Is Hunting right?

[Baby Tea]

After reading an article about people in London and Liverpool, catching urban foxes and cats and having their fighting dogs mutilate them for fun, i found myself very unhappy with humanity.

I don't agree with any form of hunting unless its necessary for food. I am not a vegetarian but hunting for sport just seems sick you know.

I would agree with this statement, except for the 'necessary for food' part.
I would go hunting for food, even though I can goto the store and buy it.

Basically, my thoughts are this: If you're going hunting, go hunting for food. DOn't just shoot deer, moose, or bears just for the sake of shooting them. If you're going to eat the meat and use what you can, then fine. But if you're just going to get an antler rack or for the love of killing, then I don't agree with it.

Although, I also don't mind hunting for vermin who are ruining crops or the like. My friend's family has a vegetable farm, and we go raccoon hunting every two years or so (When their numbers swell) and shoot raccoons to protect the vegetables. It's their lively hood, so I see it like placing a mouse trap. Except instead of a trap, it's a bullet.

 

[Xyphon]

Hunting for food is natural and therefore good. If you think even hunting for food is sadistic, think back to your ancestors. I guarantee you wouldn't be here gracing us with your ignorant presence if they never went on a hunt.


Hunting to control the population of a certain species is required at times.
What would your reaction be if, on a sunny Saturday morning, you woke up to 20 Grizzly bears in your front yard, 4 tearing apart your fridge and 2 releasing big coils on your chest? Or how about being a farmer whose crops have just reached full maturity only to see a field of wild rabbits gnawing at all of your corn the next day?


Hunting for "sport" is just all around dumb. You don't eat the meat. You don't even feed it to your damn dog. You just register your kill, take it home, cut off the head/antlers/horns/whatever and dump the body.

 

[Lusty]

What's hypocritical is the correlation between the cuteness of the animal and whether public opinion is in favour of hunting it. If people were hunting rats with hounds in the same way as foxes, no one would care. But foxes are cute so it's not right to hunt them.

No one ever seems to care about fishing either. I fish myself, and no one ever looks down on me when you I them that. But deer hunting is evil apparently. Imagine if you caught a deer by dragging it through the woods by its lips?

 

[G1eet]

snip

Also, the proceeds from people buying hunting licenses often go towards environmental conservation projects. Or at least they do here in New York.

Deer, elk and moose especially are by no means "cute and furry animals". They could very easily kill you if given the chance. They're incredibly majestic and awesome creatures and you learn a healthy respect for, especially when you have actually hunted them. You don't just have an animal chained up and standing in front of you the moment you step out of your vehicle for you to shoot (with a gun OR a bow). It's a systematical and very thought out affair to hunt a creature whose senses and speed completely dwarf your own, especially when it's in its native habitat.

Agreed. The animal that's involved in most human fatalities actually isn't any type of shark, or of bear, or big cat. It's the innocent deer.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34914.html

 

[AwesomeNinjaPowers]

It all depends what you're hunting. >D

 

[Xrysthos]

I am myself a hunter, and I cannot for the life of me see anything wrong with hunting responsibly. Hunting semi-endangered/endangered species (Africa's Big Five, for example)for trophies, methods that are more painful to the animal than necessary and other irresponsible behaviour is no good however. I've partaken in hunting deer, moose and caribou, in addition to a variety of small game like ptarmigan/grouse and rabbit since I was a kid, and it comes natural to me. In Norway, large predators are as good as extinct due to the expansion of civilisation, and deer and moose have no real natural enemies. In order to keep the population in check for the sake of the animal's own health, hunting is necessary.

People claiming that hunters have no respect for the beauty of animals and nature in general are sorely mistaken. Nothing gives you more respect for a moose than hiding in the woods 50 meters from it, hoping that it won't notice you before it's too late. It's an amazing feeling.

I also avoid shooting the largest stags in the area, in order to keep the population healthy. As long as hunting is done responsibly and with respect for animals and nature, there is nothing wrong with it, and even though I respect people's right to their own opinions, saying otherwise is somewhat ignorant.

 

[Borrowed Time]

well in this case no

but Hunting in any other ways has been normal for all eternity

everybody does it even the animals

PS: being a vegetarian doesn't make you a hunter any less you might call it gatherer but it's still taking the life of organisms to feed yourself

True, yet many equate "morally right" to if the creature can feel pain or not. Though, some scientists have found that plants can have a pseudo-nervous system of hormonal response to damaged/invaded areas. You can even go so far as to say that they may feel a "type" of pain that we can't comprehend. :shrug:

http://www.sciforums.com/archive/index.php/t-25644

Interesting reading, though it's just a forum. Once you get down to the user named "copper" almost halfway down the page, they have some very good points and interesting scientific stances.

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

What you described passes the line between hunting and pure sadism. I think hunting is agreeable when you use as much of the animal as you can, and of course only if it is legally acceptable to hunt the animal.

 

[Cortheya]

When it's done for profit,or worse - for the lulz,and involves butchering innocent animals...

NO,IT FUCKING ISN'T.

Only time when humans should go hunting is when they have nothing to eat or nothing to wear in -30 Celsius. Hunting For The Evulz is just unneccesarily cruel. And,by some *ahem* coincidence,much of the hunting (at least in Europe and North America) is done for the aforementioned evulz,and nothing else.

I,for one,think that hunting for trophies should be outlawed.

Everyone who likes hunting can fuck right off. I'm not talking with you.

It is not "For the evulz" and come on dude overreacting a bit? They're not humans. They're not sentient.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

"I don't need to blast holes in woodland creatures, I just think it's fun."
Not a way of thinking I can sympathise with. I don't care enough to feel passionately about it. Although, when I read stories about hunters getting killed by bears, it makes me very happy.

 

[LockHeart]

After reading an article about people in London and Liverpool, catching urban foxes and cats and having their fighting dogs mutilate them for fun, i found myself very unhappy with humanity.

This isn't hunting, this is baiting and it's been illegal in this country for over 150 years.

Hunting I have no real problem with, provided that the animal is hunted for food (many of my family are avid game shooters) or as pest control (I feel that hunting pests, while being enjoyable for the hunter, also spares the pests a lingering death in a snare, from poison, or a trap). Big game gunting, again unless its for a real purpose, i.e. protecting your farm animals, I can't justify as it is done only for trophies and serves no practical purpose.

 

[bilkobob]

blah blah blah... snip

Let me guess: you are extremely proud of your medal collection,all of which you recieved for brutally murdering innocent and very cute creatures.

Okay,that's too rude on my part,but my point still stands. I don't mind hunting for food. I do mind when animals are killed just to saw off their horns,and i mind even more when sadistic psychopaths are given guns and attack dogs.

Uh, no, actually. As I said, I don't have any animal heads mounted on my walls. Nor do I have antlers hanging everywhere. I don't hunt anything besides deer myself. (though I have been on an elk hunt once, didn't get anything), nor do I have pelts. I have a box in my closet with a couple pairs of antlers that I use for "rattling" (a skill that immitates two bucks fighting together during the rutting season, I don't use synthetic ones). I sell the pelts to a tanner who uses them in making leather goods which he then sells. I know, cold blooded killer, huh?

Yes, I killed Bambi's mother! I snuck up behind him and took a combat knife to his throat and told his mother that she'd better come with me or he gets it. Seriously, stop following your idealized nonsense and listen to actual fact. The bastardized idea of hunters played out in that Disney film is NOT the norm. Yes, there are some idiot hunters out there who give most a bad name. They are why there are regulations put in place.

I honestly find it interesting that you completely ignore my points about caged farming and the inhumanity of it, yet try as you might to apply a stereotypical ideal that you have of the "average hunter" to me. Why aren't you calling out the demonic farmers for slitting the throats of the innocent cattle, lambs or fowl? Is it because you feel it's a necessary evil? It's not, humans do not NEED to eat meat. Plenty of vegetarians/vegans lead perfectly healthy lives with out it. So I'm sorry, but the "only hunting when you need food" argument holds absolutely no water with me.

I agree with you that hunting just for the horns/antlers/trophies is wrong as well as capturing animals to train their fighting dogs, but don't you dare put that stereotypical crap in my court and call me out for something that a few idiots do, especially when we are in fact in agreement over the true issue at hand. There's a reason why dog fighting rings are outlawed. There's a reason why poaching is outlawed. These individuals generally don't care about the law.

I don't hunt much anymore... even when I do it is small game, quail and rabbit mostly, but I agree with you %100. I hate people who hunt for sport if they are only after trophies. Nearly every single hunter I know eats what he or she kills or donates the meat to a program that feeds the homeless (great program by the way). One reason why I don't hunt big game, is that it's just too much like work, heh. You can keep all that sitting in a deer stand/blind for hours freezing or burning up whilst slapping mosquitoes, then field dressing what you kill after dragging the carcass for miles. Now, if you could just put me in the place to shoot it, then let someone else drag it... well, then I might be interested- well, that and letting me sleep in. Oh I am getting off point.

I also wanted to say that in addition to your sentiment about hunting which quite a few people don't realize is that hunters are the quintessential environmentalists. I have rarely met a hunter that wouldn't be considered a steward of the environment in which he or she hunts. They abhor seeing any wildlife or landscape being treated improperly. Hunters, in fact, need the wildlife to flourish.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

As long as it is done ethically and humanely, doesn't put populations at risk of extinction, and the meat is eaten and not wasted, I have no problem with hunting.

The jerks that use high tech gadgets for simply the fun is un-sportsmanlike and I have no respect for them. Real hunters use bows or low tech firearms.

 

[ninja steve]

if i where to hunt it would be a quick shot to the head and eat all the eadible parts and prehaps sell the non edible parts therefore its 100% useful

 

[Rolling Thunder]

It's fun.


What's the problem?

 

[hippykiller]

I go hunting all around the world. i just recently got back from the U.S.A, i was moose hunting in Maine.

 

[tsb247]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with hunting for both food and sport. Any real hunter will tell you that no matter what they kill, it will be either eaten or used in some way to make it's death not in vain. That's the idea. People hunt for food or because they have some use for the animal they are hunting.

Hunters have a culture all of our own that encourages an attitude of conservation and respect for creatures big and small (Well, in the U.S. anyway). In fact, the very act of hunting a specific kind of animal can be good for the species as a whole in many cases. Let's take a look at the deer population as an example:

Deer have a relatively short gestation term (about 200 days), and a relatively low mortality rate at birth. If you couple that with the fact that they have very few predators in some areas of the country (We're talking the U.S. here), you tend to get population explosions of deer every year or so. That problem is sometimes made larger by mild winters and early springs that keep the weak or the sick from dying off like they would naturally due to winter extremes. What happens when you get a population explosion? The answer is simple. The general deer population competes with itself for food, and the likelihood of disease spreading through the general population skyrockets. Not only that, but they end up having more contact with humans and tend to get hit by cars on highways, get into and destroy farmers' crops, and generally wreak havoc on civilization (oh yes, deer can wreak havoc).

Hunting deer when the population is overly-inflated is actually good for the species. It thins their numbers thereby reducing competition for food, it decreases the likelihood of disease spreading quickly throughout the population by reducing the population, and it reduces their overall contact with humans by shifting the population elsewhere. Of course there are limits... It keeps them from being over hunted.