Do you ever get a burr under your saddle? Something that irritates you but you keep it to yourself, at least for a while. Well, I’m there and it’s time to talk about it. This past Friday evening I was sitting in my den watching one of the many hunting shows on television these days. This particular episode was elk hunting. Elk hunting in Nebraska. There were two hunters featured on this episode, one was hunting with a bow and the other with a rifle.

As I watched, I immediately knew something was different about this hunt. The Nebraska ranch they were hunting on was wide open. Oh, there were a few scattered cedars, but for the most part this was wide open rangeland. Not typical elk habitat.

As the cameraman scanned the horizon and hills, bull elk could be seen grazing in many directions. The ‘guide’ was dressed in blue jeans and a short sleeved khaki shirt, not your typical elk hunting attire. You probably know where I’m headed with this now. The guide literally had his hand on the hunter’s shoulder easing him toward the grazing elk. They would stop and glass these elk and discuss their size and score and then continue on. The guide would make comments about the wind direction to be sure they would stay downwind and not be detected even though they were in plain sight of these bulls.

Both ‘hunters’ took a bull on this show, and when they reached the bulls they had taken, the jubilation was ecstatic. The guide was commenting to his hunter about the great stalk, the good shot, and how big the bull was. The hunter was in awe of his ‘trophy’ he just took.

For anyone that can spell elk, you could tell they were hunting pen raised animals under high fence. This is not hunting at all. These people have to know that they are not hunting wild elk. Why in the world someone would want to do this, much less air this on television is beyond me. The more of these types of hunting shows I see, the more disgruntled I get.

I have seen whitetail hunting shows that show hunting in this same manner. Trophy buck after trophy buck appear on camera. Seasoned hunters know that it’s hard enough to see one trophy animal while hunting, much less six to eight in a short period of time from the same stand. If you look closely, you can see huge wallowed out spots in the ground where these ‘outfitters’ have fed and fed these deer in the same spot time after time and they have their hunters positioned overlooking these spots where buck after buck will come in to feed. Many of these whitetail woods are completely barren of brush and thickets. Wide open parks that are very atypical of whitetail habitat. Again, these bucks are being hunted in a relatively small enclosure under high fence.

These hunters are not earning a trophy, they are purchasing a trophy. I don’t see how one can look at his purchased trophy and even remotely think that this was a challenge. Has our quest for bigger and better things now penetrated our hunting? Evidently it has for some.

I am aware of a whitetail rack that was sold to an individual in Texas for $1,500. The new owner then put the ‘horns’ on a plaque and sold them for $2,500. They were then taken off the plaque and a shoulder mount was made with them and the mount was sold to a banker in Dallas for $5,000. If the buck was purchased for the sake of just having the antlers, then that is one thing, but if this man purchased the buck for the sake of telling others of his trophy that he took while hunting, then that’s where the line should be drawn.

I fully believe that the good Lord, in all his infinite wisdom, never intended his wild creatures to be exploited for the sake of someone’s ego. Have we reached the point where all we want is the animal and not the experience of the hunt? Is our hunting success measured in whether or not we took our animal and not the fact of how we took our buck or bull?

We owe it to ourselves and the sport of hunting to keep hunting fair chase. I realize there are high fence areas in Texas that may encompass thousands and thousands of acres. But what I am talking about is the 500 to 1,000 acre enclosures where the animal has absolutely no chance of escape. This is not good for hunting, and we as hunters should not support or tolerate hunting these pen-raised animals.

There are many hunting shows on television that are very good and only hunt by fair chase rules. I do not intend to link these reputable hunting shows with the others by any means. I truly enjoy many of the shows, but as hunters, we can tell the difference. I just hope everyone else can.

There is a wonderful wild world out there in the outdoors, enjoy it for what it is and let’s not succumb to pressure to obtain trophies for just the sake of bragging rights.

Until next time, enjoy our woods and waters and remember, let’s leave it better than we found it.