“A hunt based only on trophies taken falls far short of what the ultimate goal should be...time to commune with your inner soul as you share the outdoors with the birds, animals and fish that live there. If you are not working to protect hunting, then you are working to destroy it.”
-Fred Bear (1902-1988)

Have you seen that national pharmacy company advertise on TV about living in “The Perfect World?”

Do any of you ladies and gentlemen believe in reincarnation? Really can’t say that I do, but if there is such a thing I want to put in my application to come back as one of those folks who have those half hour hunting shows on television.

Holy cow! Can you believe the quality of the deer they harvest on these shows? I’ve been hunting and guiding hunters most of my life but it seems like I’ve been looking in the wrong places because I can’t find animals like that every time I go out. They are even harvesting monster bucks in folk’s backyards.

When hunting TV first appeared the kill shot was never televised. Now we see far less than accurate shot placement, especially with archery hunters. Thankfully, we see the majority of them seem to recover their wounded animal…but when? The familiar phrase is, “We’re going to let him go until morning and then try to recover him.”

I see more of this on TV all the time and it doesn’t matter how prominent the host of the show seems to be. By golly we are making a TV show here and we are going to take a buck regardless of how long or to what means we must go. We have advertisers. We must produce a specific number of shows so forge ahead.

Bad shot placement happens with rifles and more often with archery equipment, but normally the whole world is not watching when it happens. I have had it happen more than once while guiding hunters. On occasion it was my fault for rushing a client when I thought he or she could handle the shot but could not but I didn’t go around telling the world that I screwed up.

We, as sportsmen, have a moral obligation to hunt responsibly, to make sure we are prepared, take calculated shots, not over extend our equipment and make every effort necessary to recover game as quickly as possible to reduce undue suffering of the game we are hunting.

The sportsmen of this country are not the only ones watching hunting shows on TV. There are many environmental groups poised to use the bad footage from these shows against us and want to completely prohibit sport hunting, fishing and trapping. For those who don’t believe me, you are truly living in “The Perfect World.” I would urge the TV networks that now offer hunting shows to take a look and clean it up. If you don’t it will come back to haunt us.

-John Rinehart