Thread: Summer hunting .....a question of ethics??

i share a patch of bush with a fellow member who was kind enough to share this area with only me. i feel very grateful for his sharing of the area. i am a meat hunter and he is a trophy hunter at least in this area anyway. i will not shoot a stag if it is showing a good head or promise of one. i will leave that for my mate (hopefully) Hinds well if i spot a hind and its young enough or deemed not to have a Fawn at foot it would be very hard to look past an opportunity to put meat in the freezer. if i spot a hind with a yearling i will take the yearling first if the hind sticks around long enough i will take her to. the last 1/3 of this video deals with herd management which think has merit. summer time i would honestly target yearlings TV Wild :: it is hard for some people when presented with a clear shot of a deer not to take it when they have spent 10 hours stalking the bush and only see a lactating Hind that takes alot of control not to shoot that animal when there's no meat in the freezer. the debate has been great. what are peoples thought on the video is it possible to manage a nz wild herd this way and have the best of both worlds excellent trophies while still putting meat in the freezer.

Me ,well I normally watch the animal for a little while before pulling the trigger. I normally wait for the perfect bullet placement opportunity, this time waiting confirms target species and not another hunter, also a better animal may pop out and join the first, or a fawn might turn up. In that case if there is a sucking fawn at foot I don't shoot. My 2cents worth.

I do wonder if some of the difference in opinions here is as simple as two things...
1. Experience level. Particularly guys who gave been employed shooters exposed to high animal populations
2. South Island open country hunters. I haven't checked people's profiles to see which part of the country you come from, but for GappedAxe to say he 'watches animals for a while' to make an assessment first, as though he gets this time to watch often, suggests to me he might be a South Island open country hunter.
Hunting Reds but mainly Sika in the North, I mainly see them in thick bush or on tracks & there certainly isn't much time to assess the situation beyond whether it's a deer or not. However, when I did once see a Sika stag on a clay pan in summer and a hind further down on a slip face, my automatic decision was to go for the stag and had no interest in the hind. But it was never because she might have a cute little baby fawn tucked off in the bush somewhere.
I'm pretty sure I cried when Bambi's mum got shot... But I got over it by the time I turned 5

Originally Posted by Hunt4life

I do wonder if some of the difference in opinions here is as simple as two things...
1. Experience level. Particularly guys who gave been employed shooters exposed to high animal populations
2. South Island open country hunters. I haven't checked people's profiles to see which part of the country you come from, but for GappedAxe to say he 'watches animals for a while' to make an assessment first, as though he gets this time to watch often, suggests to me he might be a South Island open country hunter.
Hunting Reds but mainly Sika in the North, I mainly see them in thick bush or on tracks & there certainly isn't much time to assess the situation beyond whether it's a deer or not. However, when I did once see a Sika stag on a clay pan in summer and a hind further down on a slip face, my automatic decision was to go for the stag and had no interest in the hind. But it was never because she might have a cute little baby fawn tucked off in the bush somewhere.
I'm pretty sure I cried when Bambi's mum got shot... But I got over it by the time I turned 5

While Iv made a dollar selling venison and hunted some SI open country it has no bearing on the standards I try and maintain. As a young kid starting out it was set by my parents but was also I think part of me from an early age. I hunt and kill things but I don't like see animals suffer needlessly. Simply put if I was going to kill something then it was my responsibility to do it as quickly as painlessly as possible which meant hinds where off the list at this time of year.. period. Everything I shot had to come home as the local game freezer was run by my Dad so it got the once over and I guess reinforced things. Standards are just that as I see it and I wont adjust them as freezer levels lower,animal numbers drop or the distance Iv covered increases and there's no hypocrisy here on my part (at least on this topic) , Iv never shot hinds this time of the year.
.Some guys I know park up the rifle over summer altogether and go fishing as the hinds have fawns and the stags are in velvet , all a no go for them.
I guess you will either care about it or you wont but I don't think it hurts that that people are at least aware of what they are doing.
My grandad told me way back that Id never regret not taking a shot, Im pretty sure he was right.

Hunt4life, Gapped axe lives at Tarawera and hunts locally.

Most of my 'standards' are the same Sneeze and I think your stance on hinds in summer is admirable. Just not one, at this stage of my life nor hunting career, which I subscribe to. Cheers for the discussion