Quote: "While you're at it, post some photos of your trophy room, and I'll do the same, and we'll see how much you've done with rifles besides punch paper"

Don't know who the original poster of this quote was; but when it becomes "my trophy room is bigger than your trophy room", there are more factors involved than just the love of hunting....just MHO....

Stubble, sounds like a whole lot of sour grapes on your part. That and unadulterated jealousy. You're using the same logic that Oprah and Fat Ass uses: "one person kills another with a gun", ergo all gun owners are killers and guns should be baned.

Why don't you get Ruffhewn in here to help you with your thinly veiled flame of Allen Day? I don't know the man but from his post, I would not figure him for a dilettante.

Finally, I would guess there are as many slob hunters on the low end of the spectrum as there are on the top end.

FYI, What determines a trophy is what it means to you. Thus, I have a 2x2 muley on my wall because it was my son's first. I also have a 2lb bass mounted on the wall for the same reason.

Why don't you direct everyone to the exact thread so they can read the bullshit that drove AD's remarks and see just how far out in left field you are.

Some of the "best" hunters out there do not advertise their trophy rooms. I know several guys that are truly amazing hunters and rarely do they even talk about their accomplishments. I also think that there is a difference between "accomplished" hunters and "great" hunters. A guy that gets to spend a few weeks a year hunting on guided hunts can be a very accomplished hunter and should be proud of that. The best hunters out there are the guys that go out and consistantly kill trophy size animals on public ground. A lot of times these guys want to keep their accomplishments on the down low so as to not tip off others that hunt the same areas.
All of this being said, both accomplished hunters and truly great hunters should be proud of their accomplishments but due to the machoism associated with the sport of hunting I think that a lot of guys cannot differentiate between the two.

Drummond

This is one of those issues that is stated in generalities, which are "generally" true, but dangerous to make.

Money buys opportunities. Period! I've attended the Sheep, Mule Deer, Elk Shows. The kind of dollars that are being thrown around in these places blows my mind. And I am envious of those who can afford to spend that kind of money, w/o leaving one's family destitute.

At the same time, I realize that money - abundance or lack of, do not make the hunter. It has already been posted that the success of a hunt is probably 1st related to the how "prime" the area is for the game hunted! Money makes the difference here.

Anyone can stumble on to an animal and get lucky. Yet, a fellow who regularly takes excellent animals w/o a guide on public land, is obviously a superior "hunter" to the guy who NEEDS a private ranch & guide to do the same thing. I have 4 Muley bucks on my walls, two over 30" taken on public land. I'm not boasting of my prowess, but simply pointing out that many lack the skill to accomplish this evenon on private land & guided hunts.

Yet, when I was living in B.C. I got to know a couple of outfitters and had a friend who guided for one of them in the Yukon every fall. They ONLY see folks w/ money to spend, but there biggest gripes, seem to tell us a lot of what makes a hunter. In this Order, this was their gripes:

1) Lack of ability w/ their weapon. This is ususally the #1 complaint. Many guys come w/ custom jobs that cost 5G+ w/ scope, usually in the latest wiz-bag caliber. Many can scarecly hit a pie-plate at 100M from a rest, let alone make sitting shot on a 200M stone sheep.

2)Lack of physcial conditioning. Few are as in good a shape as the guides, but we're talking about folks who think they are going to ride a horse to w/i shooting range, dump a trophy, load it on a hoarse and ride back. My friend Mike constantly complained about being able to see sheep that the client simply couldn't get to w/o a coranary.

3) Lack of "woodsmanship". Again, my friend Mike said a lot of these guys have little knowledge how to move quietly through the woods (after moose). He said this was especially true of European hunters who often hunt from stands. He said folks couldn't use a compass & map and if left alone by accident would have died there.

Again, these are generalities. Some were ready to hunt, could shoot like Dave Tubbs and rough it like Daniel boone. But those are the exceptions not the rule.

Last season my brother-in-law chased a mature whitetail back and forth across a very thick hillside here in Georgia, according to him bellycrawling quite a bit. He said three times he eased his rifle up and three times it moved off before he could get a sight picture. The fourth time he killed it at about twenty yards.

Back at camp when I got the story I asked him if he was going to have it mounted, knowing what his answer would be.

"Are you serious?" he said, "It's a doe!"

I replied, "Yeah but it's a REAL trophy."

I think it's great that deer are being managed for antler growth. But it has obfuscated the trophy books IMO. Kind of like steriods will diminish what baseball records mean. How many homeruns would have not gone over the wall without the drugs in the blood? There is simply no way to tell.

And some states allow baiting and some don't and even in those states the deer may have been baited or poached. Like homeruns, there's no way to tell.

So no, the antlers don't mean much to me except to give a buck that majestic look or say he's legal for the freezer. Why should they? Where I hunt they just don't get as big as elsewhere.