New State Record Gizzard Shad Gigged for Alt Method.

[Chief Grey Bear]

There are no ethics in it. They shoot them by the barrel full and all are wasted. Gotta leave the gar and buffalo out or put some restrictions on them. They are native and have a place in the ecosystem. 

[Al Agnew]

Obviously they did nothing illegal in gigging the shad.  The only thing about it that bothers me is the probable mindset involved.  They probably were pretty sure it wasn't a game fish...okay.  They probably thought it looked like a shad in the water...okay.  But why gig it?  Does ANYBODY in MIssouri eat gizzard shad?  Did they gig it with the thought that it was going to be eaten?  Probably not.  They probably gigged it simply because it was there and was probably (in their minds) legal to gig.  I do have a little bit of a problem with killing something you don't intend to eat, just for the fun of sticking it.  And yes, I have that same problem with bowfishers shooting gar.  Although gar are edible (and not bad, either), none of these guys shoot them to eat.  And it's legal to do that only because of an old-fashioned mindset that they are somehow doing good things for game fish by killing "excess" gar or carp or whatever.  Hey, if it is biologically established that gar or some other fish in a given body of water are so abundant that they ARE having adverse effects on the ecosystem, fine, kill them until they get back under control.  But I highly doubt that's the case in most of the waters where bowfishing occurs.

It's all an ethical gray area, for sure.  Those of us who practice catch and release undeniably kill some of our catch without meaning to.  In that case, we are also killing critters, however inadvertently, for our own pleasure and no other reason.  Is the fact that we don't INTEND to kill them, and kill only a small percentage of them, enough to make us any better than those who would kill a non-game fish on purpose without planning on utilizing it?  None of us are complete innocents.  But there are degrees of ethics involved, seems to me.

[jdmidwest]

Maybe I misunderstand the sport of gigging, I thought it was always done for food.  Do people gig fish just for the sport?

The giggers i have met eat what they gig, usually suckers.

[slothman]

1 hour ago, jdmidwest said:

Maybe I misunderstand the sport of gigging, I thought it was always done for food.  Do people gig fish just for the sport?

The giggers i have met eat what they gig, usually suckers.

I always eat what I gig (only suckers). However, it does not surprise me in any way to hear that people gig whatever they can find and just for fun with no intention of eating them. There are lots of waterfowl hunters in that same boat too unfortunately. 

[Chief Grey Bear]

Look at the piles of coyote carcasses all in the name of "pedator control". Yeah sure.