Absolutely wrong. I have no moral issue with killing an animal whatsoever, even for the simple fact of “it keeps getting into my trashcans” or “it keeps eating the plants in my garden”. It just seems odd to me to get a thrill from killing an animal.
I smushed a big-ass cockroach just yesterday, but the act didn’t make me feel good, or excited. There was no “thrill of the chase” and I wouldn’t dream of saying I had engaged in a ‘sport’.
See, now I can ‘get’ that; that I could consider a sport. It’s not one I’d necessarily engage in, but I could certainly see what might make that scenario thrilling. The emphasis isn’t so much on the killing, but the circumstances surrounding it.
Catch and release hunting is called photography. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to fishing: finding out where the animals are, making the area more appealing to them, tricking them into believing that you’re safe to be around… The skill of the fight is replaced with the skill of the shot, precision instead of energy, self mastery enough to shoot cleanly when excited, and to not shoot when excited but with no clean shot.
Morally, I’m not a fan of trophy hunting, or canned hunts, but I don’t have any issues about hunting simply for variety of meats, or taking a trophy of an animal killed for food. I won’t hunt with anyone who doesn’t make certain of their shots, or track down any animal they wounded.
For those thinking about the poor innocent deer, they’re just as much a pest to farmers as groundhogs or mice. They do have one quality above the rodents though, they taste good.
If it is not moral, I fail to see the nature of your objection. Is target hunting a “sport”? Targets don’t shoot back - in many cases, they don’t even move.
it is a skill also. knowing animal habits and signs can all help make a better hunter. knowing your method with gun, bow or sling or spear are all important.
people do enjoy different skill sets. what fishing lure to use in what part of day. what putter and stroke to use on what type of green. how to attract or track and kill an animal.
animals without breed populations are skilled in avoiding predators if there are older adults in their populations.
people hunt for all sorts of reasons both good and bad. people do get obsessed with hunting and this might lead to throwing more money at it than skill (like buying 40 acres of land and plant thickets of trees and the rest in apples and corn and a $20000 three story deer stand with heat throughout and satellite tv (you then don’t have to choose between football and hunting) with open-able shooting windows on the top floor).
if you eat meat you are responsible for something being killed unless you are a scavenger. though if you eat most plants you are responsible for that dying too, so some people become fruititarians. where people are philosophically on this whole continuum is varied in position and reason.
For the Rhymers who hunt, there are about six reasons that I can think of. Not all the reasons apply to all of us, of course.
[ol]
[li]Tradition. I, one of my brothers, our baby sister, and our two double-first cousins hunt in memory of our shared paternal grandfather, who taught us (except for the baby sister) to hunt and whom we all loved.[/li][li]Cameraderie. Another of our cousins has a different paternal grandfather than my brothers & double-first cousins, but we’re very close to him. Because relationships need watering if they are to thrive, he comes down from Chicago to hunt with us. This is a much more enjoyable ritual than getting together to get drunk after one of our parents’ funeral, which we do but obviously don’t look forward two.[/li][li]Initiation. My stepdaughter is coming with us this year, on her first hunt. This is intensely important to her, because she is not related by blood to anyone in the family but wishes to be part of it. Sharing this ritual solidifies and solemnizes the bond. Similar motives obtained when my Chicago cousin’s nephew first hunted with us, and hopefully, next year, his son will join us as well.[/li][li]Connection. Not to one another–that’s covered in reasons 1, 2, & 3–but to the reality of life on Earth. You see, despite what some people think, food does *not[/] originate in supermarkets or bodegas, for us or for any other creature. All animal life exists at the expense of other life. All predators live at the expense of other animals. Humans are predators. Compare the placement of your eyes in your skull, and the shape of your teeth, to those of cats and deer if you disagree. By actually killing and eating something, we force ourselves to see that we are part of the natural world, not separate from it. This also discourages us from being smugly condescending about the activities of others, as it encourages us to think about the cost of our lives.[/li][li]Morality. If there is an ethical difference between eating wild game we have killed ourselves and meat that was raised on a factory farm, I think the superior position goes to eating the game. Neither the deer nor the cow volunteers to be slaughtered. But the deer, at least, is allowed to run free rather than being confined under conditions that are often torturous and cruel.[/li][li]Appetite. Venison is tasty. So is wild turkey.[/li][/ol]
I grew up in East Tennessee where hunting was pretty much mandatory. I have hunted pretty much everything that could be hunted legally and killed and skinned them as well. I used to catch a bit of flack from my stepdad when he would ask me if I was going hunting and my reply was, nope, going killing, finding them is easy.
All that being said, I now don’t hunt and haven’t hunted for over 25 years.
I understand exactly what you are saying, even after years of killin’, I don’t get it. And once it became all about what I wanted to do, I quit doing it.
I wouldn’t mind trying it, but nobody will invite me. I’m familiar with firearms and shooting, but none of my close friends/family hunts. There are so many rules these days I think I need a hunting buddy to get me started in the right direction.
If I go I just want it to be very basic, no dogs, no elaborate equipment.
Are you being willfully obtuse, pal? Targets are not living things; you cannot ‘kill’ a target, hence you can’t get a visceral thrill from ‘killing’ something. I used to play darts in my favorite pub years back, but the board never bled or fell off of the wall and died.
My objection —actually “objection” isn’t quite the right term…I don’t object to the practice of hunting— to the traditional type of hunting (guy sits in deer stand, spots deer, shoots and kills deer) is that the positive, excited feeling of the experience seems to come from killing something.
I have no idea why people enjoy watching football, baseball, or basketball. It seems pointless and boring to me. But I don’t feel the need to call the practice creepy or weird as you do in the OP.
If you find yourself in Buna or Batson, you might run into some of my far-flung kin.
If it’s offered, don’t drink the clear stuff in the Mason jar; at best you’ll just have a blinding hangover for a day or two, at worst you’ll wake up wearing lipstick and having some serious sphincter pain.
This is getting stupid. Plenty of people have told you that the “thrill of the kill” has nothing to do with their enjoyment of hunting, and you refuse to believe them.
Malthus’ point was that there is plenty of sport and excitement in shooting something, regardless of whether or not it is alive.
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?”
You have every right to enjoy killing animals, wearing women’s underwear, piercing your septum, or getting that “Shorty’s Bar & Grill Open, 24 hours. Ask about our Endless Stack of Pancakes Special!” tattoo on your schlong. Likewise, I have every right to think those activities are a little weird and a little creepy; that doesn’t mean you’re not a nice guy, though.
It’s about the gear, the stories and the culture of the people who do it.
Bass fishing. Hunting. Bowling. I don’t get any of these. All too passive. However, people that are into these things are pretty much wired to like/love them. They also love to get the equipment and go to the outfitter stores and talk about their adventures.
Again, I look at hunters/fishers and I don’t identify with them. I see a boat drifting/fishing in the intercoastal waterway and I blow by them at about 65 and drop a rooster tail on them and shake their ear drums.
Upthread, in post 25–right here, since you seem to have missed it, I listed the reasons I and my family hunt. Please tell me where the word thrill or any synonym appears in that post.
I see nothing weird about enjoying the outdoors and harvesting a game animal that tends to overpopulate its habitat. Non-hunters who enjoy walking around state parks and nature preserves would do well to consider that much of the funding for those preservation efforts comes from the fees generated by hunting and fishing.
Look at it from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. The prehistoric humans who were “into” hunting were the ones whose genes survived, because they were able to feed themselves and their children.
It seems you have simply decided that “the thrill of killing something” is why people who hunt enjoy it. You object to this enjoyment (or if you prefer “find it creepy”).
You may wish to re-examine your assumption on this matter.
My point is simple: if someone can find hitting an inanimate target “fun”, be it a tin can or a dartboard, absent moral objections to killing it is no mystery at all why they can find shooting at animals “fun”. They are if you will animate targets, thus requiring more skill to hit than a simple tin can, since they actively do not want to be shot.
That of course ignores all of the other reasons why one would want to do it, such as fresh food.
Of course I may be being “willfully obtuse”, but it seems to me pretty clear that what you are really objecting to, whether you are willing to admit to it or not, is the morality of deriving enjoyment from killing animals for the hunt.
I’m familiar with firearms and shooting, but none of my close friends/family hunts. There are so many rules these days I think I need a hunting buddy to get me started in the right direction.