The Gray Area: Ask Your Tough Ethical Questions Here

Let’s say you’re duck hunting with a buddy for the first time. You both brought kids along for a first-time hunt, and your buddy tells you that he told his son that he can shoot anything on the water, something you would never do. What do you tell your own youth?

We’re starting a new column on sporting ethics, and this is the type of thought provoking “fair chase” question we hope to address. But we need your help. We’re interested in any thorny ethical issues you’ve come across that involve hunting or fishing.

Whether it’s a tricky situation you’ve faced in the field (a wounded buck walks under your stand, but all you have is a doe tag), an often-debated subject (like long-range shooting), or an aspect of your state’s regulations that you feel is a gray area (how to define “primitive weapons”), we want to hear about it.

This could be something you’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand, or it could be a hypothetical.

Send questions about your toughest moral quandaries, and we’ll do our best to answer them. If we publish yours in the magazine, we’ll send you our new The Total Outdoorsman Manual. E-mail your questions or scenarios to ethics@fieldandstream.com or post them here in the comments section…
–The Eds