I hunt for the Freezer.
Like Jeff Foxworthy says, us hunters bust our butts to give our Families the most expensive meat in the world.

At last count though, I have 17 mounts in the basement.

5-fish
4-ducks
1-goose
3-deer
2-pheasants
1-grouse
1-Texas Longhorn skull with a 6' spread

Eric

Crackshot wrote:

$1.99 cartridge $15.00 lisence $0.00 gun .

It costs some of us a "little" more.

$1,000 airfare
$400 for gas & parking at the airport
$70 excess baggage for the rifle & ammunition
$250 for the licence
$1,300 for the gun (Savage 119 at UK prices)
$800 for my brother to look after the shop for two weeks

Mind you, I do save on some things - my own loads only cost me $0.60 .......

And the hunt itself is of course priceless.

Well I guess not all of us can hunt in there own back yard so to speak.

I can hunt in my back yard(20 acres)but I don't get any real enjoyment out of shooting these german shephard sized blacktail deer!Usually I will drive 180 miles to the desert to hunt mulies and more often than not come back with no meat and less money-but the trips to the cabin in the desert are well worth it to relieve the stress of the metro areas.I have potted a few of the black tails when they bust down the electric fence and eat up the garden-I call those my "farm management hunts".

What ever works for you!

I suppose I could hunt from my back deck, I see Deer every day. It's just not hunting to me, and my Wife won't let me..LOL I like Deer Camp in the Upper Peninsula, I hunt for a rack up there. I can shoot corn fed Deer here in the lower for meat.

Ach, it's not that bad over here: long deer seasons, no tags to buy & I just bought a quarter share in the lease of 1,600 acres of Scottish countryside that's less than a couple of hours away.
I can also shoot magpies & pigeons out of my bathroom window using a suppressed PCP air rifle when I'm bored.

I hunt for meat - that is not to say there are no trophies involved - some pig tusks and a couple of sets of buff horns.
The driving force is to get aout into the bush first and foremost though.
Cost isn't a factor last three trips out to the desert have cost $140 for fuel each trip and $300 for a tire each trip. 1st trip no shots were fired 2nd trip 150 kilo of meat and last trip weekend just gone 300 kilo of meat. I'm too scared to do the math but in the end being out there sitting around the campfire solving the worlds problems and a bit of BSing is a good life.

Amen wicky.

Says it all mate. In fact I sometimes think that the "telling one another lies around the campfire whilst having a few beers" is the best time of the hunt.

Cheers, Vince

I hunt for the meat and the chance to get back to nature. If I get lucky enough to se a good set of horns I'll take the shot.

Bushy wrote, Meat hunter. Horns just clutter up the den...No place to hang a photo of ME... Maybe you need to start collecting more horns... you can save on cameras that way

I would say that the meat is more important to me, however I always look at the herd of animals and check to see if there is a trophy in it. If there is one, I will try to take it, if not I look for an individual animal that needs to be taken out of the herd because of deformed racks or excessive age. If not a nice, fat one will do just fine.



Frontier

Strictly a meat hunter here!!!! We try to use evrything up, the guts we bury under our apple trees and garden and the rest....well....some of it might still be in my stomach!!!
ah cant wait for hunting season to start!!
just recently upgraded my Savage .300 mag with about $400 worth of accesories and it looks mean!!!
ill see if i can post a pic of it!

Oh lads, you have to stop lookin at the cost of wild meat. You'll just make yourself depressed...

I hunt for the meat, but I sure won't pass up a nice set of sticks. With Moose, since we can only take bulls here unless you happen to get a cow draw, if it has antlers, it falls down. The meat is the only thing when it comes to moose, I love moose meat.

For deer, since I can take three Mule bucks a year, the first two are what ever has sticks. The last tag I tend to save for the 4 point and better season. (Four points or more on one side above the brow tine)

I do agree with everyone that the time in the bush, either alone or with friends and family, is the most important part.

Yup...That western point count. Only one side and the brow or eye guards don't count...I subscribe to that...

I've hunted for trophy whitetail, mulies and Coues in numerous states. In many of these areas there are named bucks, the huge trophy that keeps eluding hunters season after season. The Liberty Buck, Mr Tom, Snaggle Horn, and others come to mind.

Two and three year old bucks haven't fully developed their survival instinct, or, perhaps, it wasn't there to begin with, but, these big trophies have become legends because they are elusive and very challenging. In the course of a dedicated week long hunt, usually there will be the opportunity to kill a lesser buck and certainly that can be tempting as the season winds down and the time becomes short.

Pitting one's skill against a big buck, for me, is the thrill of the hunt. And, often, I will come home with an unfilled tag taking time to the limit. That said, with carefully glassing and hunting, a truly big buck may be glimpsed from afar and the hunt is on again. And, once in awhile, all that glassing and all that stalking pays off, a truly magnificent buck is taken and the hunt memorialized every time that rack is viewed or shown to envious friends, the hunt and kill recounted many times over.

A place in Boone and Crockett or Pope and Young attests to skill and patience and I admire those that have so placed sometimes more than once. Are they better hunters? Well, that is totally subjective and probably misses the point altogether. We are drawn to nature, we are inherently killers, and we relish the opportunity whenever and wherever we can. We define the hunt for ourselves and by that definition we define the term "success".