Originally posted by John Carter of Mars:
Were you so ragged the folks used to call you Patches?
j\k
Anyway one time I was walking with a friend of mine to the woods and we spotted a King snake that had been hit by a car and was still alive but its intestines were hanging out. My friend didn’t have the constitution for it so I had to put it out of its misery. I picked up a rock and smashed it’s head in…I felt bad but felt that I had at least ended the suffering.
I grew up the son of an avid hunter, I liked to hunt, too. I’ve killed many things though I’m not as blood thirsty as some I have known. Hell, when I was twenty and there was still a market fo fur, I ran traplines in the swamp. Racoons used to bring up to $16.00 a piece.
I’ve never shot an animal but I’ve killed thousands - nay - *hundreds of thousands * of fish of all species, a few porpous…es (sp?), a couple of sharks and loads of other sea creatures. There was a lot of cats in the village I grew up in and they really liked to catch birds, but not necessarily kill them. Therefore I had to kill a lot of injured birds, sometimes several birds in one day.
I can’t really say I enjoy killing any of them (except for some of the more vile fish, their English names evade me, unfortunately). I’m not afraid to admit that killing a large shark does make me feel like a big man, though. A BIG man! 
I killed a rat once with a broom. It was in an abandoned truck that I was cleaning out, so I used the broom handle like a pool cue to hit it repeatedly through the headliner. It finally crawled out to get away, stopped on the seat of the truck and looked at me with its huge eyes until the eyes greyed over and it died, then a friend’s dog found it and ran off with it.
I felt terrible at the time and I still regret killing an innocent animal, but I’d do it again to aviod being bitten by a rat. For what it’s worth, I’d still like to hunt sometime, though I know I’d feel the same way about anything I was lucky enough to kill.
I should have mentioned this in my first post, then I might not sound as monstrous as I did earlier.
We didn’t know the squirrel was there. We heard stuff moving around in the fireplace, figured it was the wind blowing down the chimney, moving the paper and stuff around, which makes an annoying sound, in an otherwise silent house. So we started the fire to get rid of the paper, and therefore, the noise.
I didn’t say I enjoyed it, it’s a terrible way for anything to die. I’ve never killed anything else on purpose, and I don’t intend to start.
I would certainly object to the idea that this is an American norm. Because it isn’t.
Be realistic.
The following
Would be a heck of a lot more surprising to hear coming from the mouth of a citizen of a different first-world country.
Oh, yes. 'Cause the majority of Americans are bloodthirsty hunters who enjoy killing domestic animals. I find troubling this bizarre stereotype of us yanks as psychotic destroyers.
I did no such thing.
Why must people always read meanings that are not there in what is said.
America, with it’s bizarre gun culture, is a place more likely to contain some people who will shoot a defenceless animal and enjoy it than say, Britain. How can you read from that that the majority of Americans are bloodthirsty hunters?
Hunting is scarcely a tidy, cultural, " American thing." The degrees current of fomality–and possibilty–surrounding it just vary widely.
I’m a very good shot w/ a .22 rifle. My father taught me, with the gun his father gave him as a boy. (I still have it, btw, for obvious sentimental reasons.) Hey, it came from his Depression childhood, when immenent starvation was all too real. He lived in the hard-scrabble hills of upper Appalachia where game was–and is–fairly common.
He taught me to shoot–at targets. First for the technical skill, y’unnerstand, but with with full respect for the deadly potential.
Actually taking a life, right up front and personal, is a whole 'nother thing. I once, one time only, shot a squirrel. A “tree rat”. And then couldn’t bear to dress it out, much less eat it. A true waste of life, that.
I bear scant respect for anybody who cries virtue by eating “clean” meat, i.e. that killed and packaged for comfortable consumption. An animal died just the same, only conveninently out of sight.
That said, I have grave reservations about those who glory in hunting. It’s not remotely challenging, as a “sport”. The firepower and risk are all ludicrously one-sided, even when done with a bow and arrow. (Yeah, my old man taught me that one too.)
I rationally understand “wild life managment”, balancing starvation, habitat, etc. and culling. Maybe it was never all that simple, but the respect–gratitude-- for lives taken is pretty perilous, for the hunted as well as the hunter.
Veb
Well, it depends on where you live/grew up.
As a kid, I killed sparrows and pigeons on my uncles farm (dairy and cattle feeding operation). Why? Because they would crap in the feed and contaminate it.
We would also death trap gophers, because they ate the vegetables we planted to eat during the winter. We would also shoot gophers and prairie dogs because they destroy crop land with their burrows, and cows and horses can break their legs in the burrows.
We killed grouse and pheasants, because they are food. We killed deer for the same reason.
Most of my friends hunt and all of them fish. We eat what we kill, because fish, game birds, deer and elk all taste good.
Most of the people who have hides and horns on the walls also ate those animals. I’m not so hot on hunting non-food game animals, but out here in Montana it’s a big industry ($300 on up per day for guiding someone to kill a big horn sheep, bear, etc.)
My grandparents and parents hunted for food. Many of us still do. I can get 100-200 pounds of elk or deer meat cheaper than I can get beef. And venison is cheaper, better meat.
Whistlepig
BTW, I feel kind of bad when I kill something to eat. But probably no worse than a shark or a grizzly does. But it’s food and I’m a carnivore.
[QUOTE=Lobsang]
I did no such thing.
Why must people always read meanings that are not there in what is said.
America, with it’s bizarre gun culture, is a place more likely to contain some people who will shoot a defenceless animal and enjoy it than say, Britain. QUOTE]
Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s kind of like how you tend to think of pre-teens taking a two-year-old from a store and beating him to death, then leaving his body by the railroad tracks as more of a British thing than American thing. I mean here, they would have just shot him and gotten it over with much more quickly.
:rolleyes:
My statement is that the act of shooting “nuisance dogs, cats, coyotes, and groundhogs.” feeling “good” is NOT an American standard. Of course there are people who hunt - and for a variety of reasons, and more power to them.
Shooting an animal because it’s being a nuisance (in whatever form), and getting pleasure out of that, is not something you can say is a typically American attitude.
I am not saying that it is an American standard either. I am sure the vast majority of Americans would be equaly shocked at the prospect of shooting a domesticated animal without feeling. I was just surprised by Crafter_mans post and didn’t think before opening my mouth.
But then I defended my statement because it bugs me when people get touchy almost at the mere mention of the name of their country in a negative light. I couldn’t give a toss if someone said something similar about britain. As long as they didn’t imply that it aplies to every brit (which becomes a dig at me). I did not imply that america is full of uncaring pet killing hunters. But I stand by the belief that it is a bigger thing in America [hunting animals for fun/sport] than elsewhere.
I stand by the belief that the perception is drastically unequal, not to mention lopsided.
I live in a metropolitan area of @250K–right downtown–and still have had deer casually munching down on my veggie gardens. Rather unusual, but not unknown. Let’s not even mention raccoon, squirrels, etc. The US is huge, and more of it’s open land than not.
The US may not be as vehemently “green” as much of the UK, but neither of us are definitive poles regarding hunting lust. Claiming otherwise requires much too narrow a focus, culturally speaking. Can you really discount the whole rest of the globe–Asia, South America, Africa, Eastern Europe–as comfortably PC, animal loving cultures?
I’m NOT saying American hunting culture doesn’t exist. I DO maintain that its perception far outweighs the actuality in wider terms, just by dint of popular communication.
Just mentioning…
Interesting question. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me fishing. Once, I caught a gigantic catfish and lots of fishermen came running over to congratulate me. For the first and only time, I said, “Let’s take it home.” I went down in the basement to watch my dad kill it. My great-grandmother cooked it for dinner and I felt so bad. So bad that I was sick that night.
That was 30 something years ago. It still hurts to think about it. I keep it in perspective, but feel like a hypocrite. I’m willing to eat bacon, beef, fish, etc., but won’t eat lamb, rabbit or veal. What is the difference between eating a pig or a dog? I will eat it, but only if someone else kills it. Even my husband has to put the live lobsters into the pot. Sorry to ramble on so.
I accidentally hit a bird once - a couple feathers were left in the car grill. Other than a passing “Ugh” it didn’t bother me much.
Once when I was out walking my dog in my neighborhood, we came across a rabbit. My dog wanted to chase it, but he was leashed as always. But he scared the rabbit, which ran in front of a passing car. Even though I wasn’t the one who hit it, I felt responsible for it and felt pretty bad about it.
I’ve killed lots of things in my life. My dad has always really loved hunting and the outdoors and I used to go hunting and whatnot with him all the time when I was younger (like middle school aged). I’ve been dove hunting and duck hunting. I don’t feel bad actually shooting the birds, but it sucks when they aren’t dead and you have to twist their necks or pull their heads all the way off to kill them.
I’ve never killed any kind of furry animal, unless you count the possom I hit on the highway. I’ve shot squirrels in my yard with a pellet gun because I hate squirrels, but it doesn’t kill them.
I do bird taxidermy. This entails skinning and picking apart birds that have been shot. I have never shot any of the birds, my dad shot them all. I haven’t been hunting in so long I doubt I could even do it anymore.
When I was little I used to get really pissed at my dad because he would tell me how he shoots cats when he goes hunting…like if one just happens to walk by. Stuff like that pisses me off. I really like animals.
I get pleasure out of it for two reasons:
I have eliminated an animal I consider to be a nuisance.
I hit the target. (Hitting a moving target is a challenge.)
What are you surprised about? Around my neck of the woods I’m considered Joe-average.
Lest you forget, our “bizarre gun culture” perforated quite a few of your redcoats during our War of Independence… :dubious: