VR
The weather has been nice and I have spent 7 days in the woods hunting. That experience has mellowed my type A, combative personality. You ought to try it, it would be good for you.
I guess I will play along for awhile.
I was an ex high school and college jock and probably define sport different than everyone else on here or the dictionary. Where do I place hunting as a sport? It is not as physical as footbal, rugby or basketball that is for sure. I would place it just below baseball barely, on par with golf and above billiards and all the x game sports.
I am a big, ugly that will not make a concession to age or arthritis. I challenge you or any other poster to pull my vintage 1994 80 pound bow back to full draw. You will notice that at half draw the 60% let off kicks in and you are only holding 32 pounds. I held that for 10 minutes Friday night as I tried to get a clean target on the wandering does. It seemed like an hour, not from the weight of the draw but the anticipation of getting a good shot. To be consistent with that bow requires hundreds of practice shots a week at small targets at progressively longer distances.
I met a guy at a state convention that spent 7 days hiking miles up and down a Colorado mountain in pursuit of a trophy bull elk. He saw lots of spikes and cows but no trophy. He lost 12 pounds that week. My brother crawls for miles on the ground to get close enough to a antelope to get a good shot. There are the crazies that scale mountains in pursuit of mountain goats and big horn rams. So there is the physical part.
You have a vision of the Ohio cornfield hunter. That is not always the case. The work does not start until after the trigger is pulled. I have one buddy that gets a nice buck every year. Without fail that deer will run to the bottom of a ravine into the thickest stuff before it dies. Dragging a 250 pound plus deer half a mile to the truck and lifting it to the truck is more difficult than the 30 minute stairmaster workout I did today.
You of course would say that none of this is sport defined purely on your qualifications. I say sport is a combination of the physical, mental and emotional. I remember my first deer kill much more vividly than all my undefeated seasons, all star games, championships and all state honors. I have to have the physical capability to use my bow effectively, the mentally ability to know where they will be and when to take the right shot and the emotional ability to let them walk if it is not right and still enjoy the experience.
Hunting is actually becoming more of a science to me. We work with a wildlife biologist. We add tons of lime and fertilizer to the soil and plant foods that are high in protein for the deer on our camp. We know the moon phase, barometric pressure, temperature and rainfall even week. We use infrared cameras to document how many deer, how many are does, how many have fawns, the bucks of course and when they are moving.
And yes the deer here become almost nocturnal once they sense all the vehicle movement and human presence. They are wary by nature and have smelling and hearing capability that puts them at an advantage to us.
I am sure this won't convince you.
I would like to just address two other points you make. While the day of the bubba with the single shot shotgun showing up in a cornfiled is still here it is fading fast. Hunting costs are skyrocketing and the opportunities are dwindling. I know this will be hard for you to belive but hunting is becoming the domain of the financial affluent. It is decreasing in numbers all around but big game hunting, trophy hunting, is on the rise.
Good Hunting
