New tech can create rifts in hunting circles

Technology in hunting can create disagreements. Those in favor or against will use every hyperbole, red herring, facts taken out of context, and even some misrepresentations to convince us why they are right. It’s rarely as simple as the arguments. Who is right and who is wrong depends a lot on what side has the most money to spend.

I’m old enough to remember when the majority of deer hunters hunted with open sights. It was rare to run into a hunter with a scope. I can remember one particularly cold day when some warmth was sought at an establishment that served hamburgers or hotdogs to warm up a bit. I recall a conversation started by someone about why scopes were “cheating.”

They always used that word. They didn’t want to discuss it upon its merits. For whatever reason they didn’t like scopes, so using one was cheating. Today it’s rare to encounter a hunter using open sites. We all know why, we all know the benefits, we all understand the increased accuracy and thus efficacy. It also makes it more likely that if you see the buck of your dreams farther away than 50 yards that you will hit it. The last couple of decades, trail cameras have become quite popular. They provide many benefits and a lot of enjoyment to hunters and nonhunters alike. People like to look at pictures of wildlife and see what animals are moving through their land, past their stands, or even in their yard. Yet two states have outright banned trail cameras for hunting and five others have partial bans on the use of trail cameras. I don’t have a problem with trail cameras at all. If the camera helps them know that deer frequent an area or not and helps them hunt more productively, great. They are just cameras and pictures. I don’t see a problem. Some people obviously do and I’m sure some people use them to create problems. Why not just deal with those that create problems?

Cameras have greatly improved bear hunting in Wisconsin. Both for the hound hunters and bait sitters; they tell both what size and sex of bears are frequenting their baits and when. No sense sitting a bait site or starting a track that only a sow with cubs has visited.

GPS tracking systems also greatly changed the hound hunting world. Just about every hound hunter that takes to the woods for the start of the bear dog training season this weekend will use one. They can keep better track of their dogs and follow the track easier.

Those trackers did the same for bird hunters. Yet when they came out, there were bird hunters that considered them cheating. Until someone lost a dog and didn’t get it back. I’d rather not go back to the days of just using bells and beeper collars.

We have a debate about crossbows simmering in Wisconsin right now. There are those that want the use of crossbows constrained. They have their arguments and they use a lot of all the techniques I mentioned above to make them. The largest scoring whitetail buck ever shot in the U.S. was killed last fall with a crossbow by a hunter in Indiana.

Indiana game wardens received oodles of complaints on just about everything imaginable on this harvest. All unsubstantiated and all false, it was a legal harvest with a legal weapon. Those that complained didn’t like the fact that someone else harvested that deer and they didn’t. Since they can’t say that, they make up complaints instead.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that crossbows are ruining gun deer season. Change in lifestyles, aging hunters, poorer weather conditions during the gun season, personal schedules, change in hunting style preferences, and frankly less deer to see in many of the traditional areas of the state are some of the reasons there has been a slight decline in gun deer season participation.

A longer archery season, better weather, and reduced hunting pressure are some of the reason crossbows are drawing hunters away from gun deer hunting and to archery. It fits into their lifestyle better.

Hunting has changed a lot since I started hunting and will continue to change. 40 years from now some young hunter who will hunt for the first time that year may be looking back and saying how odd it was that anyone opposed crossbows, cameras, and whatever else comes on the market.

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CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN