# I don't 'get' hunting **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 21, 2009, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605 "2009-10-21T14:38:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/61 "2009-10-21T20:03:52Z")
If you try and “stalk” a deer, it’s going to notice you and it’s going to run away from you very quickly. That’s why deer hunting involves a lot of standing around very still. I used to go hunting with my dad and my uncles, and all the standing around in the cold when I was tired turned me off on deer hunting, but I did enjoy skipping school for a couple of days and walking around the wilderness with my dad. I’ve bagged one deer in my life and it didn’t create an insatiable bloodlust or a horrified revulsion; it just was. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/62 "2009-10-21T20:23:43Z")
I’m not a hunter, so I am not going to try to explain or justify hunting. I am, however, going to call you on this (from the OP): > [@Jettboy](#): > > Besides, it’s 2009; nobody really _has_ to hunt for sustenance any more; there are these things called ‘grocery stores’… Flat out not true. I presume you don’t know many poor people. Almost 8% of the population of my county is currently trying to subsist at below the poverty line. I have friends who simply can’t come up with a few dollars a pound to buy meat for the winter. They can, however, take a gun that they’ve owned for 20 years or more, buy a $20 box of cartridges and a $35 license, and go fill the freezer. These people aren’t trophy hunters. They’re not paying taxidermists. They’re not paying someone else to clean, cut, chop, or grind the meat. They’re picking up 3 or 4 deer tags (and an elk or pronhorn tag, on a good year), and feeding the family with the meat. Hunting is flat-out simply the only way these people are going to have a t-bone steak, a backstrap, or a sirloin this winter. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/63 "2009-10-21T20:24:36Z")
> [@unclviny](#): > > I don’t hunt but I do taget shoot, paper targets tremble in my prescence! > > Here is what I don’t “get” about Hunting: > > Hiding in a tree, wearing Deer scent, all Camo’ed up waiting for Bambi to come for the food (or the salt) that has been there everyday is NOT Hunting in my book. Hunting would involve.. ACTUALLY Hunting. > > If hiding in a tree stand and killing stuff is your idea of a sport, that’s fine. Do the world a favor and “Hunt” crack dealers. > > Unclviny I don’t understand this argument. It’s okay to kill deer if you have to work really hard at it. It’s not okay to kill a deer if you’re just patiently waiting for one to walk by. What possible justification is there for one to make you angry, and the other to satisfy you? People kill animals, because people are biologically hard wired to kill stuff. That’s what we did for a hundred million years. You think you can argue against several million years of natural selection of the best hunters who get the most pleasure out of killing stuff? Good luck. Get back to me in 80,000 years or so when we’ve been farming for even a tiny fraction of the time we’ve been hunting. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/64 "2009-10-21T20:30:07Z")
> [@unclviny](#): > > Hiding in a tree, wearing Deer scent, all Camo’ed up waiting for Bambi to come for the food (or the salt) that has been there everyday is NOT Hunting in my book. Hunting would involve.. ACTUALLY Hunting. > > If hiding in a tree stand and killing stuff is your idea of a sport, that’s fine. Do the world a favor and “Hunt” crack dealers. > > Unclviny What if you’re doing it because you know that deer [cause a lot of car accidents every year](http://www.statefarm.com/about/media/media_releases/20090928.asp)? Or because deer raid your garden? I certainly find it acceptable to hunt deer for those reasons (I don’t hunt them personally, but I don’t have a problem with it if other people do). ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/65 "2009-10-21T20:30:10Z")
[wrote a post not realizing there was a second page; since this is now in the Pit, it’s not my concern] ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/66 "2009-10-21T20:41:30Z")
The few times I hunted as a teenager, killing a large animal was the only thing I was interested in. In the end I was forced to settle on killing several small animals. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/67 "2009-10-21T21:05:14Z")
You still kill. You merely kill with your wallet instead of your gun. Those neatly packed grocery store steaks don’t grow on trees. I think every meat eater should feel morally obliged, at least once in their lives, to go out and actually kill their own food. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/68 "2009-10-21T21:06:12Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > It seems this thread is generating a little more passion than can be contained in MPSIMS. We’re off to the Pit. > > **Ellen Cherry** > MPSIMS Moderator Man, Jordi needs to take a look at those containment fields IMO 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/69 "2009-10-21T21:11:18Z")
I think it’s hilarious that you think it’s all good and well to practice catch and release fishing, which in my mind is cruel as hell, but not _kill_ an animal. If you’re killing it, you’re killing it to eat it. If you’re catching it and releasing it, you’re _torturing it for your amusement_, which is kind of dickish, I think. I mean, I don’t hunt. But I do eat meat, and frankly I think the deer is probably more ethical to shoot and eat than the cow is to buy and eat. I admit that it is a personal failing that I am too squeamish to kill my own food, yet perfectly happy to let somebody else do it for me. Plus, I know how pleasant it is to raise your own vegetables and eat the fruits of your labors. I’d imagine eating your own venison is similar. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/70 "2009-10-21T21:37:44Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I went turkey hunting once. > > As god as my witness, I thought turkeys could die. > > I was mistaken. Here’s a story about turkey hunting from my great-uncle Jerry. Way back in the day, like in the late 1950s, he went hunting with some mobsters. He was from Brooklyn and he had some low-level mafia connections. These guys were all city boys and hunting for them was a lark, not a way of life. They went out somewhere upstate to shoot the birds. While walking through the brush, a huge turkey burst out of the bush, flapping and squawking. The mobsters screamed in panic and went running in the opposite direction “like little girls,” as he put it, before turning around to empty their shotguns into the thing. They definitely underestimated the turkey. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/71 "2009-10-21T21:40:14Z")
One of my proudest accomplishments is having stalked and taken a tom turkey, in heavy undergrowth, with a recurve bow and arrow. Yes, I am that badass. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/72 "2009-10-21T21:45:37Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > One of my proudest accomplishments is having stalked and taken a tom turkey, in heavy undergrowth, with a recurve bow and arrow. > > Yes, I am that badass. 🆒 Next on the silver screen : Predator vs Ogre ! I’d pay good money to see that 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![unclviny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e274bd/32.png) [@unclviny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unclviny)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/73 "2009-10-21T22:08:19Z")
At summer camp Eons ago when I was small(er) I had a camp-guy who hunted Rabbits with a bow AT NIGHT (with a head-mounted flashlight), THAT kiddo’s is HUNTING!. I think that the hide-in-a-tree-with-Deerpee-sprayed-on-you is SOMETHING I just don’t think it’s Hunting. I’ll bet those Rabbits tasted GOOD because he had “earned” them. Unclviny ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/74 "2009-10-21T22:19:05Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > Consider going after boar alone and without dogs; that would be close to what you want. Even with a good weapon and the skill to use it, I won’t be taking bets on who the winner will be. Want to go (sorry) whole hog? Go after that tusker with a single-shot flintlock on a rainy day. I did that once - never will again. But I did do it once. > > (thank god I always was a fast tree climber!) You got a pair on you. I’d give it a shot (heh), but I’d probably pull a bonehead like forget to pick out an easily climbable tree _before_ making Bre’r Boar really mad at me. > [@Jettboy](#): > > Killing a living thing just for _the thrill of killing it_ isn’t creepy or weird? Not even just a little? I guess that begs the question, “…what DO you consider creepy or weird?” Let me take a crack at this (seriously; I’m not snarking) I think you may be confusing “Killing a living thing just for _the thrill of killing it_…” (which I agree is beyond creepy, right into psycho territory) with the thrill that comes with _ **successfully completing a hunt** _, and all _that_ entails, which, of course, ends up with a dead game animal, which translates into some damned tasty meals. In most ways, it’s emotionally akin to the satisfaction a hobbyist has in completing a difficult but ultimately rewarding hobby project; like a model builder successfully completing an accurate and complete rigging scheme on a model of a 19th century sailing vessel. > [@unclviny](#): > > If hiding in a tree stand and killing stuff is your idea of a sport, that’s fine. Do the world a favor and “Hunt” crack dealers. > > Unclviny I’ve been told that this is “bad.” I’m sometimes fuzzy on the whole “good/bad” thing, so please don’t lead me astray with posts like this. 😉 > [@GargoyleWB](#): > > Regarding the skill of tracking and stalking…how much of it is just confirmation bias on the part of the hunter, or conflating scarcity with elusiveness? I.e., I bagged a deer, therefore I have great skill. > > I’m not a hunter, but I have countless times camping or hiking when I’ve stumbled across wildlife while we’ve all been laughing and taking up a noisy storm. Hell, I’ve zipped open my tent and been nose-to-nose with elk and wolves. Just this weekend, I had to stop in my car for a group of a dozen elk crossing a state highway. Game animals just don’t seem to try very hard at keeping out of rifle range. This is all frustratingly true; but, for some reason, on the first day of hunting season, all those critters mysteriously vanish. It’s like they somehow _know_… ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/75 "2009-10-21T22:40:40Z")
I hunt. The kill thrills the living shit out of me. Know why? Chronic Wasting Disease. Watch a deer starve to death or waste away because it’s living in such horribly crowded conditions (for a wild animal) that it casually ingests prions from its own species. Humans have totaly fucked up Br’er Deer, and since reintroducing natural predators is out of the question, replacing the predator is the next best thing. Venison? Eh, I like it ok I guess. Looking at a live, healthy deer and knowing I had something to do with keeping it that way? Love that! Grow up Jettboy. Not every hunter is a bloodthirsty knucklehead who gets a charge out of luring deer to the stand with salt licks the way other people lure children to the van with candy. Which is not to say the human herd wouldn’t benefit from a good culling program, but that’s another thread. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/76 "2009-10-21T23:48:55Z")
Would the OP please list some things he \*is \*into so that we can all talk about he is weird/deviant/immature/sick for his interests? ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/77 "2009-10-22T00:20:18Z")
> [@Jettboy](#): > > Besides, it’s 2009; nobody really _has_ to hunt for sustenance any more; there are these things called ‘grocery stores’… Even in 2009, you’re not apt to find wild game in grocery stores…it isn’t FDA approved. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/78 "2009-10-22T00:28:45Z")
I like hunting. I like killing. I like carving. I like grilling. I love the outdoors. I find it thrilling. Fresh meat is healthy and filling. * * * Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with all the pussified people that have a problem with hunting? Somebody oughtta drop them in the middle of the woods a la Bear Grylls for a proper taste of reality. I know that when I’m dealing with somebody that has a problem with hunting that I am dealing with a total idiot. It’s the best test I know. You don’t have to enjoy it, you don’t have to do it, but if you have a problem with it you are a moron. Four million years of evolution has made you a collossal hunting badass. Everything about you that makes you human, makes you a hunter. Evolution has sacrificed just about everything else to make you the ultimate hunter. You are weak. The muscles in your body are inferior from a strength standpoint. The weakest chimpanzee in the world can kick the ass of the strongest man. They have different fast twitch muscles. Our muscles are built for endurance, not strength. We can run all day long in the heat of the day because we can sweat, have no hair on our body and are loaded with slow twitch muscles. We have the biggest asses of any primate to propel us long distance, binocular vision, and a special ligament in the back of our neck to turn our eyes into “steady cams.” while we run. There is no other animal on the planet that can cover the distance we can in the heat of the day. We evolved to persistence hunt, to chase after game all day and run it down until it dies of heat exhaustion. Even our brains evolved empathy to allow us to think like an animal and track it. Even the way you breathe has evolved to allow to you run with endurance. Every other running animal is limited to one breath per stride, but we can take fewer or more depending upon our needs. The cartilage in your knees depends upon a lifetime of running to provide it with the blood flow to keep it strong and vital. If you don’t it atrophies and is prone to injury. If you don’t follow the forms you’ve evolved to, you atrophy into a fat useless waste of protein. If not a hunter, you are nothing. You are a hammer pretending to be a screwdriver. * * * There is this pretend ethic that killing is wrong. Killing is not wrong. Suffering is not wrong. I have news for you. You will die. Because we are particularly inhumane to each other chances are you will suffer immensely for a long time before you die. No one here gets out alive. As the Radiators say, it’s the Law of the Fish: “The big ones eat the little ones. The little one’s have to be fast. It’s the law of the fish now, Momma. You got to move your ass.” Somebody else said: “The Gazelle wakes up every morning knowing it needs to be faster than the slowest lion if it wants to live. The Lion wakes up every morning knowing it needs to be faster that the slowest gazelle if it want to eat. But, come dawn, Lion or Gazelle, you best be running.” In the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the author shows how wild caught game is much more nutritious than farmed, so there’s that, too. I hunt, because that’s who I am. It’s who you are too, you just don’t know it. If you have a problem with hunting, you are an idiot and a moron, you are a pretender to an ethic that does not exist, and has no validity. Your mere humble existence cause suffering and pain and death to the animal kingdom. No way around that. You gonna hide from that? You waste of breath. I think you have a responsibility to see things die, to kill them with your own hand, so that you know you place in this world, your role, and the **cost** your existence inflicts. How can you not “get” hunting. That’s like a car not “getting” driving, wanting to stay in the garage all day. If you don’t “get it,” there’s something wrong with you. There’s something broken. What’s broken is this: The universe is a cruel and unfriendly place. You are in the precarious situation imaginable. You live on a tiny little rock, hurtling through frigid airless space. The conditions that support you, the warmth, liquid, light, the entire environment, is the most transitory, fleeting and fragile thing you can imagine. You’ve been dying since the day you were born, and suffering too. There is no difference between death and suffering, and life and joy. They are not even two sides of the same coin. Just like there is no hot and cold, only temperature; there is no suffering and death and joy… only life. And. that will end. Take part in it. Run. Hunt. Breathe. Eat. Kill. Fuck. Raise Rugrats and teach them to do the same. If you have a problem with hunting, you’ve lost sight of this. You are a ship adrift. A thing without purpose. **I** have a problem with people that have a problem with hunting, just as I have a problem with anybody who is a conspicuous waster. You are wasting life. You have it wrong. You’re fucked up. Now get out there and kill some things! ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/79 "2009-10-22T00:33:18Z")
Well, a guy steps out for lunch and gets back to this thread and already it’s in the Pit. So here is what I was going to say before it was Pitted: I will be going deer hunting again tomorrow. I am fortunate enough to live in an outdoorsman’s paradise. From where I sit typing this all I can see is trees and hills of more trees. I live at the bottom of a logging road mainline, before that it was a railroad line that brought the huge trees out of the NW Oregon forests, before that it was a Native American trail that led to a huge settlement on the Columbia that was documented in the journals of Lewis And Clark This is my back yard. It is raining now but expected to stop by morning. I will go into the mountains before dawn and walk out into the forest at daybreak. Quietly, because the forest has alarms that go off, Fox squirrels and chipmunks let out a warning that can be heard for a long ways. But after I get to my spot , those alarms work to my advantage. The squirrels will also alert to deer passing through the area. I will sit silently as the fog rolls in off the Pacific, and listen to the forest and hear and smell many things that will take me away from the mundane daily events of my life. I will feel good and new again as I breathe in the morning air. The air will smell better than any Christmas morning you have ever had. Cedar and Douglas fir, and wet bark, soil and mushrooms. Smells and sounds get drowned out in the land below. I will not hurry away from this unique pleasure. Since it will have rained, all the tracks that I see will be fresh ones. Bobcat, elk, deer, coyote, maybe even bear or cougar. As the morning dawns I will remember that I am more than an office drone. That all the worries of the normal day are silly. After day light I will move into the forest and sneak up trails and imagine myself to be a mountain man, for a moment. And by 9 or 10 the deer will have bedded down for the day and I will slowly make my way out of the woods. Perhaps I will meet a stranger and stop for coffee with him, even though he is heavily armed I am not afraid, for we understand each other. We will drink our coffee as we over look the fields and farms and towns below. And we know we must go back there, to the things that make us happy, and the chores of life. But not just yet. We have both spent hundreds of dollars on equipment, licences, etc. The fees go toward animal habitat enhancements. The majority of the budget for state fish and game agencies come from hunting and fishing licences rather than taxes. And most hunters are not successful, but don’t complain. Taking an animal is a great experience, but is a small part of a much bigger experience. If you don’t understand, I will not try to make you. There are many things that others like that I am just not interested in either. But I wish you could experience these things too. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605/80 "2009-10-22T00:39:21Z")
**Scylla** and **Ghardester** just knocked it out of the park. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-get-hunting/514605.md?page=5)