Fabs,
I'm just playing devils advocate here buddy and knowing that you're an attorney, am figuring that you won't mind.
I'll start with the most amusing: "The other reason for shaving ones legs is for the massages. It sucks to have hairy legs with massage oil all over them on a regular basis. I didn't care too much for the massages, but they were supposed to help remove the "toxins" from my legs"
I have no response for this!
"Yeah, I am buying a new bike to ride, but I am still going to use my old one too. I am going to send the frame out and have it restored and use it for my fair weather days." The question is, which bike do you honestly think that you will be utilizing for the majority of your competative racing and why? Yeah, I still have my first compound bow that I practice with religiously and am proficient with to bring with as a back-up on all of my hunts, but I still utilize my newest bow because it has some better updated features that I plain just prefer and seem to perform better with.
"At the end of the day, I still think more days afield will increase your chances of having good luck, versus buying the best equipment possible and not being in the field" Absolutely agree with you 100% on this common sense point Fabs. Anytime that you are in the field, regardless of your equipment and or level of skill/knowledge, you increase your odds of success.
"Or, instead of buying the range finder, how about taking some time to shoot 3D with your bow so you learn how to judge distance, but have fun while learning." Some very good advice of which I have done periodically as part of my regular practice sessions. While this does help some and certainly brings value to ones hunting repetoire, it is not a replacement for the demands of real hunting situations. Hunters can and routinely do pace off known distances to predetermined objects from their stands during daylight hours on terrain that they are familiar and/or can make reasonably good estimates from say their experience shooting 3D. Now take a bowhunter that is hunting on unfamiliar land, say as a guest of a buddy, and is shown to an area where they are climbing up a tree at 4:00am in the pitch blackness of dense woods. As day breaks and an animal proceeds through an opening on the shadows of a forest floor a ways away, I'd sure like the confidence of knowing for certain as to the distance. Can you guestimate from your experience and wing a shot? Sure, but why would you take the chance on choosing the wrong pin when you don't have to when the technology is there to be used? This is not meant solely for trophy animals either but your "meat" kills as well.
I hear what you're saying about choosing technology over skills (and I think more about the quantity of time afield which to most of us, is a precious, limited commodity) but there is technology available that helps us in our pursuits that we all use in some form or another, whether we would like to admit it or not. Perhaps we use these as crutches in one way or another to compensate but hunters are far more successful afield now as a result of this (as well as much better understanding of their quarry)
It interests me that as hunters, and I'm going through this myself, that as skills are learned from modern technology, there is a gravitation back towards more primitive/traditional methods of taking game because of the self imposed challenges. I began rifle hunting in high school, then shotgunning, and gradually began archery with modern compound bows. I have begun shooting traditional recurves and flintlock muzzleloaders now as well (and will hopefully be hunting with both next season as I improve)