Does the sound of the shots from the hunters gun bother you?

Yes and no, it depends on if I’m sleeping or not. And I’m not a fan of hunting for sport.

No it doesn’t. I grew up around it. And I like the idea of people hunting for their own food.

No it does not bother me. I live in Western NY not too far from Lake Ontario. On the various opening days (deer, water fowl, pheasant, etc.) the shots are spectacular. I can hear them coming from all directions.
I like the sound. Having never been in a war zone I only associate that sound with freedom -like July 4th fireworks.
I used to think deer were wonderful creatures to have around until one jumped in front of my car while I was on the highway. Another one hit the side of my car and my son had one jump out in front of him totaling his car. I had $3500 damage on another car. Fortunately we were not hurt. We were lucky. There are too many deer here.

As long as they’re not on my land it doesn’t bother me. Last year I had an idiot 200 feet from my house firing at a deer directly between him and my house. When I can see the muzzle flash I get a little nervous.

When I hear the sound of gunfire, I am more concerned about my own safety than that of the hunted animals.

I worry about drunken hunters.

It makes me nervous because of the “stray bullet” idea. If they are shooting close enough for you to hear, then you do have a one-in-a-million chance of getting hit by a stray bullet. Sounds crazy, but it happens.

It doesn’t bother me. I make sure I am informed on the dates of hunting season so I know not to take walks with the dog into trails beyond my back property.

It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m a vegetarian but if I could reasonably hunt or had access to fresh game, I would still eat meat. Meat gotten from a supermarket is much worse. Animals that have been factory farmed are rarely given medical treatment, crammed into small spaces, forced to live in their own excrement, have their babies taken away who are often tied down so they cannot struggle and toughen up their muscles, I’m thinking specifically of veal here, and are often still alive when they go on conveyor belts to get chopped up into hamburger and steak and the like.

Hunting for food is just evolution. My uncle is a hunter and, yes, he quite enjoys going on hunting trips, but he uses every part of the animal his house always strangely fascinated and repulsed me at the same time when I was little, he doesn’t kill more than he can use, he often uses his tags to “clean up” after irresponsible hunters putting an animal out of its misery when another hunter has shot it badly and left it to bleed out, and he hasn’t bought meat in god knows how long.

No it doesn’t bother me. I eat meat and I will eat wild game. I just hope that the hunter is being cautious, respectful, and has good aim. A clean kill is always best.

I’m used to it, but, I am not a fan of sport hunting.
I live in a wildlife abundant zone up here and heard lots of shots over the weekend as it is deer and turkey season overlap.

I am rooting for several magnificent huge bucks that I have seen herding the does around the last few weeks. Anything that comes onto my 5 acres is safe.

No hunting in my retreat zone. Bah!

There is enough space around here so there’s little chance of property damage. A little before each season, I can hear neighbors sighting in their shotguns and other equipment. After Christmas some people will get handguns or rifles and you can hear shots during that week too. To me it means someone is enjoying their new purchase.

To be honest, quite of a few of those shots are from my property. I probably shoot about once per week. It does not bother the neighbors at all. They do it, too.

Not at all (unless, of course, they are poaching on my property or otherwise posing a danger).

In fact, I rather like to hear the shots during the season. It lets me know who is hunting where. Heck, having listened pretty much my whole life I can for the most part even tell whether or not a shot hit the target (discharge of the firearm followed very quickly by a “slap”) or went wild (discharge of the firearm followed by a long sound of the bullet ripping through air). Often times I can even identify different hunters because I know what caliber of firearm they are hunting with.

It does bother me a little but game hunting is actually beneficial to the countryside in many senses. Gamekeepers have a job of keeping the land in a perfect environment in which these animals should live (I know that many of them subsequently get shot) but surely keeping the countryside as is and creating a sustainable livelihood by ensuring these animals grow naturally is better than this intensive factory farming? These animals have a fantastic life, much better than a cow in one of these “superfarms” you get producing low quality beef! I am for controlled game hunting. It isn’t the hunting itself that I like but the automatic preservation of the countryside that goes with it.
Gamekeepers want to ensure these animals are healthy, have enough to eat and have offspring for the next year. The hunting is what pays for this. It’s a sad fact but it is true.
I don’t eat much meat. I feel livestock farming is horrible but it is the only realistic way to feed a world that eats the amount of meat it does. Game hunting on the other hand I feel is important to preserve the countryside and prevent it all becoming factory farms.
In a perfect world people would put aside massive areas of countryside for no economic benefit, but that isn’t the case. People have to make a living from the land.

I kinda like it, actually.
In any case, deer are actually quite adept at defending themselves. Their senses are keener than yours, they can run faster than you (miss that shot? You might get one more if you’ve got a semiauto), they’re equipped with razor-sharp hooves and the bucks have antlers. And they don’t have to worry about getting lost.
And as @bongo said, a moderate amount of hunting is actually beneficial to the species. If your deer population expands too much, they outstrip their food supply and will all starve to death, which has the added fun of throwing a monkey wrench into the local ecology. The game wardens are tasked with tracking population levels, and they base the number and sort of issued permits on that data.

Yes, it bothers me.

Only if i might get shot.

@Lightlyseared Yes, that’s my problem, too.

Perhaps strangely enough, yes… a bit. For just an instant I want to drop and return fire. Call it a holdover from my Vietnam days.

No.

I’m not a hunter myself, but I appreciate the positive ecological impact that legal hunting has (hunters almost single-handedly fund conservation efforts through taxes on their purchases, the cost of tags, and the Duck Stamp program) and I have no moral opposition to legal hunting.

I’m from the ghetto. Gunfire does not really starttle me. If I was out in the woods and heard a shot I’d be very scared. Dick Cheney might be out there.

Gunfire doesn’t bother me at all, yeah it’ll grab my attention, but I really don’t care too much about the sound. It’s the where that can bother me like when a friend was shot to death not a block away from my home.

Oh, their conversations bother me, not their gun shots.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir You should have heard some of the ones at the last hunting camp. One of them, after about three shots of whiskey, started going on about the faster-than-light neutrinos. I told him that he might get a kick out of Plato. He replied that he’d read Plato and hadn’t been terribly impressed.

I’ve been unable to kill anything since I got back from Vietnam. That’s why I don’t hunt, although I can appreciate the enthusiasm of others for it.

Yep, @Nullo, I’m sure that most would be quite surprised at how wide the gulf is between their assumption of the education and general mental capacity of the average hunter and the reality of the situation.

In my last deer camp I had a bit of rum and coke while conversing with my tea totaling hunting companion about the engineering details of significantly increasing the efficiency of my aquaponics system and the practicality of integrating a renewable energy source into the equation.

@Nullo Aww, that’s sweet…I see what you’re doing…but I meant their conversations about hunting, not that they’re generally dumb or something. Please think better of me.

I’ve never actually heard a conversation between hunters. @Simone_De_Beauvoir: What kinds of conversations have you generally heard? I confess myself surprised that you have ever been on a hunting trip.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Actually, I had assumed that you had assumed that the conversations would be marked by opposition toward or disregard for the issues that you champion.
Ironically, actual hunting figured little into conversation once we finished relating our encounters with deer or signs of deer, and got past the vital information about who would be where pointing which guns in what direction.

Well @KatawaGrey, in my experience it is widely varied depending on the company. For the most part the folks I hunt with I have known for years (decades) and our interests and educational level are comparable. We tend to talk about the same things that most everyone else talks about, work, politics, the finer points of home repair and improvement, etc…

There is really very little hunting related subject matter to talk about other than something like “how did those new boots work for you” and, of course the the usual 5 minute recap of all of the game spotted at various locations. (i.e. “I saw a couple of hen turkeys, a doe, and two fawns over on the north end this morning, but didn’t see that big buck that Bob caught a glimpse of last week.”).

@KatawaGrey I grew up in a village but that’s not where I have heard my most recent conversation between hunters. Apparently, there is a correlation between hunting and being a big pharma rep (yep, all my favorite people all in one) and when they get together to hoodwink doctors, they also talk about deer hunting…I’ve written about their conversations extensively elsewhere, I feel like…but it’s all trading stories and how to kill them better and how to stay quiet on the tree and ‘tricks of the trade’. So, obviously, I haven’t listened to all hunters and I’m sure everyone’s smart and blah blah whatever, but from what I have heard, I didn’t like the conversation.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir It would be peculiar if one who thought poorly of hunting to enjoy conversations about it.