I think you have the wrong idea. I make no apologies for hunting deer, but to say I enjoy killing is ignorant. I participate in the natural cycle of life.
Deer are *very* smart. I cannot stress this enough. They know how far our guns can shoot. They know where we are. We are in their backyard. There is only a few occasions you get a deer. And it mostly depends on how you hunt. They have to make a mistake or willfully expose themselves (on the run from drivers). Or you have to use all your gifts as a human to trump all their gifts as deer (good luck with that, you'll lose every time).
Hunting from a stand elevated over a trail is your best bet in a wooded area. And it usually ends with you sitting in a stand for a half hour before sunrise to a half hour after sunset for two weeks and never seeing a deer. Nobody does that to kill something. They do it to be out there, observing nature. They have an obstensible goal, but really they just enjoy that time in the woods.
A group of four to six hunters walking though cornfields and groves of trees with shooters posted at the end corners flushes a number of does and maybe a buck or tow if they are lucky, but in a state where doe permits are lottery, odds are with the deer. If the buck lies down, you have to step on him before he will move. DEER ARE NOT DUMB.
Even if you flush a deer on a drive, you've been walking through heavy terrain with your heart pounding from effort and now have to hit a deer bounding at full speed through cover. The posters have the best chance as they have not been slogging through plowed fields or swamp, but the deer is still moving at a good clip in a bounding pace and they are cold and stiff. Shooting one in flight is an art, not a cold-blooded killing worthy of disdain. I don't know anyone who doesn't feel a sense of accomplishment for doing a job that comes naturally to the wolf. It's not about the killing, it's about being a part of nature in a way you can't in your living room.
You can't hunt deer without developing a huge respect for the animal and it's inherent beauty and strength that transcends it's appearance. For as delicate as they look, they are monsters of survival inside and shame us humans.
Stone age man hunted deer in much the same way we do in Minnesota and the way you hunt them in New York. We choose our methods depending on the environment we have to hunt them in. Some of us live or know people in farm country, some of us have or know someone who has wooded land. Same as Stone-age man. The use of modern firearms doesn't level the playing field even a bit. We still have to match our wits and physical ability against an animal that knows the territory and trumps us six ways to Sunday as far as fitness.
Any difference between us and our stone age relatives is that modern firearms can often mean a quicker, more humane death for the deer.
Have you ever seen a couple wolves take down an animal? A rifleshot to the heart or head is quick and painless. A shotgun slug to a vital organ is a mercy. I
like wolves, but two or three wolves will eat a deer *alive.* They will tear out it's gut as soon as they can get a grip, even if the deer is still on it's feet. Ideally one will grab it's throat and clamp down so it can't breath, no blood gets to it's brain and it passes out so there is no struggle while feeding, but they don't particularly care about the suffering of their food.
I've never met a hunter who didn't make damn sure the deer was dead before cutting into it. Nor one who didn't think deer are one of the most beautiful animals on the planet. You don't sit on a stand all day watching the sun rise and set in the cold, day after day, just to kill something. You don't walk through a muddy ditch, or fight your way through a willow swamp, because you are trigger happy and want to see something die.
You do it because human nature put you in that spot, and it gives you the chance to see the animals and plants and birds and whatever in a state of flux in the fall, in a state where you stand a very good chance of getting skunked but you know that people just like you have done that job for as long as humans have been alive. The tools you have at your hand are no better at the ranges most deer are shot. They just have a better chance of making a cleaner end, and suffering is one thing that ruins the hunt.
Again,
I understand why you feed the deer. I just wish you wouldn't. If you think most deer hunters are cretins, please join them and show them how to do it right. I think you'll find most hunters are bigger fans of living things than you appreciate. But more to the point, I think you'll find more beauty in a deer in the wild, and birds and plants and foxes, etc. than you ever could in a deer feeding in your yard out of a bin filled with corn. To me, that's ugly and unnatural, like photographing crack addicts in your yard. I'm not condemning you, I'm just saying.
You don't have to shoot them, just be out there. Most people miss or never even see one. (In fact, most people miss the first one they see no matter how much they might talk
)
I'd take you hunting and let you shoot with your camera instead of a gun, but Minnesota is IMHO a bit far from NY state for a whim. But I bet you could easily find someone near you who would let you use a stand off-season for phenomenal pictures of a deer just going about it's business. If you like wildlife, hunters are really your best allies. Get to know them, because if you like deer and other wildlife, they are your best friends. They will always shell out of their pocket to protect wetlands and wild spaces. They do it to preserve wildlife populations because they know balance is important. Probably because they spend more time outside experiencing said balance and it's effects.
I think this is a very important issue, hence my very long post. I do not discount your feelings. But I think it is too important an issue to delegate to one man's feelings. With all respect. Just because I choose to hunt and take the life of an animal for food does not make me insensitive to the person who sees that animal as merely a pretty living object. That is the give and take that makes society work. In this case I will always lobby for the animal as an integral part of nature which deserves respect thereof, rather than being treated as merely a decoration, which I feel iis an insult to the deer. (That reads as silly to me, but I don't know how to say it in words. Suffice to say, I do indeed feel for those who can't bear to know deer are shot for food.)
