Over/under? Hmm…Beretta? Browning? Remington? I like the side-by-side, myself. Of course, if I was going after “big game,” I’d take a .700 Nitro Express.
In your part of the world, any animal or even plant (*) is a threat for human life, anyway. So, it hardly counts.
Seriously, what kind of horrible disease are you going to catch eating a rabbit?
(*)I still remember this tree that can throw at unsuspecting bystanders needles made of a material I believed to be always synthetic, needles that will let the aforementioned bystander in agonizing pain for months. Does someone knows the name of the tree? I can’t remember it.
Cheneys hunting is not unique. There are lots of places that have big game in closed in areas for your shooting pleasure.
I don’t know about in Australia, but throughout the U.S. there is a possibilty that one will contract tularemia.
Let’s not start speculating on the possibilty that another poster might be banned–particularly not in GD. OK?
[ /Modding ]
Calicivirus , Myxomatosis, Intestinal worms, and God only knows what else- we use poison on rabbits here as well. I personally wouldn’t eat one that I’d shot here- people do, but you have to eat either a “Farmed” rabbit or know your game animals really well.
You can eat hares as well, if you wanted to. Can’t say I’ve ever tried, but as I’ve mentioned before I’m not a game meat fan at the best of times.
But never try to substitute hare for rabbit in hasenpfeffer. Most people will be disgusted if they find a hare in their stew…
I looked up for Tularemia, and it seems to be contracted mainly via ticks and flies or undercooked meat, and to infect anyway other mammals. So, I’m not sure why eating rabbit would put someone more at risk than most other meats. Calcivirus seem not to be rabbit-specific, and to be transmitted by excrements. Once again I’m not sure why rabbit meat should be considered particularly risky as a result.
And as for Myxomatosis, I ate many rabbits that had contracted it. They don’t look nice, but once skinned and cooked, they look and taste exactly the same. AFAIK, this disease cannot affect humans. And the wikipedia article indeed doesn’t mention it as a human disease (or as affecting any other animal besides rabbits, for that matter).
Firstly, I’ll take the time to state that you have attempted to assume the moral high ground here utilizing no arguments other than: " I think that killing animals is mean, anyone who does that is bad." If you have anything more intricate than that rather emotional and juvenile rationale to support your position I would like to hear it.
Now on to your post proper. People have done any number of things that we currently find repugnant for social reasons over the course of our history. Trophy hunting is no different from any other pass-time, religious ceremony, sport, or art that produces no quantifiable contribution to our basic physical needs. Unless you’d like to state that anything that does not provide such a contribution is also inherently of no worth to a culture, then let’s drop that line of argument.
Every culture that we currently know of has made use of animal products at one time or another in their long histories, for food, clothing, tools, or ceremonial use. That continues today with nothing more than the modifications of time. Trophy hunting falls into “ceremonial use”. It’s no different than pissing away good produce in a ceremonial offering at a shrine. I’m not going to fully equate trophy hunting with organized religion, but they serve about the same amount of usefulness. People do stuff that has no quantifiable value, but makes them feel good. I think an arctic fox lined coat would be delightfully soft, warm, and emotionally pleasant in a way that synthetics could never achieve. Why do your preferences trump mine?
Yes occasionally you do run across one of these guys. Usually you do take a step back and consider their motivation. Such hunters normally gravitate to each other, as they are not well received within the larger society. It is considered good manners to use your kill, or donate the portions that you do not want to charity. To my knowledge they are not officially monitored anywhere, but hunters get to know one another and such people are quickly ostracized from most groups in my experience.
I am a non hunter. I know a lot of hunters. I try to understand their viewpoints. I am well aware of the problem with eating meat and using leather. I try not to do it. But we do not have to kill for food nowadays. There are a lot of people who want to. I do not understand the draw for it. But different strokes for different folks.
But we all know bad hunters. I had a friend who was a cop. He killed a deer. While he was dressing it another deer came by. He pulled out his service revolver and killed it. It was the size of a big dog. He was happy to tell the story.
Hunters have to put up with people like Cheney and my cop friend. They have to understand that non hunters are offended by things like that. When I try to understand the hunters mind set, I am always put off by the bad hunters. Sorry.
My own humble opinion on the matter:
I like to reduce the amount of obvious killing I’m connected to, meaning I pick up spiders and move them outside instead of killing them, but I eat meat and wear leather, it may seem like a contradiction, but I’m ok with the contradictory nature of my existence.
At the same time, I firmly believe that things like hunting and getting enjoyment out of a successful hunt are part of who we are (generally speaking). As a matter of fact, I think we are chock-full of all kinds of natural tendencies that were beneficial for our survival over the last million years or so, but that can seem “wrong” from the perspective of the societies that most of us live in today.
Bottom line: I think it’s perfectly natural to enjoy hunting and I don’t judge those that do, but I personally choose not to do it.
There are three phrases that come to my mind; “Each to their own!”, “Different strokes for different folks!”, and “Live and let live!”
It’s the last one that is still proving my stumbling block, when it comes to killing an animal for any reason, other than self-defense, or for food and survival.
Ivan:
I don’t think big game hunting is a “sport” any more than camping is. I also don’t think it needs any justification. As a matter of fact, I think justification is required from those who have never hunted.
The current mores of society have done a lot to hide the fact that we all survive at the expense of other creatures suffering and dying. Falsely I think, some people have shame over this fact. They would like to pretend their lives cause no harm to others. They may be disturbed that other people do not share that same perverted (in my mind) worldview.
I liken such a worldview to religious fundamentalists that might attach some sort of shame and stigma to swimming suits or a healthy attitude towards sex, and feel the need to express their outrage all over the place.
Really, those are the folks with the problem.
I exist, and so do you, because you are in the words of Neal Stephenson, a “Colossal bad ass of evolution.” For billions of years your ancestors have been outfighting, outfucking, outkilling and outeating the 99.999999% of all species which ever existed and are now exctinct because of it.
As an animal you do not receive your nutrients directly from the sun and soil and air, but must steal them from other creatures that do, or from those creatures which steal from other creatures.
Specifically, you are adapted to hunt. It’s what you were made to do. You have little protective body hair, and lots of slow twitch endurance muscles. Your head is on a spring that lets you keep it steady when you run. You have binocular vision, and a large ass full of muscle to propel you forward. You can bleed heat by sweating profusely, operate while dehydrated.
All this makes you highly specialized. You have given up almost everything and taken tremendous disadvantages all for one small edge. You can run farther than any other animal on the planet and you could do it in the heat of the day. Why? So that you can run down game until it collapses of heat exhaustion. We are literally born to run and hunt. Even your psychology and the way you think, the way your brain is wired and the way you view the world is all geared to this form of persistence hunting.
So, I ask why you don’t hunt? A hammer that just hangs on the wall is a waste.
I haven’t hunted since my daughters were born. I would just rather spend more time with them. I used to though. I did it for several reasons.
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To hunt succesfully requires mastery and integration of a variety of skillsets and knowledge the acquisition of which is inherently challenging. Gaining skills is a good thing.
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Everybody here does it, so I figured “when in Rome…”
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I eat meat, and use animal goods, and my existence is only at the suffering and death of other creatures. I figured I should deal with it firsthand rather than hide and let others do all the dirty work. I owed it to myself and all the animals that I use to acquire that knowledge and perspective.
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The whole process is fun.
My conclusions from having hunted is that there is nothing wrong with suffering and death. I don’t know why we as a society pretend there is. It’s really not something we can afford. From living on a farm, I would see animals suffer and die all the time. Every spring the driveway and ground would be littered with hundreds if not thousands of baby birds that fell from their nest. I’d see cats kill things. Dogs kill things. Suffering and death was everywhere. It is a central component of life.
That we as a society seek to hide this is totally asinine and perverted. You too, will suffer and die. No one here gets out alive. We hide it in nursing homes and hospitals and we spend our whole lives avoiding it and hiding it and running away from it. I guess the reason we avoid it is that when we see other creatures suffer and die it is hard not to be reminded that that fate will also befall us.
I’ve had more than my share of physical suffering. I’ve cultivated it and become familiar with it. It first started when I got burned as a kid and spent about a month in agony, and learned to live with it. Up until recently living in constant pain was pretty much the norm. It was only relatively recently that modern medicine and society gave us the chance to avoid it or postpone. I think that postponing is a mistake. I’ve cultivated my own suffering by running marathons and ultramarathons. If what I read and understand is correct than I have driven myself to suffer as much as is possible. That is, it would hurt so much that it would be an overload and the pain would fade. This is consistent with what happened when I was burned. It was like my body just used up all its suffering. It’s incredible what you can get used to if you have to, or you force yourself to.
A book called Angry White Pajamas is about an Englishman who goes through the most brutal martial arts training program on the planet. For two years he is basically continually putting himself through absolute torture. One day, while standing nude in winter, in a freezing waterfall, he has an epiphany: Physically, his body was nothing more than a pressurized bag of shit. Once he understood that, he could make it do anything he wanted it to. He learned how to be in command of himself, rather than a slave to sensation.
That is really the end point of all discipline.
I found that same epiphany through running ultramarathons. I know for a fact that I can run through all the pain and suffering my body is capable of throwing at me, and keep running until my body breaks down, collapses and will no longer follow my commands. I know because I’ve done it.
What that taught me is that there is nothing wrong with suffering, only that stupidly as a society we’ve decided that it is somehow bad and we cripple ourselves mentally and physically to avoid it. To do so is as wrong as that “circumcise” young girls to protect them from the evils of sexual pleasure. Suffering is just another sensation, neither good nor bad in and of itself. I find mild suffering in the form of exertion actually pleasurable.
Suffering enhances pleasure. A drink of cool water on a hot day after a long run is a lot more pleasurable than the finest wine when you’re already sated. A lot of pleasure is the contrast with suffering not the pleasure itself.
Nothing wrong with suffering or death at all. During your time on earth you are going to inflict and experience a great deal of the former. You’re going to inflict a lot of death (whether you do it personally, or not) and you, too are going to die.
Suffering and death are natural. The avoidance of is what’s unnatural. That avoidance is going to leave you with a rude awakening when it’s your turn in the barrel.
Eating meat that you’ve hunted yourself is to my eyes intrinsically superior from a moral standpoint than eating meat you bought in a store. By hunting, your license has contributed to the conservation of game lands and the species you hunt. You have killed an animal that has led a natural free range life rather than one that was confined. You are participated in the act itself and saw it through. To hunt, you had to gain understanding and respect for the creature you hunted. You got to know it. You killed it yourself. Butchered it yourself, and when you consume the meat you think back on what happened and the creature it was, and your experience with it.
That is a lot more pleasurable than going to KFC and having an impersonal bucket of chicken. You show a lot more respect and understanding by having a personal realtionship with the things you eat, and I think that is a higher moral ground than simply consuming.
To hunt is to commune with nature. If you don’t think that suffering and death are a part of that, perhaps the largest part of it, than I don’t think you really understand what nature is, or your place in this world. Even more sadly, I don’t think you understand what your destiny has in store for you.
Funny you mention that. I stopped hunting after my daughter’s were born. Seeing as I wasn’t doing anything with all my hunting stuff, I sold it and have bought a ton of camera equipment to take pictures of my kids with.
I have done just what you describe with my kids, and by myself. Oddly, I’ve even combined the two when I took my kids fishing (which is just another form of hunting.) I find sneaking up and taking a picture of a deer every bit as satisfying as hunting it. The big difference is that after taking a picture, I still have to worry about what’s for dinner, and with hunting you don’t.
I don’t really see hunting versus shooting a picture as being intrinsically better or worse. Just different.
If I go out an take a picture of a deer and then go home and eat a steak what real moral claim do I have by saying that I didn’t a pull a trigger?
Exactly wrong. It is because they are efficient hunters that there are different breeds. They are just efficient at different game.
Try setting an Irish Wolfhound against rats, or a rat terrier against a wolf.
Some people do. That’s how they became domesticated.
That wolves and dogs are the same species can be seen from their ability to interbreed freely and produce fertile young.
Wow, Scylla, everything you said was very very interesting and I can tell you took a lot of time to think of it and put it into words. Don’t think it fell on deaf ears. Especially this part:
It’s very true. We do everything we can to hide that stuff so we’re never reminded of the cold and hard facts of life. Authors like J.G. Ballard with novels like Crash are so unbelievably transgressive because they take those plain facts of life that everyone buries under the surface, and shoves them in your face. There’s going to be suffering, there’s going to be death. It’s just the way it is…
…so don’t be a pussy!
In any case, it doesn’t mean all of life has to be joyless and morbid. Certainly not. You should enjoy everything in life. But you have to learn to take the bad with the good.
If you eat meat but are against hunting, you’re a hypocrite. By eating meat you’re participating in the mass slaughter of animals, probably in factory farms, living in conditions far less pleasant than some deer that gets to run around in the forest for its whole life and then is painlessly killed with one bullet.
Rot. I eat meat but am against hunting as a recreational activity. If you gave me a choice of being vegetarian or killing my own meat, I would be first in line with the bolt-gun. But I still regard it as repulsive to get ones recreational enjoyment by going out and killing things.
I also believe in the right to have abortion. If it were legal, I would regard the performing of abortions for recreational pleasure as repulsive. The motive behind an action counts in terms of whether it is an appropriate activity or not.
That does not make me a hypocrite.
My point is the animals are getting killed either way. What the fuck difference does it make who is doing it?
If someone’s going out there and torturing an animal to death, that’s one thing. But that’s not what hunting is, not if you’re a good hunter anyway.
Humans are part of the life cycle like all the other animals. Don’t forget that.
Indeed, we have seem to get somewhat off track from:
Into dog management 101. But to whittle it down to basics - I think a majority of dogs still have a plentiful amount of hunting instinct, but are lacking in experience and physical equipment. A human-reared fox, wolf, coyote, leopard or whatever will also be highly deficient in hunting experience in exactly the same way (but without the physical handicaps suffered by some dog breeds e.g. bulldogs, pugs etc.) - this is not due to any deficiency in the animal itself. As to whether a generic mutt is a physically inferior predator to a jackal or other similar-sized canid I really couldn’t say. My guess is that they would be a bit inferior in terms of senses, but where domesticated dogs have managed to overcome the initial challenge of surving, they are perfectly able to establish and sustain a wild population if sufficient prey is available.
http://www.icwdm.org/handbook/carnivor/FeralDog.asp
So - I doubt that dogs (or humans) are so removed from their genetic heritage that the seek/pursue/kill instinct is significantly reduced. It’s more a matter of social conditioning.
But once our evolutionary or genetic development has been fulfilled, aren’t the only changes in our behavioural make-up only going to come from social conditioning, and hasn’t that social conditioning tamed us from the savage beasts we both were, to the extent we are less hunters now, than we were 10,000 years ago?
By the way people, thanks for some excellent responses. My brain is still digesting some of them. 