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LONG RANGE HUNTING -- Jim Matthews column 02nov05
At what range does it cease to be `hunting'
Outdoor News Service
A few years ago when the first laser-rangefinding riflescope came on the marketplace, I did a national story on the trend of using high technology in the hunting fields. In the piece, I quoted a well-respected and prominent editor of a national hunting, fishing and shooting magazine musing about the ethics of using this kind of equipment when hunting big game.
Always erudite, he simply said that hunters needed to decide if we were "going to hunt the animals, or wage war against them." I loved the quote and put it high in the story.
I'd use his name again, but he ended up in a kettle of hot water when high-tech product advertisers whined about his comments in my widely-read story. I always suspected the story he wrote later that year for the magazine -- with couched and limited praise of these products -- was coerced by bosses who controlled the purse strings and needed to douse fires burning up high-dollar clients. Everyone eventually kissed and made up, and the editor will still speak to me, cordially and off-the-record.
This all came back to me in a flood this past week when a long-time friend and well-respected Southern California hunter called me from his cell phone en route home from Wyoming. He'd spent a bundle of hard-earned money to go on a guided backcountry elk and mule deer hunt, and he'd managed to fill both tags with respectable animals. He wanted to brag, but there was something there that was bothering him. Then he told me that he'd shot his elk with the guide's specially scoped and calibrated rifle at well over 1,000 yards.
The guide is an increasingly well-known gun maker who fits high-powered big game rifles -- usually custom and extremely accurate.300 magnums of one persuasion or another -- with riflescopes that can precisely adjust the point of impact at any range out to a mile or more. The technology allows you to turn a dial to the range, determined with a laser rangefinder (and accurate to a foot or less), and know that the bullet will strike precisely at the aiming point. The guide has been featured on a national hunting television program more than once with clients shooting deer and elk at these astronomical distances.
At one level, my hunting friend thought it was pretty cool that he was able to capitalize on the only opportunity he had to shoot an elk on this trip. He'd spent a pile of time and money to get to Wyoming, and when they finally saw a bull elk waaaaaay over there, he was able to bring home venison instead of just a binocular-generated memory of a bull working through the distant timber.
Not unfamiliar with seeing game at ranges beyond where hunters normally take shots, my friend was even contemplating ordering a rifle-scope combo for his local big game hunting.
"How far is too far?" I asked him. When does all this cease to be hunting and become a mere culling operation, an exercise in technology rather than woodsmanship and field skills?
For a small number of hunters (but still too many), the killing of game is their only purpose for going afield. For most of us who carry rifles and shotguns afield, the reality is that we kill game in order to have hunted, to have participated in the process. By removing a any portion of the hunting, we are removing part of the heart and soul of the activity. We are truncating what is a life-long learning process and an intimate dance with nature. We circumvent the very fabric of our being, the millions of years of hunter-gatherer genes that pulse through our veins. Yet we can rationalize it.
Except for one thing, we are the most inferior predator on Earth. We don't run fast enough to catch anything. Our nose isn't good enough for us to smell our quarry until we stumble over it. We don't see as well as a hawk. We're as blind as clams in the dark. We don't have much in the way of talons or claws or fangs. The one thing we have is intellect. We can reason and build things that level the playing field a little, even though the best human hunters with scoped rifles or shotguns are still less efficient than our furred and feathered predator compadres. But again, intellect and our ability to make jerky, save grain, distill wine allow us to better utilize the things we do manage to kill, plant, or gather.
So we can rationalize that shooting elk at 2,000 yards is just the logical extension of our superior intellect. But in our heart-of-hearts we know its a lie. It's like phone sex. It's far enough from the real thing that it's not that thing any more.
Like sex, hunting is about intimacy. Non-hunters or anti-hunters who have been insulated from the nature and our role there have a hard time getting this. They go outdoors, to nature, to see. They are insulated observers. Hunters go to be. We are part of the natural process and become immersed in its reality like humans have been since our ancestors first walked on Earth.
There is a profound difference between taking wildlife photographs and hunting, just as there is an equally profound difference between being around members of the opposite sex and children, and committing to a relationship and taking a stab at raising a family. Just as owning dogs is not the same as having children.
So how far is too far? That's an argument for hunters around campfires, and it will vary in different situations. Hunters will know. Just like bowhunters don't shoot at 100 yards out of respect for the game. Good archers can be accurate at 100 yards, but they know the chance for error increases. A good rifleman might make a 250 yards shot from a solid rest, but never shoot beyond 50 yards if he has to shoot offhand. A hunter might turn down a 60 yard shot from a road but take a 300-yard shot four canyons in because one shot was earned and another wasn't. Some of us won't shoot pronghorn beyond 100 yards because everyone else does. Elk at 1,000 yards or more is too far, regardless of the circumstances.
I'm not against long-range shooting of big game because I think its unfair to the animal or that the technology that will allow such shots should never be used. I'm against it only if it deprives us of being a hunter. If we spin those dials and project that laser beam into space so we can launch a lethal bullet across canyons and ridges, what have we done? Who have we cheated? We will never know how to stalk across those 1,000-plus yards of terrain. We won't learn why the elk was there at that specific time and try to come back the next day or the next week and be closer when he crosses that same spot again. We lose intimacy.
It's not about gratification. It's about hunting.
At what range does it cease to be `hunting'
Outdoor News Service
A few years ago when the first laser-rangefinding riflescope came on the marketplace, I did a national story on the trend of using high technology in the hunting fields. In the piece, I quoted a well-respected and prominent editor of a national hunting, fishing and shooting magazine musing about the ethics of using this kind of equipment when hunting big game.
Always erudite, he simply said that hunters needed to decide if we were "going to hunt the animals, or wage war against them." I loved the quote and put it high in the story.
I'd use his name again, but he ended up in a kettle of hot water when high-tech product advertisers whined about his comments in my widely-read story. I always suspected the story he wrote later that year for the magazine -- with couched and limited praise of these products -- was coerced by bosses who controlled the purse strings and needed to douse fires burning up high-dollar clients. Everyone eventually kissed and made up, and the editor will still speak to me, cordially and off-the-record.
This all came back to me in a flood this past week when a long-time friend and well-respected Southern California hunter called me from his cell phone en route home from Wyoming. He'd spent a bundle of hard-earned money to go on a guided backcountry elk and mule deer hunt, and he'd managed to fill both tags with respectable animals. He wanted to brag, but there was something there that was bothering him. Then he told me that he'd shot his elk with the guide's specially scoped and calibrated rifle at well over 1,000 yards.
The guide is an increasingly well-known gun maker who fits high-powered big game rifles -- usually custom and extremely accurate.300 magnums of one persuasion or another -- with riflescopes that can precisely adjust the point of impact at any range out to a mile or more. The technology allows you to turn a dial to the range, determined with a laser rangefinder (and accurate to a foot or less), and know that the bullet will strike precisely at the aiming point. The guide has been featured on a national hunting television program more than once with clients shooting deer and elk at these astronomical distances.
At one level, my hunting friend thought it was pretty cool that he was able to capitalize on the only opportunity he had to shoot an elk on this trip. He'd spent a pile of time and money to get to Wyoming, and when they finally saw a bull elk waaaaaay over there, he was able to bring home venison instead of just a binocular-generated memory of a bull working through the distant timber.
Not unfamiliar with seeing game at ranges beyond where hunters normally take shots, my friend was even contemplating ordering a rifle-scope combo for his local big game hunting.
"How far is too far?" I asked him. When does all this cease to be hunting and become a mere culling operation, an exercise in technology rather than woodsmanship and field skills?
For a small number of hunters (but still too many), the killing of game is their only purpose for going afield. For most of us who carry rifles and shotguns afield, the reality is that we kill game in order to have hunted, to have participated in the process. By removing a any portion of the hunting, we are removing part of the heart and soul of the activity. We are truncating what is a life-long learning process and an intimate dance with nature. We circumvent the very fabric of our being, the millions of years of hunter-gatherer genes that pulse through our veins. Yet we can rationalize it.
Except for one thing, we are the most inferior predator on Earth. We don't run fast enough to catch anything. Our nose isn't good enough for us to smell our quarry until we stumble over it. We don't see as well as a hawk. We're as blind as clams in the dark. We don't have much in the way of talons or claws or fangs. The one thing we have is intellect. We can reason and build things that level the playing field a little, even though the best human hunters with scoped rifles or shotguns are still less efficient than our furred and feathered predator compadres. But again, intellect and our ability to make jerky, save grain, distill wine allow us to better utilize the things we do manage to kill, plant, or gather.
So we can rationalize that shooting elk at 2,000 yards is just the logical extension of our superior intellect. But in our heart-of-hearts we know its a lie. It's like phone sex. It's far enough from the real thing that it's not that thing any more.
Like sex, hunting is about intimacy. Non-hunters or anti-hunters who have been insulated from the nature and our role there have a hard time getting this. They go outdoors, to nature, to see. They are insulated observers. Hunters go to be. We are part of the natural process and become immersed in its reality like humans have been since our ancestors first walked on Earth.
There is a profound difference between taking wildlife photographs and hunting, just as there is an equally profound difference between being around members of the opposite sex and children, and committing to a relationship and taking a stab at raising a family. Just as owning dogs is not the same as having children.
So how far is too far? That's an argument for hunters around campfires, and it will vary in different situations. Hunters will know. Just like bowhunters don't shoot at 100 yards out of respect for the game. Good archers can be accurate at 100 yards, but they know the chance for error increases. A good rifleman might make a 250 yards shot from a solid rest, but never shoot beyond 50 yards if he has to shoot offhand. A hunter might turn down a 60 yard shot from a road but take a 300-yard shot four canyons in because one shot was earned and another wasn't. Some of us won't shoot pronghorn beyond 100 yards because everyone else does. Elk at 1,000 yards or more is too far, regardless of the circumstances.
I'm not against long-range shooting of big game because I think its unfair to the animal or that the technology that will allow such shots should never be used. I'm against it only if it deprives us of being a hunter. If we spin those dials and project that laser beam into space so we can launch a lethal bullet across canyons and ridges, what have we done? Who have we cheated? We will never know how to stalk across those 1,000-plus yards of terrain. We won't learn why the elk was there at that specific time and try to come back the next day or the next week and be closer when he crosses that same spot again. We lose intimacy.
It's not about gratification. It's about hunting.
