While some might regard road hunters as the lazy bums of the outdoors world, seeking wildlife from a climate-controlled cab has its place, some outdoorsmen said.
“We all get old,” avid hunter Buzz Hettick of Laramie told Cowboy State Daily, noting that he took his grandfather road hunting in his later years and now does the same for his 81-year-old father.
“It (road hunting) is a taboo subject that a lot of people don’t want to talk about,” Matthew Burke of Loveland, Colorado, told Cowboy State Daily.
He’s the founder of 10 CAN Inc., the Christian Adventure Network. The group specializes in guiding hunts for veterans, first responders and their families.
Burke mentors hunters in Wyoming, and many have physical disabilities, so some road hunting is involved.
He’s trying to form a new group, Road Hunters United, aimed at encouraging polite road hunting and bringing road hunters into the larger fold of the hunting community.
Viking Trumpets
Burke said he enjoys all methods of hunting, whether from the road, packing miles into the backcountry, or something in between.
Road hunters might gain better esteem if they avoid certain annoying habits, Burke said.
One of those is cruising the road at just a few miles an hour and not pulling over to let other hunters driving to trailheads get past, he said.
He recalled one such incident in Wyoming last year, when a truck in front of him was hogging the road.
When they came to a place where the track opened up with a mud hole on the right, he took advantage of it.
“I’m going to sound like a jerk saying this, but I passed them on the right and covered their vehicle with mud. And yeah, it pissed them off, but they created the problem,” Burke said.
Road hunters might like to bugle for elk from their vehicles. That’s fine, so long as they don’t overdo it, Burke said.
“If you just sit there blowing and blowing on that thing, like you’re a freaking Viking and that’s your trumpet, you’re educating bulls and you might start pushing elk out of there,” he said.
Hettick said extra care should be taken with firearms while road hunting; it’s all too easy for something to go wrong while clambering into and out of a vehicle with a loaded rifle.
It’s also illegal to shoot at big game from a vehicle unless the shooter has a special disabled hunter permit.
As long as people are being safe and following the rules, there is a place for road hunting, Hettick said.
Hybrid Hunting
Road hunting isn’t all one thing, Burke said.
There are otherwise healthy adults who, by their own admission, might road hunt because they’re feeling lazy, he said. And there are elderly or disabled hunters for whom road hunting might be the best option.
There’s also “hybrid hunting,” in which hunters cruise roads trying to spot animals at great distances and then get out and hunt on foot.
Baggs-area resident Larry Hicks loves hunting huge pronghorn bucks.
“I don’t road hunt. I use the road to get to strategic glassing locations,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
“Glassing” is what hunters call searching for game through spotting scopes and binoculars.
“To be an effective hunter doesn’t mean you just drive and hunt from the road. It means you use the roads to get to the best vantage points. And then, if you have superior optics, you can glass for miles,” he said.
“After I locate them (game animals), then I do traditional stalking on foot,” he added.
“I think the traditional mentality of road hunters is, ‘We just drive and drive and drive and drive until something runs across the road,’ and that’s terrible,” Hicks said.
Hettick said scouting and glassing from a vehicle can be an effective way to hunt pronghorn in Wyoming’s vast, open landscapes.
“When you think of how big some of the antelope hunting units are, yeah, good luck covering all of that on foot,” he said.
More Encouragement, Less Animosity
Hunters should be supportive of each other despite differences in hunting styles, Burke said.
“We shouldn’t be these self-righteous hunters who think that everybody should hunt a certain way,” he said.
“What I’m hoping to achieve is more encouragement for one another, as hunters, instead of this constant animosity between us,” he added.
Hettick said he tries not to cast judgment on other hunters.
“It kind of bums me out when I see healthy young people in their 20s and 30s who seem to have an ATV strapped to their ass,” he said.
“But I’d rather see them doing that (on the roads) than interfering with my hunt after I’ve hiked back in a mile or two,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
