Alternative Hunting Methods?
As areas get more crowded, you’d think there’d be more interest in alt.hunting methods.
They can be quieter, safer, with less wounded game running anywhere. (Even mortally wounded game running anything over a 1/4-mi in crowded areas can result in, say, a dead deer in someone’s front lawn.) Basically it seems like we have a very common situation of “10 acre hunting” anymore. Everyone sitting on their own little 10. Seems perhaps that alt.methods might be called for or considered.
Crossbows? (For silence and increased cutting surfaces.) Deadfalls/nets/traps? (For securing game in one place. Silence. Greater safety given zero projectile. —These could apply to rabbits, fowl, deer, in ways not currently done.) I’m out of the ‘scene’ personally. Are these issues that come up more often today? I do hear that crossbows are being argued for more now. The flipside is that I have also heard that sports like *hound hunting* are greatly declining to due lack of space, cityslickers moving to the country and posting, greater rural population density, etc.
If fur prices were better, I could see trapping as being more viable than hunting around here—quiet, no visible presence to newly-arrived anti-locals. It seems like the trapping modality is better for the suburban environment. (It’s what I did while growing up. I trapped behind all the local burbs and malls and Kmarts. I passed up some excellent bird-hunting years in favor of even better trapping. Now that I’m back to hunting, I notice an ENORMOUS LACK OF UNPOSTED LAND, much greater crowding, and it gets me wondering about the trapping mode again.)
The funny thing is that in the newly built up areas you never really see any people, any inhabitants. It’s strictly carland. These folks drive to their mailbox. Drive while mowing. Don’t garden. Or walk (except on roads, fast, with Walkman on loud). But they post their land. So the smaller remaining open land is crowded with hunters. Oh well….searching….
