I hunt just about everything in season from the end of one ski season until the beginning of the next. I love to hunt. When I am out in the woods, life makes sense to me. AND, I am a meat hunter. Between my daughter and I we feed ourselves, one of my older daughters and her family, various friends, and other members of my family as needed, and sometimes it is used as bait to attract the occasional potential girlfriend. In response to an earlier post by savage99, I too like to shoot things with my rifle. As soon as ski season is over, I start shooting prairie dogs, and I have no intention of eating one. I'm not a "numbers" shooter, I am a distance shooter on PD's.

I live to hunt, it is the only recreation that I have. It is a 365 days a year thing with me, I own my land, and manage it for deer, turkey and quail. Something is required every weekend, be it pruning trees, mowing, cutting shooting lanes, or just easing through the property to check things out. My wife has a kidney disease, which has required that she be on dialysis for the last 5+ years, and the venison is a big plus, high protien, low fat and very low colesterol, which is important to her well being. We eat venison at least three time a week every week, I process all the meat myslef. I make sausage, jerky, and all our soups and chili are made with deer meat. Two children in college, so they raid the freezer as well. All this is helping the buck/doe ratio, as I take most of my deer with a bow, and am fairly selective with the bucks that I take. For the last 10 years, the average has been 7-1, does to bucks, and I am seeing a real change in the herd, lots more bucks. I am lucky, my neighbors are using basically the same management plan, and that helps, still hard for me to let a nice 8 point buck walk past, but figure my kids and their children will benifit!

I am a meat hunter. I shot my last antlered deer about five years ago. If a big boy walked by, I certainly wouldn't pass it up, but I hunt for the hunt and the meat. I took two does last Saturday, opening day of second shotgun season here in Iowa.

DGK

For Moose, Elk due to the few opportunities, I am strictly a meat hunter. Meaning I take the first available legal animal. Deer however, I get often drawn for mulie does. I also buy two supplementary whitetail doe tags over the counter, the does are my meat deer. I am very carefull with my shooting not to ruin good meat. For my whitetail buck and mulie buck I am a trophy hunter for most of the season, until 2-3 days before the closing of the season. Then only if I need more meat for the year, I will turn again in a meat hunter shooting the first available bucks. If I have moose and elk in the freezer, then I will stay trophy hunter for my buck tags or nothing at all.

I hunt for food and sport. I got my father hooked on deer hunting several years ago. He goes with me every year and has shot two nice bucks, but we both would rather shoot a big doe anyday. My Father, Mother, Wife and I like to eat wild game and deer is my favorite. I look forward to go elk hunting sometime in the future. It would be a real kick if I could take Dad with me.

I enjoy finding and killing them. Then I enjoy eating them or giving them to Hunters for the Hungry so someone else can eat them.

One year when I took venison chili to the work chili cookoff a woman asked in horror. "You kill deer!?!

My response, " Yes ma'm. If you don't, they flop around when you start putting them in the meat-grinder."

I sport hunt for meat.

The primary reason I hunt is that I have to in order to stay sane. I much prefer game meat to industrial meat, so that works out quite nicely. A good rack is nice, but once I've got a representative "trophy" from a species, I lose all interest in antlers from there on out.

The only thing I can't decide on is whether it is more exciting to shoot an elk after a morning of spot-and-stalk, or to shoot a double on Chukar over a perfect point from my dog! Dutch.