I thought the Nazi's used full metal jackets & "potatoe mashers". Just wait
until I see my Uncles. I guess they had no idea what they were up against!
And I did not know that the type of bullets indicated our political leanings. Since I use premium bullets in the situations that I feel I should & yet I am
slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun, I don't know where this puts me! :shock:
This idea that using better equipment is a substitute for hunting skills is
absurb. It could seem that way when observing a rich slob hunter at a
local range but not really because you see the same thing when Joe Average tries to get his 30-30 or 742 to hit a pie plate at 25 yards & says
that is good enough & I have seen that far more. This attitude knows no economic class or type of equipment. No, among serious shooters & I
suspect most who view this thread, when they use custom rifles or premium bullets or high quality scopes, it is because they take their sport
& the animals that they persue seriously, I know I do.
When I was a kid, me & my brothers would buy old Mil. Surplus rifles &
cheap ammo because we had to. Were we better hunters because we had to pass up longer shots. Of course not. Later on when we could afford a
rifle for Varmits, we shot alot of Deer with .223's & fortunately did not lose any although a couple were a little hard to find because of no blood. We used mainly 55 Gr. Corelokts & now for Deer use bigger guns. Does that mean our hunting skills have dropped. No, it means that we observed what could happen if the Deer were angled more than we thought or if we hit even a small limb we knew what would happen, in other words experience taught us to move on before a problem instead of complaining after a problem. Some of my rifles now are precision tools, maybe more than needed, but I remember what it was like when I could not own such weapons.
Now, on our Old Home Place I have a couple of stands that I use for Rifle Season that I can see several trails, from Bow Range to Long Range. Does the fact that I can cover more trails & hence increase my odds make me an inferior hunter to a guy who could sit in the same stand and
be able to cover fewer trails because his rifle was not up to the job? How
bizarre is that ?
Redhawk, like you I try to whack 1 or 2 Deer per year with my Bow in
addition to my muzzleloader, handgun & rifle kills. In my College days
I used a Indian 60# Recurve. I now use a Matthews Solo Cam but I
did not get sloppy because I have a better Bow. And like you, I don't get this thinking. I use bow hunting tactics in scent control, camo, inc. other than the Orange even when I rifle hunt.
I have made a decision to use the best equipment I can & at the same time be the best hunter that I can. They are in no way mutually exclusive!