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9ThreeXFifty7

Thanks for your kind remarks.

One factor I meant to mention was the time factor. I am in the happy situation of being able to wake up in the morning during deer season and deciding whether to get up and go out, or to roll over and catch another forty winks. If I go out and see nothing, I consider it "paying my dues" for the next time, when I stumble into something immediately. Others not so fortunate, have to cram their hunting experience into a certain time frame, and justify their less than what I consider "fair chase" methods by a "now or never" attitude.

Professional hunting guides in this country and elsewhere justify their methods (blinds at waterholes, hunting lion over bait) on the same basis. They have a limited time to produce results and the ends justify the means.

In Germany, as I understand it, hunters in their leased hunting areas have customized bag limits based on an actual census of the animals in the area, which are very specific as to the type of animal which can be taken, even to the size of the antlers. This means that the hunter must be very cautious about identifying what he is shooting at before he shoots. Under those circumstances, the use of "Hochsitze" is virtually unavoidable.

Again, everyone has his own idea of what a real "hunting experience" is, and many of those would not be acceptable to me, but in the long run, if such hunting is sustainable and does not threaten the survival of the hunted animal, it is essentially no business of mine how it is conducted.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from what I consider "fair chase" was the experience of a "hunter" who shall remain nameless, who enjoyed a certain amount of publicity from a local newspaper which published a color spread of his trophy room. On display was a pair of elephant tusks, which upon closer examination turned to be made of fiberglass. Also on display was a full body mount of a polar bear, standing upright in a threatening pose.

It turned out the polar bear had been bagged in East Tennessee, where it had been the property of a private zoo. When the intrepid hunter showed up to claim his "trophy", the owner asked if he would like to have it released from the cage before he shot it, to which the shooter allegedly replied, "No, it might hurt me!" Such is the stuff of legends.

To me, the memory of the hunting experience is the important thing. The photographs and mounted heads on the wall are just mnemonic devices, not ends in themselves. Some obviously disagree.

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