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There is no Such Thing as a Trophy Hunter



A.J. DeRosa founded Project Upland in 2014 as an excuse…
The debate about the trophy hunter is based on a public myth and a categorical misunderstanding.
The term “trophy hunter,” as high-jacked by mainstream media, is someone who hunts for a trophy and nothing else. Whatever it may be whether its antlers, skulls or fur, is portrayed to be the driving force of why that hunter has stepped into the woods. And that makes them a trophy hunter.
Let’s just stop right there, before we fill out the picture any further. We need to ask ourselves: do we know any whitetail hunter that does not use the meat? The answer is that the vast majority of all whitetail hunters make sure the meat is used. We would be hard pressed to find any counterexamples.
Meat Hunters With High Standards
Although there may be people out there set on trophy class whitetails, they are really just meat hunters with high standards. Some of us may choose to pass on a first year deer, some of us might not. Does that make one method better and the other worse? No. That is because there is no such thing as a trophy hunter, but there is such a thing as meat hunters with prerequisites for harvest.
We can take this to an even further extreme. I can tell you from firsthand experience that hunters in Africa do not let anything go to waste. The Giraffes, Cape Buffalo, and all the other exotic animals like Elephants are picked as clean as bison were historically by native Americans. Maybe the hunters have questionable motives, but to spread the false notion that these animals are not used casts a false vision.
For years, I spent countless hours pursuing trophy whitetails. More than once, I have been accused of being a trophy hunter. Yet as far as I recall, the process never changed. I can remember making Italian sausage from my biggest buck to date. The back straps of each of my trophy whitetails became venison carpaccio. All the while, I marveled at Mother Nature’s beautiful art work in the form of whitetail deer antlers.
Those back straps taste the same as a doe or young buck. We are all meat hunters. Some of us just have very specific goals in mind when we fill our freezer. Maybe it is time to say that there is no such thing as a trophy hunter.

A.J. DeRosa founded Project Upland in 2014 as an excuse to go hunting more often (and it worked). A New England native, he grew up hunting and has spent over 30 years in pursuit of big and small game species across three continents. He started collecting guns on his 18th birthday and eventually found his passion for side-by-side shotguns, inspiring him to travel the world to meet the people and places from which they come. Looking to turn his passion into inspiration for others, AJ was first published in 2004 and went on to write his first book The Urban Deer Complex in 2014. He soon discovered a love for filmmaking, particularly the challenge of capturing ruffed grouse with a camera, which led to the award-winning Project Upland film series. AJ's love for all things wild has caused him to advocate on the federal and state levels to promote and expand conservation policy, habitat funding, and upland game bird awareness. He currently serves as the Strafford County New Hampshire Fish & Game Commissioner in order to give back to his community and to further the mission of the agency. When those hunting excuses are in play, you can find him wandering behind his Wirehaired Pointing Griffon in the mountains of New England and anywhere else the birds take them.
I too think that the word “trophy hunter” comes with a quite negative denotation. When people hear trophy hunter, they think about people killing lions or rhinos or some endangered species in Africa. Why? Because pictures of those hunters posing over those dead animals get spread all over Facebook and without any background information it actually looks pretty questionable. If people would know that every single bit of that animal gets used for something I am sure their opinions would change quickly.
Kind of funny that people buy meat in stores from animals that never saw the day light having a miserable life and at the same time criticize hunters that go after animals that spend their whole life in nature up to that point, where they have a quick death and feeding a hungry family afterwards.
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