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Thread: hunter / hiker

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tuckahoe View Post
    And you are not actually correct either.

    To use Virginia's Department of Game and Inland Fisheries as a specific exampke, the VaDGIF is a special funded agency with a current budget of about $60 million and receives no general funds from tax revenue, except the sales tax on boats. The entirety of the budget comes from non-general funds, with about $25 million (or 42%) coming from licensing and $15 million (or 25%) from federal funds and grants such as Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson.

    Keep in mind that Pittmen-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson are excize taxes that are paid on all firearms, ammunition and fishing tackle to support game and fisheries management through grants to state game agencies (tell me do backpackers pay their own excize tax for their flavor of the week cottage gear to ksupport the AT?). And while the Federal government does not receive a part of state licensing fees, it most certainly does in fact collect its own fees, such as the federal migratory bird stamps, which is used to support the Federal Wildlife Refuge System.

    You are correct that hunters do not fund "public lands" as a whole -- but their activities are what exactly fund those state lands managed as wildlife management areas or state game lands. Management areas -- that the AT infact passes through in PA for example -- supported and paid for by those game licence, but yet again, not supported by any sort of excize tax on that backpacking gear.

    And coming back to Virginia, 72% of the agency's budget goes to actual widlife management and only 14% to administration and support services.
    thank you, I couldn't remember the names of the funds and was glad to see your post. my home hiking grounds depend in large on these funds.

  2. #22

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    You say "hunters are hikers" but that's about all they are. In the Southeast mountains of NC and TN where I backpack, it is a rare event to see a backpacking hunter---in fact after thousands of nights out in the woods I've only seen one hunter with a backpack and a rifle strapped on the back so he could sleep out every night. So really, hunters are Dayhikers only.

    The giant percentage of hunters in my area stand around their trucks at trailheads and use hunting dogs extensively to do the hunting. Then when their dogs tree a bear or surround it they hike out to kill it. Unsportsmanlike conduct in my opinion. And you can always tell when it's hunting season by the trail of candy wrappers and empty soda cans they leave on the trail.

    The worst aspect of hunting where I live is their use of abandoned hunting dogs which invariably glom onto me and stay with me for days at a time and are real pests. What "pet owner" i.e. hunter would leave his dog in the middle of nowhere and go home to sleep in a warm bed while his dog is "abandoned" and unsupervised?? If a real dog owner did this he'd be cited for animal abuse.

    These dogs follow me from camp to camp and jump into my tent and claw up my thermarests and claw my tent fly and drag my food away when I'm not looking. They are much worse than black bears or raccoons in this regard. Oh but dog hunting is a Grand Southern Tradition and is set in stone.

    Fact is, backpackers and hikers do not remove anything from the woods. Hunters otoh harvest meat from the public forest and for this they should be taxed and regulated.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by runt13 View Post
    ... With all the top ramen they eat they would probably taste awful anyways....
    That's a good one, thanks.

    I'm not a hunter, but have no objections to those who choose to. In fact I just spent 4 days backpacking with an old friend who is a life-long hunter and retired DNR officer/wildlife biologist. We spent much of the week discussing wildlife, hunting, etc... I'm not sure what the conflict is that this thread is discussing. I think most of the problem comes from the fringe elements on both sides, such the "PETA haters of Bambi killers" on one side and the "let's go out in the woods, drink beer and shoot anything that moves" hunters on the other. But there are some things I have thought about along these lines.

    One is about the money. I don't know about the amount that goes to natural resource preservation so I won't go into that. But I think it is safe to say that just about every group of outdoor enthusiasts (hunters, fishers, mountain bikers, ORVers, skiers, etc ...) spend more money per capita than hikers. Let's face it, supporting backpacks is one of the world's worst economic models as your job is to sell stuff to people who want to have as little stuff in their pack and spend as little time in town spending money as possible. All the exchange of currency generated by the other people give them more visibility, influence, and power. Hikers it seems to me, have to appeal to good will, justice, environmental stewardship, etc... to gain favors, and in our systems, these things don't speak as loudly as money. Our local governments and non-profit organizations are willing and able to spend big bucks to build bike paths everywhere. Getting anyone to build footpaths is always a struggle. I get the feeling that as a result the hikers feel disenfranchised and everyone else sees the hikers as feeling entitled. Is this part of this perceived conflict?

    A second question I have wondered about is in regards to the hunting community's claim to be concerned about preserving the natural environment. As a non-hunter, I see many things that are not consistent with this position. It seems to me that hunters are mostly interested in maintaining an habitat that gives them the most trophy animals to hunt. Hunters claim they must hunt deer to prevent overpopulation since the predator species are not around to keep prey numbers in check (probably true). But historically, people have eradicated predators so just so they have more animals to hunt and the reintroduction of predators is usually met with more opposition than I would expect from people who are concerned with maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Likewise I would not expect environmentally aware fishers to stock our lakes and ponds with lots of non-native game fish. And if the hunters goal was to help maintain a healthy deer population, why not kill the old, sick, and weak deer (the way the predators do) instead of going after the strongest trophy animals they can find?

    I don't claim to have any answers but these are just questions and observations I have made over the years.

  4. #24
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    as someone who grew up with dog hunting I can certainly see Walters position and I have seen the same myself which is why after half a life time I quit dog hunting, I no longer wanted to be associated with the ones who hunted close to me but not all hunters are slobs, some are respectful and responsible. I also stand hunted with bow and gun and found slobs there too but those type of folks just call their selves hunters, they are there to hang out and drink beer, hunting is the excuse. I have seen the same thing from folks who called their selves hiking and I don't think either represents the majority of their perceived group in most cases.
    as far as protecting forest goes I can tell you first hand and without reservation that in my part of the world no group does more damage to the forest than dog hunters. the feds and FWC go nuts over a 500 pound atv and issue fines up to a grand but it is perfectly legal to take a 2 ton FWD pushing 500 HP and tires that belong on a tractor and tear the roads up to the point that the average truck can no longer use them, and I know this as fact because I drive close to a hundred miles a day on these roads until about the middle of hunting season. I want hunters to have their rights, I still squirrel hunt, but it gets awfully hard to defend a guys rights when he don't give a rats butt about how pursuing his hobby is making it hard or impossible for you to pursue and enjoy yours. I hike and hunt for the same reasons, peace and relaxation and in my part of florida that is hard to do because the weather that hikers look for comes the same time as hunting season and about 99 percent of the Apalachicola NF is open to dog hunting and I would expect all NF in florida follow suit. I know it goes against multi use but since dog hunters have driven nearly all still hunters out of the ANF and onto leases if it was up to me I would restrict dog hunting to private property. and if any FWC officers are reading this how about instead of parking 3 or 4 trucks at an intersection and all piing into one SUV you start checking for open containers, you'll find 9 out of 10 between 267 and 319 and 319 to 65 are drinking.

    I apologize for the length, I did not intend to be so long winded.

  5. #25
    Registered User Cadenza's Avatar
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    I backpacked and hunted in the Citico for 20 years, but have not done so for the past 15 years.
    I never killed anything. I did not have dogs.
    On two occasions in those 20 years my hunting partner killed a wild boar. I can tell you first hand that dragging a 165 lb hog from halfway down Stiffknee Trail up the mountain to Farr Gap is hard work. Probably explains why the locals don't hunt that way.

    For me it wasn't about the kill. I just enjoyed being out there.
    Otherwise, coming home empty-handed would have gotten old and I wouldn't have kept doing it for 20 years.

    Tipi is right in that most locals just ride the roads and hang around trail heads. It always seemed to me that they spend one day hunting wild boar and bear, then they spend a week hunting lost dogs. Having talked to many of them, their theory seems to be that eventually the dogs will find their way out to a road and some hunter will pick them up and call the owner whose name is on the collar.

    Wild boar and bear hunting is a big deal in that area. Many of the locals live for it.
    I would not presume to deny them their tradition, but the way they do it just doesn't appeal to me.
    Last edited by Cadenza; 09-05-2015 at 15:15.

  6. #26
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    I am going to take a stab at this.....

    There are an unlimited variety of hunters as well as many varieties of hikers/backpackers. However somewhere the axis lines cross and the conservation minded hunter is no different then the conservation minded hiker/backpacker with the exception that every so often the hunter harvests his game and brings his bounty home to share with family and friends. It is here where these two groups should meet and work together to make experiences in the wild better.

  7. #27
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    Tipi Walter's post reminded me of something I have had happen more than once. (When I have forgotten it was bear season)

    I have set off to hike in what I was told was a Bear Reserve area, out behind Indian Boundary Waters, and seen guys with no hunting colors running away from the road and hiding in the woods.

    There were no cars in sight where they dashed into the woods.

    Moments later someone would come roaring down the mountain talking on a radio.

    When I get to the parking area, it is full of bear trucks and people in orange.

    Of course I drove on, and someone usually followed me part of the way down the Mt.

    The last time it happened, I scared myself by thinking it might be poachers trying to take Bear out of the Bear Reserve. People in the campground fed that fear.

    I have not been back and do not know if it was / is still a Bear Reserve.


    I do not dislike Hunters or Hikers, ( only chickens because I have turned into one ).


    But since I have been reminded of this beautiful area, I may go back this month.

  8. #28

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    Great post runt13.

    Tipi Walter, you are doing what people typically do when they've decided to hate a whole group: you are judging the good majority by the actions of the misbehaving minority.

    I'm a hiker and a hunter. I would abandon you in the woods before I'd abandon my dog. I carried two puppies out of the woods when I was hunting once, lost by a non-hunter. Most hunters consider their dogs family. Only a small percentage of hunters hunt big game with dogs.

    Fact is, backpackers and hikers do not remove anything from the woods. How about berries, ramps, firewood? Eaten any fish? As a hunter, I don't leave trash in the woods, but I have packed out plenty of trash left by hikers.

    "So really, hunters are Dayhikers only." I've been on two hunts over a month long. I have been on many, many, week-long backpacking hunts as have hundreds of thousands of other hunter/backpackers. Right now there are tens of thousands of hunters backpacking into the wilderness.

    [hunters] should be taxed and regulated. Hunters ARE taxed and regulated. I personally have spent thousands of dollars on hunting licenses, duck stamps and taxes. The Fish and Wildlife Service says The sale of hunting licenses, tags, and stamps is the primary source of funding for most state wildlife conservation efforts

    Hikers AND hunters are primarily good people.

  9. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by Colter View Post

    Fact is, backpackers and hikers do not remove anything from the woods. How about berries, ramps, firewood? Eaten any fish? As a hunter, I don't leave trash in the woods, but I have packed out plenty of trash left by hikers.

    "So really, hunters are Dayhikers only." I've been on two hunts over a month long. I have been on many, many, week-long backpacking hunts as have hundreds of thousands of other hunter/backpackers. Right now there are tens of thousands of hunters backpacking into the wilderness.
    As clearly noted in my post, I am speaking of Southeastern hunters in the mountains of NC and TN. Re-read Elmotoots and Cadenza's post as it's exactly where I go backpacking. We do not see backpacking hunters. Hunters stay predominantly by their trucks at trailheads and dayhike into the woods to follow their dogs to make the kill and then dayhike back out with the meat, if possible. I heard of one hunter in the Wildcat Creek area who killed a big 600lb black bear and couldn't get it all out so he cut off a flank and left the rest to rot.

    I do not fish and rarely burn campfires with wood. I never take meat out of the woods since I've been a vegetarian for the last 42 years.

    And you do not mention the sport of dog hunting which is predominant in my neck of the woods. My criticisms of such still applies---Abandoned dogs, marauding dogs, scavenger dogs, pests. We often have organized Culling Hunts, short 4 or 5 day hunts whereby the woods are saturated with 300 or 400 hunters and hundreds of dogs to harvest whatever they can in that time. It's a circus.

  10. #30
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    I don't hunt, but do hike. Others in my family used to hunt and I would go out with them just to walk in the woods at a beautiful time of year.

    I think of hunters as allies in saving land from development. For example, Mass. has wildlife management areas (WMA) that are primarily intended for wildlife preservation, wildlife corridors and hunting. There is quite a bit of WMA land near me:
    http://maps.env.state.ma.us/dfg/mass...8.153015487,14
    The dark green areas are WMA land, light brown are mainly state forest. Some of this would have been preserved without hunters, but a good portion of the part nearest me probably would not have been without hunters and hunter organizations.

    I hate that going into the woods is not safe during deer season (especially at dusk). Still, deer season is not long and there's a lot of land here that wouldn't be public without hunters. I really appreciate the deep knowledge of the outdoors that some good hunters have.

    I'm not familiar with the kind of dog hunting that TipiWalter talks about. The only person I've known that hunts with a dog has a trained pointer for bird hunting. He would NEVER abandon his dog.

  11. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tipi Walter View Post
    And you do not mention the sport of dog hunting...
    Yeah, except where I mention it. "Only a small percentage of hunters hunt big game with dogs." You are mighty selective in what facts you notice.

    Some hunters are jerks, some hikers are jerks as well. Slob hunters don't define hunting any more than slob hikers define hiking. The overwhelming majority in both groups are good people. Noticing only the bad ones is confirmation bias.

    As far as how dangerous hunting is, here are some real numbers...

    HUNTING SAFETY

    According to the 1991 figures from the U.S. National Safety
    Council, here are the annual rates of outdoor recreation-related
    injuries requiring hospital emergency room treatment in the US:

    Recreation # of injuries per 100,000 participants
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    Football 2,171.1
    Baseball 2,089.6
    Soccer 910.2
    Bicycle riding 904.6
    Skateboarding 869.2
    Horseback riding 464.6
    Ice skating 334.9
    Fishing 141.2
    Tennis 119.7
    Golf 104.4
    Swimming 93.3
    Hunting 8.0

    From the same source (1991 figures of National Safety Council), here
    is the table of accidental deaths in the US:

    Accident cause Mortality rate per 100,000 people
    -------------------------------------------------------------
    Automobiles 18.6
    Home accidents 8.6
    Falls 5.0
    Poisoning 2.6
    Fires 1.7
    Suffocation 1.3
    Hunting (among participants) 0.85
    Lightning 0.04
    Insect stings 0.02
    Hunting (among non-participants) 0.001

  12. #32
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    Don't they charge taxes on rifles and ammunition down in The Southeast? Do they not need to purchase a hunting license? That money goes toward Wildlife conservation. Hunters do pay for the game they take from the woods and mountains. Some sucky hunters probably pay more than their fair share since they never bag anything. In Maine, only ~17% of deer hunters ever kill a deer. That's not per year, that's per ever. On the other hand, there are hunters like me, who hunt and live on the same patch of land that my grandfather hunted and almost always filled my tag.

  13. #33

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    I could barely get past the bad grammer and spelling errors. Something in the original post mentioned that hunters spend more than hikers on gear, but again, I was lost in this topic to see what the point is.

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  14. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kraken Skullz View Post
    I could barely get past the bad grammer and spelling errors. Something in the original post mentioned that hunters spend more than hikers on gear, but again, I was lost in this topic to see what the point is.

    Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
    Did you mean grammar?

  15. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kraken Skullz View Post
    I could barely get past the bad grammer and spelling errors. Something in the original post mentioned that hunters spend more than hikers on gear, but again, I was lost in this topic to see what the point is.

    Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk
    Quote Originally Posted by Colter View Post
    Did you mean grammar?
    Dat's beautiful.

  16. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by Colter View Post
    Did you mean grammar?
    That was a pun. Maybe I should have misspelled spelling or errors. Glad you caught it. I should work on my secret humor attempts.
    "Truth is anything you can convince someone else to believe" - Me

  17. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by burger View Post
    I see this falsehood a lot. Hunt all you want, but the idea that hunters pay for public lands is mostly untrue. Your hunting license fees mostly pay for administration of the hunting program (monitoring the wildlife populations, paying the salaries of the game and fish folks, and managing wildlife). Most of the budgets of state wildlife agencies come from state taxes. The federal government (remember, over half of the AT is on federal lands) doesn't get any of your hunting license fees, and federal lands are mostly funded by taxes and user fees. And, of course, none of your hunting license fees pays the army of volunteers that maintains the AT or other trails.

    Hunters don't have any special claim to public lands because they pay hunting fees. Wildlife are commonly "owned" by everyone and managed by the state. You should think of your license as a fee you pay to everyone else because you decrease the population of animals for others to enjoy or use and because you personally benefit from the food you obtain. Hunters don't finance public lands in general.
    In Pennsylvania the AT traverses a number of state game lands which were purchased strictly with funds from hunting licenses or Pittman/Roberts funds (taxes on hunting and fishing equipment).

    Some of the conflict between hunters and hikers comes from this "dual use" of those lands during hunting season. Hunters feel they should be able to use the land without interference.

  18. #38

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    I think it fair to say some hunters are hikers (and vice versa), but thats a pretty broad brush. There are some hunters, like my neighbor who hasn't walked a full 3 miles in years, clumps into the woods to a deer stand, sits there most of the day for a period of time, then comes back with a deer tagged. No issue with that, but calling him a hiker is like calling a pin ball player an athlete

  19. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by PAFranklin View Post
    In Pennsylvania the AT traverses a number of state game lands which were purchased strictly with funds from hunting licenses or Pittman/Roberts funds (taxes on hunting and fishing equipment).
    This is a common perception. However many more recent purchases have been brokered by conservancies, land trusts, and the like to bridge the often significant gap (we're talking possibly 75% to 90% of actual cost) between the total land acquisition cost and the legal maximum of the P-R funds. Not to mention recycling of timber and mineral sales revenue through the PGC. Also many ammo purchases are not for hunting purposes, but they pay P-R taxes.

    Preserving the outdoors in the East requires a partnership of many outdoors lovers, something both hikers and hunters (and those who, like me, are both) should always remember.

  20. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by burger View Post
    I see this falsehood a lot. Hunt all you want, but the idea that hunters pay for public lands is mostly untrue. Your hunting license fees mostly pay for administration of the hunting program (monitoring the wildlife populations, paying the salaries of the game and fish folks, and managing wildlife). Most of the budgets of state wildlife agencies come from state taxes. The federal government (remember, over half of the AT is on federal lands) doesn't get any of your hunting license fees, and federal lands are mostly funded by taxes and user fees. And, of course, none of your hunting license fees pays the army of volunteers that maintains the AT or other trails.

    Hunters don't have any special claim to public lands because they pay hunting fees. Wildlife are commonly "owned" by everyone and managed by the state. You should think of your license as a fee you pay to everyone else because you decrease the population of animals for others to enjoy or use and because you personally benefit from the food you obtain. Hunters don't finance public lands in general.
    Not so. Many funds from hunters and fisherman, such as Wallop Breaux and Pittman Robinson and many more. I am neither, but appreciate their love for the woods and lakes.

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