doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Post Deleted

Rob, you are right, it is not about the posting of hunting pictures in general. And arguing otherwise is disingenuous at best. I too post such pictures a lot, on this forum and oterhs, and I will continue to do so. For a long while, I even had my own website loaded with such pictures. Eventually it will back with yet more photos of successful hunting.

However, there are a couple of other issues here.

First, is that this is obviously not a kill shot, and coupled with the narrative, this detail was obviously not even slightly troubling to the shooter or poster. Wounding an animal happens. Discussing that in an open forum is legit in my opinion. But boasting about it as an accomplishment rather than an error (which we all make) is quite different.

Second, many hunters have a rather ignorant idea of what a coyote represents. They see them only as threats and competition which then justifiy their being targets of opportunity. Both of these justifications are pretty weak. Golden retrievers are more dangerous than that coyote and yet, had that coyote been a golden instead, I doubt anyone would have shot. anyone that finds coyotes a threat to raising puppies or chickens or children probably should have none of the above if they can't figure out how to avoid that problem. So the threat issue does not wash.

Nor does the competition for game birds excuse hold much water, esp where racoons, opposums, skunks, feral house cats or most especially, foxes are common (and that is pretty much everywhere). In fact, coyotes have been shown to be beneficial to birds in most cases where anyone has looked closely. While it may not be immediately obvious to the average hunter, we have discussed this many times before and some folks just can't give up on the notion that it is their god given duty to kill coyotes everywhere, when really the excuse is that they just want to blast something for the pure hell of it. And in the end that was really the whole point of taking that shot.

Brent