.....And stay off his lawn, dadnabbit.

He could kill that deer at his feeder...just not during hunting season

Valid points well argued on both sides. Like PrimitiveHunter, I have been hunting since the 1960's and have serious concerns about our dependence on technology and feeders to replace skills. That being said, I still know a lot of very good hunters who employ a vast array of skills in pursuit of their quarry, including technology.

I grew up hunting on the family farm, then progressed to leases where everyone knew and trusted each other literally with our lives. We hunted specific areas and respected others nearby.

What is being overlooked is the corporate nature of leases today. Companies pay astronomical sums for leases as business write-off to entertain clients. All too often these clients who are not hunters but individual looking to be entertained ruin prospects for the rest of us. Feeders accomplish this. I can not hold the landholder to blame, he is looking at the hunters as a business and hopes to maximize his profit. Game is a crop to be harvested today and I fear we are losing the beauty of the hunt.

one week eariler......

I once heard a guy next to me at the archery counter Bass Pro say "hunting with a gun is like, cheating."
As I looked at his $1000 bow with pulleys the size of hub caps, holographic sites, and more gizmos than a Transformer, I said "man you need a stick with a rock tied to the end of it."
He laughed and we had a great conversation about what PH posted here.
Every generation takes advantage of the technology that is at hand, I just wander some day will we say "back in my day we used to have to sit in a blind for 30 minutes or more and wait for the deer to show up, and all we had was an Iphone for company"?

I don't like Hunting anymore now...selling everything

Yes they are.....getting a cold beer as I type to sip on while reading the rest of this thread!

Even when I was still doing Lease's with 6-12 guys during my most productive hunting years I had the opportunity with my flexible schedules to hunt during the week most of the time. With 2 boys in 2-4 sports each and as many as 4 teams fror the young one in his teen aged year in big time Youth Soccer getting ready to play college ball, Youth Sports took up lots of weekends during Hunting Season too.

Thank GOD there were no Cell phones back then or my boss's would have driven me nutz...but then they all drove me more nutz than I already was anyway wanting to micro manage everything. Finally went into some Self Employed things I could do on my own and set my own schedules and did that for a long time.

I don't mind hunting out of well placed ground box blinds or semi elevated "shooting House's" or tower stands - but I love noisy old windmill platforms as long as they are stable, but just really hate to stare at a fenced in feeder all day, and been very successful if I can place a ground box or a semi enclosed shooting house on 4-6' tall legs with a sight line just above the brush tops where I can overlook a travel route that leads to feeders or a food plot.

But what I really have always enjoyed most was Still Hunting slow and easy, thru a wash or creek bottom, down thru a hillside thicket or a broken series of mottes working the wind, sit & glass for a while watching a game trail couple hundred yards away, or looking for sign. Never killed Mr Big that way, that usually came from hunting just below ridge lines or some kind of elevation break & looking downhill at 1st early light or end of day & mid day skylighted cross overs away from the other doe young buck herds except when Mr Big was running his harem ragged.

Made plenty of running shots over the years when I pushed deer out of a Oak or mesquite motte or fence line thicket out to around 100-150+ yards ...it's just like shooting quail thru a scope ...pull the crosshairs thru the critter and feather the trigger....easier to do when they are stretched out with long even strides and not bouncing along, or what the Mule Deer guys call "stotting" all stiff legged & alert...prolly comes from hunting rabbits with a scoped rifle. THAT was the good old days for me.
Ron

I thought I liked hunting "old school" until I moved to Nebraska.....I am crying for my box blind and heater!

Very well said!

Your refridgerator in the stand break and all your beer go bad

How else am I going to ban someone

You shouldn't need a fridge in the deer stand....at least not around here!

Deal, but I have some tall CRP and I refuse to give you a piggy back ride, you can borrow my compass.

You forget, I carry my iPhone to the stand, so I am good

iPhone and their apps I swear.

There is an app for that

It is a Happy Commentary on What Deer Hunting Has Become 50 years later. We still have the freedom to hunt and there are more trophy bucks due to a better understanding of deer management. Also you have numerous states to hunt anyway you want.

I've made it a point to collect books about hunting that were written back in the 70's and before because of the knowledge and skills their authors have covered in them. In one such book, the writer describes how air thermals are created on even the calmest of mornings and evenings. For example, in the evening a pasture or cutover cools faster than wooded areas that border it. As a result, air currents will be drawn from the pasture as the warmer air in the wooded area continues to rise. And in the morning, the opposite is true as open areas warm faster than the bordering wooded areas. Knowing the direction of these natural thermals can make the difference in getting a shot or getting busted by a mature and wary buck. You might be hard pressed to find such tips in today's world of feeders and box stands.

I consider the knowledge in these books to be as valuable to future my grand kids as my firearms.

You get out of hunting what you put into it....

sometimes when I wake up from my nap and look out the window of the blind there's a big ole buck standing there!

Yes sir. I completely agree. I am only 25, but I can count the number of times I have sat at a feeder on both hands. I have friends who have leases and can not figure out a good place to put a feeder without and blind for the life of them.
The lease I grew up on had a map on the front fat and you would put a thumb tac where you were sitting to avoid other hunters. No stands, no feeders, just know how and common sense.
Deer hunting has become pretty complicated even in the short time I have been alive.

I like stalking, hunting from box blinds, throw blinds, open tripods, and tree stands. I like hunting on public land, my lease, my friend's place, and high fence ranches. I like hunting pigs, deer, dove, predators, and exotics. I like eating everything I kill (ok, maybe not the predators although we did grill up bobcat backstraps once). I like working and being outside and I particularly like drinking beer while I'm working outside. I like hiking out to where I'm hunting. I like riding a 4 wheeler back after I've shot something. I like shooting all sorts of guns. I love taking my family hunting and teaching them what I've learned from others. I love talking with other hunters about hunting. I work very hard to pay for all of this.

I don't like people who criticize everything about hunting except what they do.

I feel the same way. I only wish more hunters would mix in some time hunting away from their food plots and feeders so they will retain and sharpen the skills and knowledge that are being lost by so many others these days.

You might be surprised at what you see that's been otherwise staying out of sight.

It reminds me of the time many years ago when I was hunting the late season in Mississippi. I decided to throw up a ladder stand in an area that was between a food plot and two box stands, all of which had been in place for years. It couldn't have been more than an hour before a nice eight-point snapped a twig to my far right. It gave me just enough of a jump on him to get turned in my stand for the approaching shot. And even though he came straight from the direction of the food plot, my wife's uncle reported never seeing him that evening. In fact, it was the first time he had EVER seen the buck. Photo below.