Meat Hunter or Trophy Hunter?

Phillip over at the Hog Blog currently has a poll asking what
type of hunter are you? Meat Hunter or Trophy Hunter? I am a
little bit of both.   Here in Colorado the Division of
Wildlife implemented a three points or better on buck deer and a four points or
better on bull elk rule during the rifle seasons in the mid 80’s, and I hunt bucks and bull elk during that time.  However, I also purchase doe and cow tags to help fill the freezer. In fact I
am heading out this weekend to hunt doe antelope up in Wyoming.

Wyoming has a neat wildlife management
program. After the initial full price applications have been processed, they
offer reduced price doe/fawn or cow/calf licenses for hunters that would like
to harvest an animal, but don’t want to shell out the exorbitant cost of a license.
In Wyoming’s
case, the tags that I picked up cost $29 a piece. Compare that to the full cost
price of $225 for an out of state buck tag and you can see the attraction to
hunters looking for meat over trophies.   Colorado
has done something similar by reducing the price of cow elk tags for out of
state hunters and is currently considering doing the same for doe deer tags. I
can certainly understand that when an out of state hunter shells out close to
$500 for an Elk tag or $400 for a deer tag, they defiantly want to shoot
something with horns. Anything with horns sometimes! I myself, enjoy eating the
animals that I shoot, so if it is a monster that is great, but a doe is sure
tasty as well. Stop on by The Hog Blog and throw your vote into the hat.

One Response to “Meat Hunter or Trophy Hunter?”

  1. Phillip says:

    Hey, thanks for the links!
    I’m glad the topic spurred some thought, and I like where you took it.
    I chose to do an either-sex archery tag in CO this year, although the cow tag (at half the price) was quite tempting. I just wish CA would give us that kind of option.
    Good luck in Wyoming. I get an annual invite to go out there and try my own hand at speed goats, but I can never break away at the time. Maybe next year I’ll have time to take them up on it.

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