sport hunting

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by birch, Sep 5, 2010.

  1. AJRelic Malformed Registered Senior Member

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    I think that's wrong. It's like throwing dynamite in a lake. At that point it's not hunting, that's just killing.
     
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  3. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    don't safaris help the local economy? Aren't they only hunting a limited number of animals that aren't endangered?
     
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  5. AJRelic Malformed Registered Senior Member

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    Haha I hope it does. At this point it isn't so much hunting as it is target practice. If all you have to do is point and shoot then the only difference between this and the gun range is the fact that you actually kill something in the process.

    I don't like the idea, but just because I don't understand doesn't make it wrong.
     
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  7. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    In your fictitious scenario, the deer is near death already and someone is stupidly bringing their hand to the deer's mouth. For what reason do you think this is pervasive enough to pose a serious threat to hunters? Try to answer truthfully, if you can. You are talking about a mechanism that takes place after the deer is already defeated.
    Halt: why are you assuming the act of hunting is the pleasurable portion of the process to obtain food? I'm quite sure that the reason for hunting was to obtain that food. There's your part that makes the person feel good: eating the food. In the meantime, hunting was a chore that gave way to injuries. In the likeliest case, it was done only because it was necessary.
    Hunting is for people who have no brains and lives, AJ. There are better ways to spend your time than pretending to be a caveman. Try it some time.

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    You aren't..? Aww.
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    Last edited: Sep 6, 2010
  8. AJRelic Malformed Registered Senior Member

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    There isn't but you'll find that there are some fishing advocates that'll turn blue trying to argue there is. They make some fairly decent points, for instance fishing doesn't necessarily involve killing the thing and it's widely accepted that fish don't perceive pain.

    In their defense you don't see too many people hunting with tranquilizers and the actual act of fishing doesn't seem as violent as hunting.

    But in the end I think they both seek to fulfill the same kind of pleasure, that is to stalk and capture their prey. It just so happens fishing is potentially less lethal.
     
  9. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    if you are hunting with the intent to kill, the result will end up the same. killing.

    i've seen electricity used to shock fish immobile so they can be gathered.

    hunting is not about a fairness or rules, it's about the objective.
     
  10. John99 Banned Banned

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    22,046
    That is false though. Except for some big game hunters (not really done in the U.S either) close to 100% of hunters USE the animal for food weather for themselves or someone else will eat it. I never hunted so i am not lining up to choose a side here but if something is not true then we should comment on it.
     
  11. John99 Banned Banned

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    22,046
    So it is the stalking that bothers you? The animal will not consent to be hunted. If you lived in the wilderness and was unable to farm would you go hungry or kill a rabbit. The rabbits will keep multiplying and you would be dead if you didnt hunt them but then they may get eaten by a mountain lion too.
     
  12. AJRelic Malformed Registered Senior Member

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    87
    How did you come to the conclusion it bothered me?
     
  13. John99 Banned Banned

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    Sorry, i got you confused with birch.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    When something is very difficult and subtle of execution, the people who enjoy it will get better, faster, than the people who don't. Good, skilled hunters, the ones that fed their tribe the best, have always enjoyed hunting. We are their descendants. Almost everyone enjoys hunting - look at hide & seek, tag, Easter egg hunts, games involving chasing and catching.

    For most people, the part that is not enjoyable is the killing and handling. In the aboriginal cultures we know of, making food from the successfully hunted animal was often delegated to women. In modern society, fishermen often release caught fish, since killing and cleaning them - making food of them - is not nearly as enjoyable as hunting them. If the animal only stayed dead for a few minutes, so that the person could get their picture taken with it or tag it with proof of kill, etc, I think hunting would be more popular, not less. Making food from game is work.

    Humans enjoy hunting much more than killing and butchering - many people who have given up killing animals still hunt them, substituting photography or naturalist observation for the less enjoyable killing, for example.
     
  15. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    2,595
    Your activities involve searching for people or toys. None of them involve chasing an animal and killing it, which is what this thread is really about if you read the OP. As well, you are presuming to know the minds of people who existed since long before you were born, who performed activities that you have become rather disconnected from. That doesn't really fly.

    The definition of hunting for the purpose of this thread involves killing. What are you describing is a wholly different activity with a differing purpose as well. You should probably take your non-argument elsewhere. It has no bearing here.

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  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Children play at what adults do.

    That would be your assumption.

    No, I am presuming that our ancestors were generally similar to us in the fundamentals of how their minds worked, child and adult - people who enjoy things are better at them than people who don't, because they focus and remember and learn better, because they play at them. You are claiming that people were much different, fundamentally, in how they learned and lived, in a past that is not at all distant - we have written records of the European pioneers of the US, and the European life they left, and their experiences with stone age tribal peoples in the Americas, and so forth.

    There is no record anywhere of people not enjoying hunting, of having to be coerced or pressured by hardship, of giving up hunting for farming at the first opportunity with expressions of relief, of the lower status people in a hierarchical society being forced to do the hunting while the nobles sat around the castle, or any other indication that hunting was a disliked or onerous chore.

    Hunting was so far from being a chore as to be a privilege of the rich, in feudal and otherwise impoverished societies. Among the white poor in early America, the temptation of going to live with the reds included the temptation of a life of hunting, widely viewed as a self-indulgent or irresponsible way to live. Among the poor today, frequent and serious hunting is well known to be an activity of those who are - how to put it - less diligently employed, in general, than their harder working fellows.

    There are no societies in which hunting is held to be more onerous, less desirable, than any other way of producing food.
    People who have failed to kill anything often say they went hunting. Deer hunters sometimes fail to kill a deer for two or three consecutive years - they still claim to have gone hunting.

    I don't think you will find many people who cannot tell the difference between hunting and killing - and even fewer who would prefer killing to hunting, given a mutually exclusive choice. Employment on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, for example, is not envied, privileged work. Hunting guide - a job which often, or even ideally, involves no killing of one's own at all - is.
     
  17. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    2,595
    Nice double negative. We hear similar arguments from people who say you can't prove gods and devils don't exist...while not offering a single shred of evidence that they do exist.

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    Can you prove that? I don't think you can.

    This thread seems to be about people who hunt with the aim of killing, successful or not. Drawing in examples of easter egg hunts falls out of the scope of analogy here.
     
  18. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    This is true. Of the hunters I've known, every single one of them considers using all of the kill to be a moral imperative, and regards hunters who waste their kill with contempt. It is considered disrespectful to the animal, and to nature more generally, to waste life in such a way. Rather hunting is held to be something of a sacred honor, to be undertaken with respect and humility. People who disrespect that are considered tourist ingrates - rich city slickers who pay for a guided, catered trip on a game preserve so they can impress their co-workers with souvenir photos.

    I'm sure there exist hunters who are more cavalier about the question, but I also expect that they don't end up killing many animals (or at least, wild animals). This is because successful hunting in the wild (even with firearms) requires a near-religious level of dedication and investment, and so the types of people who are looking for a casual thrill rarely succeed. Whatever the actual demographics of 'real' hunters vs. fake, I think we can say with confidence that the "hunting culture" ethos hews much more closely to the "wild" version than the "game park" version. It's ultimately much more about empowering a self-reliant, close-to-nature self image as it is about actually killing any given animal. Hence the preference for bow hunting and other high-skill/low-payoff hunting methods amongst the hardcore hunter crowd. And the dogged persistence at the pursuit even when years go by without a successful kill.
     
  19. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    But if someone eats the trophy animal, does it really matter why it was killed?
     
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. In exactly the same way that it matters whether one climbs a mountain, or hires a helicopter to fly one up to the top. Both ways end with you standing on top of the mountain, but only one counts as "mountain climbing."

    Or, for a better analogy, compare climbing a mountain yourself vs. paying for a guided expedition where sherpas carry all the gear, set up all the camps, prepare all the meals, and make all of the mountaineering decisions.

    It's the difference between truly participating and being a tourist. If you bypass the whole years-of-dedication and assumption-of-personal-responsibility by paying someone else to do it for you, then you're a tourist.
     
  21. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Hunting helps White People prepare for the next Eastern invasion so we can kill them by the bushel fuckin basket.
     
  22. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    •In 2008, over one million deer collided with cars and motorcycles in the United States. According to estimates by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, this resulted in the death of 150 people, injuries to 29,000 others, and an estimated $1.1 billion in vehicle damage.

    •One recent study of 13 northeastern states revealed deer caused $248 million damage each year to agricultural crops, nurseries, and landscaping

    http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/rooney.html

    http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=MP685

    http://www.wtop.com/?nid=706&sid=1907417

    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...g-forest-ecosystems-agriculture-57900192.html

    http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/agriculturaldamage_tcm6-4636.pdf

    We don't have many predators anymore.
    We either have to reintroduce predators, which then means we have to deal with the occasional kid being eaten by a Wolf, or we have to fill the predator roll. Wolfs might be ok in the more sparsely populated West, but probably won't be a good fit in the middle of Maryland.
    We actually need MORE hunters, not less.

    •Declining numbers of hunters. The number of hunters in the United States has been declining since the 1970s. Fewer hunters in the woods during deer season will translate into larger deer populations over time.

    Arthur
     
  23. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    ^i started this thread in this subforum to consider why people think one type of killing or of certain animals okay or not okay vs another in relation to ethics, morality or justice not about practical considerations such as deer get in our way so their numbers need to be controlled. that's just an issue of competition for space or resources that was not the focus here.
     

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