EDM, you don't have to wander very far north of your stomping grounds to find states where baiting deer (and bear) is perfectly legal; likewise, hunting bear with hounds, to which some object. I'm not a bear hunter, but I had a friend who, after having shot one over bait, said he didn't see a lot of sport in popping Yogi with a Twinkie in his mouth.
I think quite a few of us Yanks, used to hunting pheasants over dogs, will pass up the tough shots for fear of crippling and losing birds. That's quite ethical, IMO. The discussion on "high birds" has likewise surfaced excellent points re ethics. I like the statement by the chap who said that if the bird's too high for you, then it's not an ethical shot. That being said, having played the driven game in Scotland once, each "gun" in our line had a "picker-up" whose only task was to mark and recover the birds we dropped. Seeing that driven pheasants are somewhat more akin to our preserve pheasants (not exactly however, and with a FAR better chance of survival when they run the gauntlet of guns) than they are to wild birds, the concept of challenging onesself while not overreaching seems reasonable to me. And there's no quicker way to get disinvited from a driven shoot than to take a bird so low that the shot endangers the beaters, or to consistently take only easy birds.
Last edited by L. Brown; 03/08/10 08:42 AM.
