From: robinson@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: A veiw on hunting
Date: 9 Apr 92 12:52:20 GMT
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <7_1tk+f@rpi.edu>, schwae@marcus.its.rpi.edu (Eric A. Schwartz) writes:
[...much stuff removed...]

> Point 1:  I was oversimplifying.  I do not believe hunters simply pick
> a tree to sit in and take potshots at the numerous deer all around them.

While I would not say most of us ever 'take potshots' I would say that we 
do often pick a tree and sit in it.  The trick is in the picking of the 
tree.  In order to pick a tree that will yield a shot at a deer, one must 
know much about the animals habits.

> Point 2:  Someone in the "hunting community" had said that the only way
> to groundhunt deer was to stalk and hope other hunters scare one your
> way.  Still oversimplified, but I was paraphrasing a hunter when I said
> that.

Well, it isn't the *only* way.  I have heard stories of people to whom this 
has happened to.  Because the deer's sense of hearing and sense of smell 
are *so* good it is often quite difficult to sneak up on them by stalking.  
So difficult that most people aren't up to it.  I was able to get within 
about 15-20 feet of a pair of them once, but they were rather, uhm, 
pre-occupied. :-)

> Point 3:  I have read quite a few hunting/fishing magazines.  They 
> contained quite a lot of useful information.  The problem was in the
> quality of the information, not the lack of it.  Much of common hunting
> lore is simply myth.  Like most myths, it has some grounding in reality,
> but many "facts" are distorted or made up.  

I think you over state the case here.  Much hunting lore is remains 
unverified by scientific means.  Very little of it is actual myth.  Mind 
you, it depends on whose lore you read.  

> 
> Much of current biological knowledge is based on former hunting lore.  I'm
> not saying it is crap.  Much of it is totally correct, and has been 
> objectively demonstrated.  Much of it is simply unproven either way, and
> is correct in reality.  My problem with the knowledge of the "hunting
> community" is twofold.  For one thing, there is that last part, the part
> that is crap.  False assumptions that don't hurt hunting success, 
> techniques that work, but by chance and not becase the underlying
> theory is correct, baldface lies formulated to placate AR, or earlier

Hmmm.  Can you point to any 'baldface lies....' here?  I haven't seen any 
efforts to placate AR groups.

> Humane groups, old lies that are now accepted as fact; these all
> are also present in the vast body of knowledge the "hunting community"
> possesses.  The second part of my problem is that no organized effort
> is put out by the "hunting community" to verify what is and is not true.
> As long as something isn't blatantly false to the extent that going on
> the truth of that information doesn't result in no hunting success, it
> is assumed correct.  It "fits my experience."  A hundred and one other
> reasons could exist for why some bit of hunting "truth" works in practice.

While I've not actually attended one, I think that the NRA Whitetail 
hunting conventions (can't remember their exact name) are a good step in 
this direction.

> 
> I use my favorite example for this.  Some hunters have said deer stare
> at them.  This is patently false, but probably not a lie.  It is easy
> for anyone who has ever seen a deer to mistake their gaze for a stare.
> They have big, alert eyes, and humans are naturally (?) willing to 
> assume someone is staring at them.  The fact is that deer cannot
> stare at people.  Their eyes are on the side of the head, designed for
> range of visual field, and not clarity of front field view.  They have
> no cone cells, and therefore, neither color nor detail vision.  They   
> see motion, and contrasts of light and dark.  So they wouldn't see what
> they were staring "at", even if it were the hunter.  They are simply 
> scanning a field for potential threats, and the hunter assumes that to be
> a directed stare.  Hunting lore holds that if a deer stares at you, you
> stand still so it doesn't consider you a threat.  This works, though the
> basis in "fact" is false.  By not moving, the deer never sees you at all.
> It never knows you aren't just a fallen branch or rusling leaf.  A
> technique doesn't have to be correct to work.  Does anyone here have
> any first hand experience that a casual technique does not work?   The
> problem with hunting lore and "first hand experience" is that without
> a broad base of knowledge and a sense of skepticism, it is nearly
> impossible to pick the good stuff and the crap apart. 

This may be true.  However, I've been reading hunting literature for over a 
decade now and I have seen the debate ebb and flow as to what deer really 
do and do not see.  I'm still not convinced we've heard the last of this 
debate either way, but I don't wish to debate it here.  Suffice it to say 
as a hunter that when deer look in my direction I move very slowly and 
deliberately, if I move at all.

..

> How does hunting deer give you knowledge of "wildlife behavior in 
> general?

You'd be surprised.  All that time spent in the woods hunting deer is an 
ideal opportunity to observe other forms of wildlife first hand.  One can 
see everything from woodpeckers to bears, depending on where one is 
hunting.  You can often learn a great deal just by sitting quietly and 
whatching them.

..

> Off the top of my head, I know 7 hunters.  Now that I think about it,
> make that 15.  Probably more I'm not thinking of at the moment.  My
> view of the _hunter_ is not limited.  My view of what hunting knowledge
> has to teach is not limited either.  A lot of it is useful, factual
> info.  What is clearly limited is the sense of proof surrounding the
> vast majority of hunting lore.  Too much is based on unproven assumptions.
> Simply because something isn't proven wrong doesn't make it correct.

Your are correct in saying that we have a more relaxed standard of proof 
than the scientific community.  That is completely consonant with our 
purpose.  We as hunters are interested in information that helps our hunt 
be more successful.  Now, that might take the form of uproven anecdotal 
evidence, but what often happens is that one person reports a particular 
behavior and then others observe it and report their findings.  Information 
tends to be more useful when it is in the form of first hand observations 
of the deer themselves.  The interpretation of the behavior is less 
important to us in some cases than noticing that the behavior seems to be 
consistent under certain circumstances.

As an example of the above, 10-15 years ago very few hunters would have 
ever considered rattling antlers to get a deer's attention.  After all, 
conventional wisdom of the time said that if you wanted to see deer you had 
to be QUIET.  Rattling antlers is anything but.  When this was initially 
written up in various magazines, many people were skeptical but tried it 
anyway and discovered that very often it *did* attract deer.  We speculate 
that this is because it imitates the sounds of two bucks fighting it out 
for dominance during the mating season, but to the best of my knowledge 
that speculation has not been *proven* to be true.  It doesn't need to be 
proven to be useful to us.  Now, rattling is a widely accepted hunting 
technique, and now that it is more widely accepted, many are discovering 
that it doesn't *always* work.  Still it is useful information.

..

Mike Linan (I think) writes:

>>	I am still willing to bet that the vast majority of hunters are 
>>	better informed and have more FIRST HAND experience with wildlife
>>	than most of the city dwelling AR types who probably get most of   
>>	their information to form their views from AR propaganda.
>>
> Better informed by what measure?  Number of facts?  Number of correct
> facts?  Proportion of correct facts?  Anyway, the issue is not what
> AR city slickers know, it is what hunters know.  Who's the one obscuring
> the debate with smokescreens?  

Better informed by a proportion of correct facts I suspect.  Not 
scientifically proven facts but correct facts.  This is a direct 
consequence IMHO of one's own first hand experiences and a reading of the 
first hand experiences of others.  I don't think anyone is trying to argue 
that all hunters have a better understanding of deer than anyone else 
(thoguh perhaps one could make a case for that) but rather that we as a 
whole have a better understanding of our quarry, because that understanding 
is important to successfully bagging it, than our AR opponents do.

> 
> First hand experience without critical, SKEPTICAL evaluation is useless
> except as a descriptive account.

Very true.  Many of us are very critical and very skeptical.

..

> No, but how do you verify when they have and have not detected you?  
> How do you judge what parts of their behavior are due to your presence,
> and how much is due to normal behavior?  How much does their behavior
> change when hunted, and how can you judge that if you don't observe
> without hunting?  How do you know what you observe as changes during
> "hunting season" aren't due to the season of the year as opposed to the
> hunting?  

Well, when they wander around your tree stand without a care in the world 
and then suddenly stop, stiffen, stamp the ground it is easy to see that 
they are disturbed.  Does that mean they've necessarily detected *you*?  
No, but it is often the most reasonable explanation under the 
circumstances.

Some changes are due to the season of the year.  We certainly haven't 
figured out all of them but some among us have observed deer in habitats 
and refuges during hunting season and so we have a pretty good idea of 
which changes are due to the season of the year and which are due to 
hunting.  Another good yardstick to use is pre and post season scouting.  
Many more hunters do the former, but some do the latter as well.  It is 
interesting to note that shortly after the end of the season deer often go 
back to using trails that they used prior to the season, but abandonded during
the season.  Now it could still be a season of the year thing in this case, 
but observations of deer in other areas which are free of hunting would tend 
to belie that.

..

-- 
John Robinson                  Only criminals, tyrants, and cowards have
robinson@ac.dal.ca                 reason to fear the armed, honest citizen.
DOD #0069