R.I.P D&DH Forum

I opened up my web browser this morning, and discovered a hole. I have FireFox programmed to show me the front page of a couple dozen websites using a plug-in called SpeedDial. The little thumbnail for the Deer & Deer Hunting Forum had gone blank. When I clicked on it, I was informed that D&DH was no more.

D&DH Forum had not been much for over a year. Some of it was due to consumer tastes changing. Most of it was due to neglect. Nobody wanted to invest the time and energy into keeping it clean of SPAM. In fact, I made my last post on there a few weeks ago, and it was off the first page within day with ads for Nike Shoes and Luis freakin’ Vitton handbags. I agree with D&DH. It was time to put a fork in it. However, I cannot help but notice the passing of this forum. It marks the end of significant episode in my life.

When I stumbled upon D&DH’s new forum in August of 2007, it had only been online for a few months. It was a lively bunch of deer hunters from all over the country. So much of the content out there at the time was geared towards merchandising. There were a bunch of deer hunting forums, but I frankly found them overly parochial. This forum was quite a bit different. It had quite a bit less anger to it, and far more intelligent participation than the average gearhead forum. I had been a subscriber to the magazine since the late 80’s. I appreciated the magazine’s attempt to bring science into deer hunting, and the writers had done a good job of digesting scholarly works on deer behavior and biology and explaining its relevance to average deer hunter. It had been a breath of fresh air in the otherwise anecdotal world of deer hunting literature.

A year after joining the forum, I was asked to be the pro-staffer for D&DH covering Ohio and Kentucky. It is funny what a little bit of celebrity can do to your life. For one thing, folks were starting to ask me for my opinions on deer hunting as if they really mattered. For another, my opinions on things really started to have an impact. It was small, but it ended up being important to me, and I felt like I left my mark. Those marks probably contributed to the end of the D&DH forum in the long run, but I am not sorry.

What marks? Look, I am not a proponent of the idea that you can buy your way to a trophy whitetail. I don’t mean guided hunts. I mean trying to buy the “winning edge” from a store. I was there once. I could not hunt all that much. I could not scout all that much, and I thought I could compensate for it by buying stupid stuff. Scents, calls, decoys– you name it. I had been there at one time, but actually getting out among a healthy heard of deer changed all that. That has been my message in all of the 15 years or so that I have been seriously writing about my deer hunting experience. That was what I brought to D&DH. The problem was D&DH relied heavily on advertising dollars from all the doodads and gewgaws. I don’t think anyone had really thought that all out. However, I and most of the other pro-staffers agreed that it was time in the woods, not time in the sporting goods store that made the hunter.

I cannot count the number of times some newbie would get on and ask for an opinion on this camo versus that, or should he buy SuperTarsal or MegaHeat scent or how much Anti-UV spray he needed. It was not just me telling him to put the credit card away and get out and scout more. However, I was part of the wave.

D&DH Forum has been dying a slow death for several years. In January of 2014 I made the last mention of it in a post here on this weblog. As I remember later that month, I stopped deleting spam from the forum.

Wait a minute, Shaman! What are you saying there old buddy?

There was problem after one of the updates to the forum and I could not get in for a couple of days. In working it out, D&DH accidentally gave me administrator rights on the forum. For about 2 years, I was secretly going in on a regular basis and cleaning out spam from the forum. Truth is, I could have done a lot more for them. I could have also given in to my baser instincts and zapped a few folks that needed zapping. I doubt anyone could have ever figured out who had done it. However, after WoodsWalker, JPH, Kellory and others gave up, I really lost heart. It was time to let D&DH Forum seek its own level. I’m coming clean now. I do not regret my participation in the forum.

In looking back, I have to ask myself what I have learned from being a Stump Sitter. Confidence. I had a lot of ideas rolling around in my head about deer hunting when I joined 9 years ago. I just did not have the confidence to come straight out and say a lot of it. What should you all take away from it? Here are the important lessons that I have had confirmed during my tenure as D&DH’s pro-staffer.

1) There are no hidden secrets to deer hunting. It is all about going out and finding deer. Once you have done that, the rest is fairly easy. Deer are not hard to kill.
2) Anyone who tries to tell you there are hidden secrets to deer hunting is trying to sell you something. Whatever they are trying to sell you will probably not help your deer hunting one iota.
3) We are all like the blind monks fondling the elephant when it comes to deer hunting. There are no absolute right ways.
4) Anytime anyone says we have to put aside our differences and work together or deer hunting will fall apart is trying to make you shut up. There is a word for it: demagoguery. The truth is out there. Go find it for yourself. Feel free to share it.
5) This is a big enough sport and there are enough deer that you can hunt deer your way and I can hunt them mine.

For the rest of it, Dang! We did have fun. I tried to save some of high points of my time at D&DH on this weblog, but there is a lot of good advise from a lot of good deer hunters that is now lost like a long whizz off a treestand.

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