YouTube Is The Latest Tech Company Hammering Hunting

A crisp, beautiful 50-degree morning, certainly a most welcome greeting to this day. About halfway out the gravel road, a nice buck trotted across the road, head high and proud. My first thought? I hope my neighbor or his son is sitting in a stand down that hardwood draw with bow in hand. 

My next thought, why in the heck am I not in a deer stand? Or skimming across the lake throttle down to find out if the shad are moving into that pocket and leading the bass with them?

This glorious morning stood in stark contrast to a dark mood just last evening when I spent too much time taking a deep dive into current events and watched a bit too much news coverage. Five minutes of TV news is too much these days. I don’t need that sledgehammer pounding my head to remind me that aspects of our country are going to hell in a bucket. 

A bad mood started yesterday with news that YouTube was taking a sledgehammer to folks who post videos about hunting and guns. Even some fishing videos were being affected. They weren’t taking the videos down, instead they were “demonetizing” these YouTubers. With the flip of a switch some 20-something vegan in California took the livelihood away from people because their videos showed hunting. Meanwhile, I don’t have to tell you the types of videos they allow to make boatloads of money with content you wouldn’t believe even exists, much less is allowed. Taliban or Chinese propoganda? No problem. Hunting? Nope.

I don’t spend much time on YouTube. Or Facebook. Not on Twitter. And I don’t have a TicTok—you’re welcome. So why do I even care what YouTube does to hunters? 

Despite my best efforts over the past several years in this space to dissuade GON folks from spending so much time on social media, I feel like Custer slinging his revolver after firing his last bullet. 

I care because social media and the 20-something vegans who control these companies have more power right now than most countries. Maybe even ours.      

What if this is all part of an intricate plan? It could apply to any aspect of life these people don’t agree with, but let’s use hunting as an example. First, draw all the eyeballs to social media and the internet, which has literally killed almost every hunting and fishing magazine you grew up reading—save GON, thank goodness. Draw the hunters in and then just pull the plug. In an instant, those Facebook hunting groups, gone. Your favorite YouTuber? Gone. No warning, no one you can call to complain or beg… just gone. Flip of a switch, no recourse. Total control of what you see and the information you receive. Try calling Facebook or YouTube to file a grievance.    

Ever have folks tell you to look on the bright side? Finding one can be difficult at times. Yet as I write this it’s still only 58 degrees and I’m looking out my office window at a field framed by a sky so blue the Allman Brothers would write another song about it. There’s a frisky buck prowling my neighborhood woods this morning. I’m spending a day this weekend with good friends gliding down the Oconee River. Yeah, we will be picking up trash, and it would be easy to let the number of plastic water bottles and Diet Coke cans take me to a dark place, but it won’t. There’s something special, something good for the soul about a lazy river. Or sitting in a deer stand. A day like this reminds me how blessed I am—in so many ways—but including the opportunities I have to get outdoors. There are people who have never hunted? Hard to imagine. 

Should you care about people who don’t hunt? Yes, if you’re concerned about the future of hunting, about whether your kids and their kids will get to experience the wonders of going to the woods and coming home with meat for the freezer. Hunter numbers are predicted to see a continued decline in future years. If they do, eventually there will be a tipping point when there aren’t enough of us to matter to policymakers and the agencies that facilitate hunting. This is especially true now that we’ve given so much power to tech companies in California.

Times are tough. Yet some Americans are going through a transformation, not forward, but back toward a simpler way of life. A garden and putting your own meat and fish in the freezer… that’s good for the soul. Now if we can just figure out how to make our own toilet paper.