Ripp, I have essentially no problem with any method used to harvest game. In my view the maintenance of healthy populations of game is the ultimate goal of harvesting. Harvesting game is the taking of a crop in the same way that we ranch our cattle and sheep and don't kill eliminate too many. It is in essence "farming" of a sort, nothing more though obviously there is highly sophisticated culture surrounding hunting most everywhere it is pursued.

Some around here consider the hunting of deer with hounds "immoral" or shooting deer over bait "immoral". Both of those things are illegal here and a cultural stigma has grown around such activity.

I do not consider any such activity "immoral", only illegal. I have no problem with Alabama deer hunters shooting hound hunted deer or Michigan deer hunters shooting deer over a pile of apples.

But I am very uncomfortable with a blanket statement being made that any disagreement with any hunting method is a form of treason of sorts. Does anybody here accept "lion hunting" that takes place in 40 acre enclosures? Would rejection of that method constitute prostration before the antihunters?

No, I do think that we need to support each other, but I also think we need to police each other. Intelligent, reasoned dialogue is the right kind of policing.

I too have thought the same exact thing as NITROX puts forth. My personal opinion is that his question should not be treated as rhetoric but as a legitimate question, and answered as such. I have no problem with bow hunters being backed up with a rifle, but why aren't bow hunters backed up with a bow? The reason is obvious and the fact that it is obvious is just one of those things that might support the antihunters in the minds of many non-hunters IMO.