There are a lot of hunters who don't even need the meat from their kills. They justify their hobby with words like "tradition" or "sport".
So, let's make it a game that has all the elements of traditional hunting, but doesn't actually harm any wildlife.
I say have wildlife authorities go out and tag all deer, elk, moose, etc with those electronic tags they already use for tracking wildlife. Hunters would use their traditional hunting rifles loaded with blanks and fitted with a laser sight that records a "kill" if you hit the tag with it. The laser sight doesn't actually emit a beam until the trigger is pulled.-- 21 Quest, Oct 18 2015 Elk-hunting http://www.independ...osure-a6698626.html [MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 22 2015] good luck convincing the wildlife trackers, neh not gonna happen.-- dentworth, Oct 18 2015 Well all of the hunting I do is feral animal eradication - coincidentally, the meat is heavily contaminated with parasites and diseases and is unfit, generally, for human consumption.
I personally don't understand hunting of native animals for other than meat (or perhaps population control, disease mitigation, etc).
If you could tag the feral pigs, you'd just kill them. So this idea only applies to hunting animals that there's no reason to hunt anyway.
No bone, just, what is wrong with people that want to hunt animals for fun, who belong there anyway?
I'm not moralising about the hunting for fun part - it happens to be very fun, but that's also bolstered by the fact that the feral animals are otherwise hugely destructive to native wildlife and flora. I suppose I don't understand why you'd kill a native animal other than for food.-- Custardguts, Oct 18 2015 Ever since we eradicated the wolves here the conservation authority organizes the hunting season as a cull based on herd sizes. I don't get trophy hunting either, but it takes all kinds I guess.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 18 2015 That was what I had in mind, LimpNotes. You'd get people interested who have a moral objection to hunting, and it could be used as a major revenue generator.-- 21 Quest, Oct 19 2015 If this was meant to be tongue in cheek it shouldn't be. It's actually a really great idea. There's no conflict between hunters and people who would do something like this. I would think hunters would do this occasionally when they didn't feel like field dressing their catch, taking it back and preparing it.
Of course, to make sense you'd probably need a rifle shaped smart image / shape processing cam that just recognized the shape of the animal then computed whether or not you got a kill shot.
The hunting equivalent of catch and release. An enthusiastic bun for this one.
Of course the simplest way to do this is to have a camera "gun" with a simple cross hair in the middle where you take the picture, take it back, see that the crosshairs were centered on a "kill" area of the animal and score it accordingly.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 19 2015 Thank you for the effort, [21 Quest], but I'm not sure if the evil hunters would go for it.-- blissmiss, Oct 19 2015 evil?-- Custardguts, Oct 19 2015 I'm an animal lover, oh wise one [custardguts]. Unless for survival I do not see the beauty, only the evil, in killing something for sport.-- blissmiss, Oct 19 2015 I get that, I just don't like being called evil. You might note that I'm not calling you names.
Eh.-- Custardguts, Oct 20 2015 //I get that, I just don't like being called evil.//
Given your first post, she's not. And you seem to agree with her.-- Loris, Oct 21 2015 <as the good grammarians nod knowingly>-- FlyingToaster, Oct 21 2015 On second reading that appears so, if you include turtles and other native fauna inside your definition of "for survival".
It's a fair cop guv' - 'e were just plain wrong 'e was.-- Custardguts, Oct 21 2015 You are kind and benevolent...[Custardguts],I think, I was speaking of those who kill for the thrill. I find no good in that action, only evil. All of life is beautiful and serves nature a purpose, I propose. I believe we agree on this.-- blissmiss, Oct 21 2015 The good thing about this idea is that many, many other animals and nonanimal things could be added to the list of huntables, provided that the huntable item could carry a tag. For example I encountered an Oldsmobile Toronado last night. Wow! I would love to zap that with my tagger and add it to my list!
Hunters might want their tag zappers to look like rifles or bows or whatever, for the sake of tradition. For urban hunting I think a smart phone-looking zapper might be better, to reduce the risk of being shot by cops.-- bungston, Oct 21 2015 I'm selectively kind and almost certainly not benevolent. I get the feeling you likely are both.
To be honest there's something very primal and immensely enjoyable about the hunting I've done - both pest eradication and food harvest. I won't be made to feel ashamed of that and on the contrary I think it's completely natural - hence my reply to what I mistakeny thought was a loaded comment by you.
I can't imagine bothering to use a system such as this that [21] proposes. Others might. Who's to know?-- Custardguts, Oct 21 2015 This would also be useful in teaching kids tracking skills.-- 21 Quest, Oct 22 2015 I like the idea of the tag being a little barcode, read by the laser and a photodiode. I know you want the rifle to go 'bang!', but I imagine it going 'bip' when you scan the prey instead.
And when you left the reserve you'd get the pictures you'd taken, and a itemised printout with a score.-- Loris, Oct 22 2015 Amusing <link>.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 22 2015 Now I enjoy the occasional deer stew, fried deer meat with A1 and deer Jerky. So as an alternative for people that just want to play with guns paint ball, laser tag and water gun fights are perfectly fine. If you need to shoot a real gun shooting ranges and targets set up in fields are fine. Especially if you need to protect your self from terrorist, jihad and radical Islam. Or the odd thief or home invasion. Then you have have socialist, communist, and all the crazy stuff like aliens and moth men, and big foot, and the other boogie men.-- travbm, Oct 29 2015 It could have a website where you could type in a hunting license and pull up a verified "kill" list. You could order photographs of your "kill", artificial trophies of precisely the same size, and score sheets including the difficulty of the hunt in that area.-- Voice, Oct 29 2015 random, halfbakery