Jimmy I hope you are doing well.I know him personally and he's a great guy. We've had many conversations recently about what he does and how it could be affecting public land hunting in a negative way. Sure he disagrees with me but we've still remained friends since I left TN and almost every time we go to TN to visit family, I make an effort to get together with him to hunt or fish for something. He left the forum because he said he was catching a lot of heat about his videos, getting blamed for ruining spots, and was just tired of arguing about it. I honestly can't say I blame him, there are few things more pointless and unproductive than arguing on the internet.
I don't like his constant KFC (killing for content) of slaughtering every doe he sees, "donating" the meat to Hunters for the Hungry (just an excuse to kill another doe and get rid of it). That bothers me and I've already told him if/when we move back to TN to just call me instead, I'll gladly come get that doe. I eat a lot of deer meat and have two growing daughters and wife who all love deer meat. Or he can just bring it over. We'll have dinner and a few cold beers ready for him then we can get to hacking up that doe in my garage.
One thing that I think he doesn't get is that his opportunity to hunt is WAY different from the average person on here. He isn't married, has no kids, lives in a small room in a barn house so he has very little bills to pay. He doesn't have to work much to pay his bills, especially with YouTube ad revenue coming in.
This means he gets to hunt a LOT more than the average family man with a full-time, M-F job, and also gets to hunt a lot during the week. The majority of us are limited to mostly weekend hunting when we'll experience the majority of the pressure and so we get extra frustrated by the YouTubers who, without a doubt, are making that worse.
My opinion is that if he was restricted to only hunting weekends for an entire deer and turkey season, he'd throw those cameras in the trash, learn a trade, make his money that way, and never tell a soul other than family and close friends about anything he kills. And he'd only kill what he is going to eat. No more of this killing 15-20 deer a season and only eating one or two.
But trust me, for those that haven't met him, he's a very nice guy and a great friend. I wish he'd put the cameras down, as well as every YouTuber, but I'm afraid this social media hunting is only going to get worse and it's only going to cause more issues.
just scrolling and eating popcorn over here....
