ZOMG!! I am in love.
Wow, 50 yards… that’s a gimme. If I had a 50 yard shot fall into my lap I guarantee you that my shot will be far more humane than the slaughterhouse. I do hunt rifle though… bow would be far different. I always find it amusing that non-hunters fixate on the ‘kill’ portion of hunting, assuming that is the reason hunters do what they do. So, let’s see… I spend my money on gear, obtain a place to hunt, scout it, put in practice time with my weapon, then get up before dawn often in the freezing cold, hike out to the site then (depending) sit absolutely motionless and silent for hours waiting… and the 5 seconds I take a shot (if I do take one) is supposed to make it all worthwhile. Hmmm, I think you believe killing things is far more thrilling than it actually is. I worry about you.
Who, Kimmy? Or the crazy non-vegan vegans?. Antibiotics are murder!
Dude. I am a vegetarian who thinks hunting is a bizarre hobby (not like I want to make it illegal or anything, I just really don’t see the appeal) and even I think mutanmoose is coming off like an idiot here.
I am not a vegetarian. But I can see that they have a point in criticizing land that is used for herds of domesticated animals. The land could feed more people if it were used for growing grain instead of feeding cattle, etc. But that doesn’t apply to the hunter ordinarily. I think it’s the concept of the unnecessary destruction of life. Some people just can’t stand the thought of needlessly causing pain in an animal.
But that doesn’t mean that all vegetarians are judgmental about meateaters. It’s unfair to characterize them as such.
Although it is fair to categorize human beings as natural predators, unlike other animals that live by predation, we are aware of the pain we cause and the finality of killing our prey.
I’ve certainly never understood the appeal of going hunting more than ONCE, just to prove that you could actually kill some game.
My husband is a hunter, and I think that part of his desire to hunt is just instinct. I think that another part of it is that it’s a challenge, physically and mentally.
I don’t hunt myself. I don’t want to do the work to hunt, and I most certainly don’t want to do the butchering, and I don’t like the taste of game. However, I acknowledge that many hunters are very ethical in the way they hunt. My husband says that a proper hunter will make sure of his target, that it’s the proper species (that is, that he hasn’t mistaken a cow, or a human, for his target), that the target can be killed cleanly in one shot, and that there’s nothing behind the target that would be affected by a stray bullet.
Frankly, I would much rather buy my meat in clean little plastic wrapped packages, and not even do so much as cut up a whole raw chicken, but I do know that these packs of meat used to be animals, and that they died because I choose to eat meat.
Hunting is more moral than refusing to hunt, from the prey’s perspective. It prevents prey from dying horribly of disease and starvation. This is because we’ve killed so many of the apex predators they no longer serve to keep herbivore populations in check, meaning prey overpopulation is now limited by available food supply and, possibly, infectious disease.
The result of the above is that if humans don’t act like the predators we’ve displaced, prey face slow, painful deaths from starvation, as opposed to the relatively quick death from a rifle or shotgun shot or even an arrow. Calling a gunshot death inhumane compared to starving is so ignorant I can barely see fit to dignify it with much commentary.
If you ignore what the prey feels, humans can be endangered by overpopulation of larger herbivores such as deer. A deer on the road is an accident waiting to happen. I know from personal experience that deer are too damn stupid to understand cars or anything else using the roads, and I’ve heard plenty about people dying due to deer on the roads.
This is just one article out of many on the subject of deer overpopulation in specific.
I’ve been trying to think of a way our friend here is right, and then it came to me:
Humans are not necessarily natural predators. As I seem to recall from a mostly forgotten scientific report, due to quirks in human evolution it’s thought humans were originally scavengers eating scraps from the kills of larger animals. Therefore, mutantmoose is perfectly correct in eating food something else has killed: by doing this, we return to our skulking hyena-kin roots.
That’s all I got. 
Well, there’s maybe an ethical conception from which to make an argument that hunting is ethically questionable since it’s not merely killing animals for food, which, by and large, just isn’t a necessity (for the typical individual) in today’s society, but also for sport/challenge and thus, there’s a certain enjoyment associated with it that serves as a motive for the killing besides the need for food – which of course doesn’t account for the necessity of hunting to cap populations and other things.
Still, mutantmoose’s position isn’t merely cognitively dissonant, it’s cognitively divorced, property separated, and having care of the kids only every other weekend. If you eat meat, animals die because of you, and there’s nothing in principle wrong with that.
i came in to mention the first …
And most hunters I know [and me, when I was still able to walk and hunt] stand or blind hunt. We wait for the animal to come close, and shoot it with precision. Chasing a scared wounded animal changes the flavor of the meat unpleasantly. A clean kill is way better. It beats the hell out of being kept in a feed lot, and run into a small stall and shot in the head with a bolt.
Yes, but read it carefully. The closest it comes to talking about “slow, painful deaths from starvation” is talking about “skinny deer.” The idea that population booms and busts are common is an ecological myth: species tend to breed less when food is scarce, and population numbers make a sine wave, not a rollercoaster (going up slowly, then plunging). Population increase slows as a population nears the limit of its habitat.
mutantmoose, I guarantee the deer don’t give a shit about whether their killers are enjoying the process, nor do the pigs in the slaughterhouse. Skald could paint himself in the steaming blood of his victim and dance a victory dance among the entrails, and it would have no moral repercussions on the death. The slaughterhouse workers could hold a full Catholic funeral rite for the dead pig, and the dead pig wouldn’t care. Your definition of “murderer” contains nothing about the state of mind of the killer.
xtisme, a vegetarian who believes that animals have inherent value and have interests that deserve protections may be consistent in a condemnation of meat-eaters; in doing so, they adopt an ethical position similar to people who argue for the protection of human infants. (I’m not arguing that animals SHOULD have rights comparable to those of human infants, merely that people who suggest they do may hold a coherent position).
I’ve just about stopped eating red meat, because the factory-farm-to-slaughterhouse system we have for quadrupeds provides such a miserable existence, ending with the poor animals having to stand in line to get killed. (Chickens I give a pass, because they’re basically vegetables with a head.)
But I’ll take some of that venison, if you have any extra.
Is there a farm near you that might sell you beef? We keep beef cows in open pasture. Calves are raised by their mothers. (Bonus: The meat is tastier than the grocery store stuff, too.) People that are generally ethically opposed to eating beef will eat ours because they know it’s been raised and butchered ethically. Trying to find someone like that near you might be worth it.
This has got to be the most ignorant argument against hunting I have ever seen!
What the hell is modern America? Did you know that there is a whole world outside the U.S. borders for that matter? What freaking world do you live in? Have you ever bought groceries? Have you noticed the current escalation of food prices? Are you filthy rich and the economy does not affect you?
I hate to break it to you, but in poor rural areas hunting isn’t a way of life, it’s fucking survival!
As a long time vegetarian all I have to say to mutantmoose and his absurd and obvious baiting is this:
Fuck off, troll.
Hunting is worse than picking up a steak at the supermarket and completely cutting yourself off from any realization that something died so you could eat? I don’t know how much more obvious trolling could get on this subject.
I don’t know why you guys are all being so hard on Mutant Moose.
It’s obvious she’s just terrified of being Skald’s next meal. Run moose, run!
That position isn’t that difficult to understand, it can be due to the type of death the meat animal must endure and how much collateral damage occurs in the process. A slaughterhouse usually doesn’t wound the animal and let it crawl off to die somewhere and doesn’t accidentally shoot other people, pets, trees, houses and cars in the process of taking down the animal.
Wait, are you saying that McNuggets contain actual chicken?! Of all the claims in this thread from both sides this is the hardest one to accept.
Neither does a hunter.
Neither does a hunter. At least not a responsible hunter. Condemning all hunters for the actions of a few (admittedly the ones that make the news because of their irresponsible behavior) is like condemning all drivers because some of them drive like assholes.
I knew I would get that response, I just didn’t think it would be so quick. I was explaining how someone can be a meat eater and oppose hunting. There are a lot more issues involved with hunting than just eating meat. Yes, there are a lot of responsible hunters but that doesn’t mean you have to like a thing just because some of the people that do it are responsible.
And everyone else on the road are assholes.