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

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.