforward, but birds seem kind of small for that sort of thing.
Don't hold strong opinions about things you don't understand. Hunting is about much more than pulling a trigger and magically recieving meat. Hunting is about knowing the animal, knowing the land, and knowing your tools. There is (well, should be) quite a bit of preperation that goes into a successful hunting trip. In most cases, the animal you're going after is very adept at avoiding you - so most of the challenge is even finding them. Supposing that you know the land and your prey well enough to map out the most-traveled trails, you then find a spot on the trail that is 1) out of sight, and 2) out of the wind so that your unfamiliar/predator scent isn't carried to them downwind. Firearms are quite effective, but that doesn't mean the shooter is. The hunter needs to know the capabilities of his bullet: smaller rounds like .223 will penetrate more, but might be deflected by twigs and branches. A heavier round like .30-06 is much better in undergrowth like that, but it isn't the perfect round either for every situation. The hunter also needs to compensate for distance, wind, and make sure that if the bullet overpenetrates - it won't hit any hunters that are stationed behind the deer. As for the shot itself; have you ever fired a rifle? With the tolerances of modern manufacturing, almost any rifle at any pricepoint will be more accurate out-of-the-box than most casual hunters will be in their entire life. You need to make sure you hit the target in the right spot so that it dies quickly and cleanly. This is for two reasons; one, we don't want to cause any unnecessary harm; and two, chasing the blood trail of a wounded deer through the swamp is a royal pain in the ass. Assuming all of that goes successfully you still need to gut the deer, haul it out, and have the meat butchered. The brother of one of my friends runs Hunt24-7. Vex, you probably shouldn't go there.
As ADD as I am hunting is one of those supremely relaxing things while you wait and soak in nature. I actually really enjoy sitting in the silence starring at fields and trees. Same goes for fishing, which I am a little less involved with. I surf fish at my grandpas beach house and the insane relaxation is only broke for a short while with the excitement of hooking something. Where we went pheasant hunting they gave us a choice. If your bird was too torn up you could get a fresh one if not you could just keep your own. They did the cleaning. Basically they dip the bird in scalding water to loosen the feathers, then used this big wheel machine with 3 inch rubber plugs over it. The plugs would strip the feathers as the wheel turned. Then they'd gut it like you'd gut anything else. My dad usually just went with fresh birds. I do remember having to spit out lead pellets a couple of times. Man I hate living in a state that doesn't allow rifle rounds. We can only use pistol calibers in pistols, no pistol caliber rifles. Even though in Indiana 20 miles away you can. I've never missed with my Super Redhawk, but one got away on a retard shot I should have never made. Another I gut shot when the deer walked forward the second I was pulling the trigger (I had this one filmed by a dad's friend's son who records shows for the hunting channels).
I don't hunt (I wasn't raised on it, not really outdoorsy, never fired a gun, etc.), but instinctively I feel like hunting for meat is more ethical and "natural" than buying it in the store. And now that I think about it, if I were a deer that was going to be killed for meat, I'd much rather die via bullet than being mauled to death by a hungry bear. Do bears eat deer? That doesn't sound right.
If they are weak or sickly. Most of the time they either starve to death do to over population or some schmoe plows into them with their Hyundai Elantra on route 32.
It's obvious that your exposure to hunting is limited to a Disney movie made in the '40's. You live in a man-made world that shelters you from the reality of survival in the wild, yet you call our species destructive. I don't know if that's irony or ignorance. I live in NW Georgia and deer are a nuisance here. When we bought our property we used to be amazed at seeing deer. Now that we've been in our house for a few years, we've discovered that deer are nothing more than overgrown forest rats. We tried to have a garden two years ago but the deer ate everything down to the ground. They also ate every branch they could reach on our apple trees, and my wife's roses right next to the house. Don't tell me about destructive species. Deer will destroy anything they come across without regard for even their own food supply. They could have more apples than they could eat if they'd let the apple trees grow. Last year our limit was 10 per hunter. My wife and I both got tags so we could kill as many as possible. I've lost count of how many we've killed but they all have something in common - every one was shot from one of our three porches. We don't have to sit in the woods and wait. We just see them outside while we're watching TV and go shoot them. I use either an SKS or a Remington 870 12 gauge. We actually prefer beef so we end up giving most of them away. Right now we're dealing with flying squirrels that have made a nest behind the brick at one of our porch eaves. There's a little gap that the brick masons left and it's enough for them to crawl into. We can't get down to them, so we have to wait for them to come out at night. A .22 with snake shot is perfect for those little fuckers. My wife has killed two of them and I've gotten one. I'm hoping to get one as it glides down from the wall to the tree. I almost had one the other night, but the snake shot doesn't always cycle the action, so I missed him because I still had an empty shell in the chamber. I hunt only for necessity but I understand why people hunt for sport. I feel sorry for people like Vex who don't understand how we got here and want to condemn others for following the evolutionary urges that have created his make-believe world for him.
I don't want to sound facile or snotty when asking this quesiton, but isn't walking through a public place covered in the blood of a dead animal a biohazard? I mean, surely deer or boar or whatever can have blood borne diseases. Jesus, there are rules you have to have shoes on, but not one to prevent tracking in the bodily fluid of dead animals? If you want to hunt, go ahead, but keep the crusty deer blood away from my food.
Blood and guts might be the equivalent of motor oil to you, but to the vast majority of other people it's not. That's the entire point of the conversation we've having. It's got nothing to do with rules and dress codes and whatever.
Those Davey Crockett movies put out by Disney in the 1950's did a pretty good job of highlighting how much dicking around in the woods was actually required before anything exciting happens.
Geese can be upwards of 18-20 lbs. For them, I usually just cut the belly and filet out the breasts. You can generally get about 4-5 lbs of meat from two breasts. Pheasants and ducks are smaller, and I usually just cut the belly and peel all of the skin off and gut the birt. Cut off the neck, legs, and wings and you have a bird just slightly smaller than your average roaster chicken, minus the fatty skin.
Id have to say that the white washing our society has done on the subject is more to blame between the perception of motor oil and deer blood. I'd venture to guess the chances of you catching some illness because of a very rare encounter with someone with deer gore on them is very small compared to even getting sick from people in public that don't wash their hands. Im not advocating hunters trapes around with entrails around their necks but when I have had deer blood on me it was checking the deer at a local connivence store after spending hours hunt, killing, tracking, field dressing, and hauling the animal. It's fucking tiring and other peoples misgivings on something that has been white washed for them by society is the last fucking thing on my mind.
Other than a dozen squirrels and a chickadee taken out with an antique marlin .22 when I was 15 I've never hunted anything of note. My mom asked me once if I was shooting squirrels and when I asked her why she said that she found a .22 shell on the deck and noticed a lack of squirrels attacking her bird feeder. When I answered in the affirmative, she said that she supported the slaughter but not to tell my father. I like shooting handguns and in my state its only legal to hunt with a shotgun so its paper targets & milk jugs for me. I think you can only have 2 or 3 rounds in your shotgun and need to use a plug. I've never looked into it because I would have no idea of what to do with a deer if I ever was to kill one. I live in one of the most anti gun states so there isn't a huge local hunting scene. Striper fishing here does rock and they are damn tasty.
You know, I have found a veggie option at every restaurant I have ever been to. Since I am the one who is different, I am not gonna force everyone to go to Tina's Tofu house for dinner. You know what else works, you say to your waiter, "I am a vegetarian, what do recommend?" I also have no problems with people who hunt. Most hunters eat what they kill and I would rather have that then factory farms. Plus most people I have met who hunt actually respect animals.
I am surprised that only a few people have mentioned bow-hunting. I have been hunting with a stick-n-string since age 14, usually just compound bows but I have a couple of re-curve bows that are fun to use as well. I have rifles and shotguns, but nothing compares to bow-hunting in my opinion. Also I have went to Wally World, the bar, just about anywhere with deer blood on my clothes during deer season. I am from Michigan and we used to show up to the bar with a fresh deer in the bed of the truck and cook it up right there. Deer heart is fantastic also for anyone who hasn't had it Dice it up and put it over a bed of lightly cut onions on a sheet of tinfoil, then lay a stick of butter on top. Add salt/pepper/paprika and take another sheet of foil and seal everything up good. Throw it on the grill and wait for the goodness that is deer heart. You can brine it in saltwater overnight before the cook if you like, some say it helps with the "gamey" flavor people say venison has.