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Jun 9, 2021
8:28:20pm
Squeegee All-American
I went on a deer hunting trip that was chase hunting - it certainly seemed fair
A lot of people argue that dog chase hunting isn't 'fair chase', which is the general standard of deer hunting ethics. Based on my experience, I have to disagree. The club had a pack of dogs, and they'd let them out, and hopefully flush deer, then chase them towards us. We'd be put in strategic positions where the deer would hopefully run past. As is typical for deer hunting with dogs, it's buckshot only from shotguns, so you're very limited on range. 30-35 yards tops. (On a side note, the most popular shotgun in the club was a Browning Auto-5, followed by Remington 11-87s, both for the quick followup shots. They did like how fast my Benelli Nova would be worked, though!) You could tell when the dogs flushed a deer because the pitch o the barking changed dramatically, and you could tell if they were coming towards you, because you could hear them, so you'd typically be pretty prepared. Still though, the deer are moving fast, and you've typically only got a few seconds to get a shot off before they cross form one patch of cover to another.

Even with 5 of us in the field waiting for the deer, and two people driving the dogs, (mainly through swamps so thick that they wore waders) it still took two days for anyone to get a deer.

The last day, I had already got a doe and was holding out for a big buck. We had radios, and the driver spotted when his dogs flushed a buck. In his words, a BIG buck, and he announced it over the radio. Of course, this was in a pretty thick swamp in southern Virginia. It wasn't easy to see. They were all heading right towards where I was waiting at the swamp edge, so I got ready, waited, and I heard them come. A bunch of does came out first, then the woods started rustling and a buck came out. I shot him and dropped him, and was immediately disappointed. He was not a big buck, just a forky. 10 seconds later, while I was a huge buck came tearing out and across the lane I had dropped the first buck in. I immediately started swearing.

I leave your judgement to you, dear reader, but I know that deer outsmarted me, and that sounds like fair chase.
Squeegee
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Squeegee
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Jan 27, 2011
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Mar 28, 2024
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