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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a hunter. I grew up in a fairly rural area. I spent a fair amount of time fishing with grandpa, going camping, and just walking around in the woods. I don't do that as much anymore, but I probably should.

From the hunters I've interacted with, there's a sort of convenient split. One has a lot of gear, pheromones, covers a lot of ground with trucks or atvs. Personally, I don't find this particularly sporting, but it's not really my place to judge. Some folks do (well, did, when I was a kid) this because that meat would save them a lot of money.

The other kind of hunter will only take 3-5 bullets, but tell you if they use more than one, they messed up.

From everything I've read, Roosevelt was very much the second kind. Go out in the woods. look around. Try to really understand what's going on, and figure it out. It shows in his legacy, the national parks, the conservation movement, heck, Teddy Bears are named after him.

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It’s an odd sort of cultural flaw. Archers seem to “get it,” you can go out, do everything right and come home empty handed and it is still a good day and good use of time. You can always learn something and grow. As a society, we tend to qualify the investment by the output alone. Aside from the tiny percentage of subsistence hunters, I’d say that if you feel it was wasted time or you’re frustrated after a hunt, you didn’t actually do it or do it right.

The gear cost equation is dramatically out of sync with “saving money on meat” any more. You can buy years worth of beef for a family of four for the cost of a crappy used ATV. Now ATVs are fun, and shooting nicer weapons is fun, and there is a lot of cool gear and hunting and fishing can be a very very fulfilling hobby and use of time, but “saving money” is just a rationalization.

Well, yeah.

Let me clarify a little bit. I think there are some folks that just like killing. And some of those folks have the money to spare.

I can think of a family or two that didn't have a lot. But a truck and a spotlight, not to hard to come by. One guy driving and another shoots from the bed of the truck at 3 in the morning. Is that sporting? is it fun for them? Did the meat go to waste? Maybe they just like killing too. But internally I give a little more leeway.

Large swathes of modern society have lost an understanding of the difference between {nothing} and {anything}, especially in relative distance to {anything} and {the best}.

A beat-up rifle and 3 bullets is incomprehensibly far from no rifle and no bullets.

A $x0,000 custom AR isn't that far from the beat-up rifle.

To me, that's what time in nature is -- resetting our baselines.

Without that periodic reset, it's easy to get subjectively out of whack and a bit crazy.

"Archers seem to 'get it'" is like saying "Mac users seem to 'get it'". There are good apples and bad apples in every user group. I've been hunting for 30 years. Some years I hunt with a bow, muzzleloader rifle, or modern rifle – some years I have hunted with all three of those. Archery has changed a lot in the past 15 years, mostly due to the internet and social media. The number of archery hunters has exploded, and with it there has come a lot more good/bad apples.

Archery also has seen the most applications of technology the past 20 years. My newest bow cost more than my newest rifle.

You are somewhat right that hunters are not "saving money on meat." Some years we do and some years we don't. But a big attraction is just knowing where your food comes from (at least some of it). Processing it yourself.

Roosevelt led a hunting safari through Africa immediately after his presidency that bagged more than 11,000 animals, including extremely endangered rhinos.

I don't think they were endangered at the time. I think Roosevelt was acutely aware of man's impact on nature. Furthermore, I think Roosevelt was aware of the need to protect and preserve "the wild"

for example: "It is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals -- not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening." [1]

I'd accept he liked killing, and the 10,000 animals is a fantastic indicator of that. I do think there's a bit more texture an nuance, given the time and technology. I'm not a fan of the "great man" model of history. I think a lot of his reforms would have come around anyway. But he really was an interesting character.

1. https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/theodore-roose...

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