Opinions on Rifles?

[dsotm]

2 hours ago, Taylorz1 said:

Regarding the technology race that always seems to happen with primitive/limited success hunts- i just see it as short sighted and selfish. Game managers have a certain number of animals they think can be safely take out of a population. They sell tags based on predicted success rates. If people build modern muzzleloaders that have the same effective range as a modern rifle in short order we will have fewer and fewer tags. Then those same guys shooting their 600yd smokeless muzzleloaders bitch about never getting drawn. Id rather have rules limiting muzzleloaders to iron sights and black powder with a 20% predicted success rate and have 500 tags for a unit then allow modern muzzleloaders with a 40% success rate and have 250 available tags. 

Fine, straight wall cartridges only then, primitive bows only 4x max zoom on scopes

[Taylorz1]

Well actually Id be on board for a lot of those things too especially if it meant more opportunities to hunt. There are no stone tablets saying you can use whatever tech on whatever weapon to hunt in whatever season. There isnt a line at the bottom of the bill of rights saying that you are granted the unalienable right to use a crossbow in the archery season. Game departments are supported by selling us hunting licenses and tags. Game animals are a finite resource. They can make the tags very expensive and sell a limited number of them (think about the states with lots of expensive out of state tags) or they can try to limit the success of hunters so they can sell more tags at a lower price. I know what I want them to do but maybe other people feel differently. So would you support allowing crossbows in the archery season if it meant there were no longer over the counter opportunities in arizona ? If you had a choice between using primitive muzzleloaders and keeping the current number of muzzleloader tags vs 50 or 70%   fewer if allowed to use modern muzzleloaders what would you choose ? Im genuinely interested. I think the "slippery slope" and "well we might as well use straight wall cases and 4x scopes then !" Responses dont hold water and are actually classic fallacies of logic. I like being able to have a tag in my pocket every year. I want my kids to be able to do that. In the future we are going to have fewer animals to hunt on less land. If I have to hunt with a recurve or Primitive muzzleloader or a spear Im willing  to do that if it means I get to keep hunting. 

[PRDATR]

When I relocated here in 1976 there were 2.3 million people living here and you could get five acres in AJ for 20-25K, total. There were a lot fewer people and it wasn't hard to find places or game to hunt. There were no GPS's back then so you used a compass and got a Map. 300 yards was a long shot. By the early 90's with the influx of more and more people tags got harder to consistently draw. I can remember when there were 1000 WT tags in 29, and some years you could get a second tag and maybe saw two other camps.

Fact is last year AZ population was 7.6 million people living here. There are less areas to hunt, more people doing it and more roads carving into them. Compound that with Social Media and droughts it takes a toll on game numbers.