There is certainly truth in what you say Carbon. Also some generalizations we need to be careful of because while "some guys" are in it for money and/or competition or only want "big buck kill" video for their blogs, TV shows, YouTube videos or whatever else motivates them, many are NOT mature buck hunters for that reason.
I can only speak for myself, but it's TOTALLY me against a mature, highly educated deer. I don't drive around with what I get in the back of my pickup, as someone else here stated. In fact my pickup box cover is closed so NO ONE can see what's in there. It goes straight home is cleaned and processed. AND, the meat is as good as any other deer. Maybe it's because we have wonderful corn, soybean, and alfalfa fed deer in my area, I don't know, but the 7 1/2 YO buck I got was as good, tender, and tasty as any other deer I've taken over the years, be they fawns, young does and bucks, old does, you name it. As I stated earlier, I have never entered any of my bucks for record books and I don't enter deer contests of any kind. Mine is a passion to pit my skills, which BTW usually aren't good enough, against the wariest of bucks. It is also to just sit and watch and learn.
I remember one evening in particular when I had already filled by bow tag on a nice 12 point, but still had a doe tag in my pocket. I went out fully expecting to shoot a doe that evening but the miracle that unfolded before me was a spectacle like I had never seen before or since. It was chase phase of the rut and I saw about 17 different bucks that evening...all 2 1/2 years old or more. I was over a small field with a babbling creek right behind my treestand and it was a crisp autumn day in early November. Every time a doe would come into the field, several bucks would show up to "court her." They sidled at each other, raised their hair, made snort-wheezes and some kind of gutteral sound from deep in their chest I had never heard in person, nor had I ever seen or heard it imitated by any call makers. None of them ever fought, however. Someone always backed down. I had two of those mature bucks literally under my stand. This activity went on for a full three hours! I had numerous opportunities to shoot a doe that evening, but I just could not and would not disrupt the show before me. Had I shot the first doe that walked by that evening, what is probably the BEST hunt of my life would have never happened...and I didn't kill a thing! I remember walking out in the dark thinking "If I die today I have certainly had the best hunting of my life happen this evening." Now, think about something else for a moment...that stand was literally within 100 yards of the intersection of two other properties that have MANY hunters on them. I'm sure that when the gun season started the next morning, someone who really wanted to shoot a doe may have gotten one because I did not shoot. I can't understand how that's bad, and in the late muzzleloader season, after most all of the other hunters had folded up shop and gone home, I filled that doe tag anyway.
I spent 7 years on a lease here in MN with 6 other guys from the panhandle of Florida. We stayed in the old 100 year old farmhouse on an 800 acre lease, of which about 500 was woods to hunt. The lease was owned by an outfitter who had it for about 25 years and used to guide weekly hunts for many, but he was just too old and ailing to do that anymore, so he just made it a lease situation. There was GREAT comradery in the group during the time spent there. Everyone was happy for everyone else's success and not everyone took deer every year. I never once sensed it was a competition between anyone there. They were all very good people just enjoying a week of deer hunting and most all of them were "normal working-class" people who had decided to spend what was a fair amount of their income to have one great week of hunting a year.
All that said, what you stated does exist. In my area leasing has taken thousands of acres out of bounds to guys that do not want to or do not have the means to lease. Larger groups that liked to do deer drives have been heavily impacted. I am no longer in a lease and am now impacted as well with less and less private land available either due to leasing, or to a much larger extent, many landowners simply putting their lands off limits to all but themselves and/or close friends and relatives...and it's mostly driven by the desire to grow and hunt mature deer. This puts more pressure on public lands and any remaining private land where the landowners open their doors to anyone who politely asks. But, I respect the rights of private landowners to do as they please and see fit with their properties and only wish I had the good sense they had to have purchased a larger parcel of land long ago. I don't know what the answer is, but I do fear that available land for "the masses" will continue to shrink.
Long winded, I know, but I'm trying to convey that these generalizations thrown about are, as usual, mostly false as they relate to a general population. All "big buck" hunters aren't selfish slobs that are only interested in money and fame or beating some other hunter. In fact, I'd put it in the minority of those I've met and talked to over the years. Do those kinds of people exist...certainly...but I don't believe it's a majority.
