“She says it was thrilling to see the rare animal, but actually a hundred more times exciting to take it home.”
While we’re at it, I pit the local podunk TV station that celebrates this kind of thing. Rare deer!! Let’s kill it! As though that were the logical response to seeing something rare and beautiful. Wouldn’t it have been a shame to only get some blurry photo of it fleeing? See, it’s nice and dead now and ready for its closeup.
I also pre-emptively pit all those sportsman-types that will doubtlessly respond to this and accuse me of being anti-hunting (I’m not…I just find something about this to be in incredibly poor taste). Yes I’m sure Lulu’s going to carve it up herself and feed her family for weeks and clothe her family using its hide and all that. I don’t really care.
I also pre-emptively pit all those who are going to ask me if I’d care as much if it were an ordinary deer and not a purty white one (probably not, but I would probably be just as revolted by the masturbatory local news coverage).
Is it not fun enough to kill ordinary animals? Can we please leave the rare ones alone for those of us not fortunate enough to be invited to see all the heads on Mary Jean Bumfuck’s trophy wall, those of us who might actually get a thrill out of seeing living animals?
It was an albino, not a rare species. Deer hunters usually like to kill anything unusual. You logic is FUBAR as well. It was a legal kill following laws set by the state fro the purposes of wildlife management. The fact that it was a genetic fluke doesn’t play into that goal By your logic, all hunting should be banned which would be bad on lots of levels. Hunters and fisherman tend to be some of the greatest proponents of wildlife conservation and some of their money goes into that by law and much more is given voluntarily through private conservation organizations. Stop being a deer racist.
Seeing as your points were covered under my preemptive pit clause, your rant rating has no truck with me. I never said it was a different “species”, I never said it was illegal, I never said all hunting (or even this kind of hunting) should be banned. I was just asking if hunters mightn’t show a bit of discretion, you know, to go along with all that wonderful altruistic wildlife conservation work that they do. Apparently not.
I know you said those things. I was just repeating it back for clarity. Why do you think albinos deserve special treatment? That is what makes no sense. It is just an albino so you must be looking things differently than others of us. Albinos often have other problems like susceptibility to other kinds of predators. Do you think this deer would have become some type of ghost deer that vast numbers of Indians whisper about soring the campfire through the ages? Albinos are usually a big hit if you put them in a zoo but there are just flawed animals in the wild.
Albinism is a rare genetic disorder that, aside from the odd pigmentation, also carries with it a whole host of other health problems, including poor physical stamina and a reduced immune system. This wasn’t just a really unusual looking deer, it was a very sick deer. Predation is an important part of the natural cycle because it removes sick animals from the population, ensuring that they do not pass on their damaged genes. Unless you’re against the entire concept of hunting, you should be applauding this kill, as it’s far more ecologically sound than the typical practice of targeting the largest, healthiest bucks.
Money hardly makes one a conservationist when one is killing what one claims to be “conserving”. Especially since hunters generally make a point of going after the most impressive animals, which means that for millenia they’ve been selectively breeding wild animals to be smaller, uglier, and more sickly. They didn’t intend to, but that’s what they’ve been doing.
And unlike the OP, I would ban hunting. Get your meat at the supermarket, from the animals that have been bred and raised for that purpose.
My dog is an albino. She’s got issues, yes, but it would be news to her to hear that it necessarily makes her very sick. Maybe if I can stop her from running circles around my ordinary, healthy Aussie, I’ll let her know how sick she is. Perhaps you think she should have been euthanized?
Those animals only tend to be impressive after having reached sexual maturity and having had the oppertunity to mate several times and thereby passing along the stronger and more desirable genetic material. Nobody with any kind of ethics (as broadly as you may allow that term to be used) hunts fawns.
Hunters go after the deer they can see, and get a clean shot at. That’s a small enough set that any subset is not going to be evolutionarily significant.
That’s a good point, because as we all know, there is absolutely no functional difference between a wild animal and a domesticated pet. The fact that your albino dog is happy despite her health issues is clear proof that this deer’s albinism was in no way an evolutionary disadvantage.
I don’t know about Minnesota but in Nevada if it’s legal nine times out of ten you take the shot. There aren’t that many to choose from. And they’re all pretty scrappy. I know plenty of guys that buy tags and don’t come back with anything. Doesn’t stop them from doing it.
Darwin’s legacy teaches us that sometimes genetic abnormalities can lead to improved survival capabilities; it’s not always the other way around. But let’s put that aside and stipulate that the deer was most likely disadvantaged in the wild to begin with.
a) It’s a rationalization in this case, one apparently not shared by the subjects of the OP. Both the hunter and the story celebrated this specifically for being a rare kill. Not a mercy kill, not a conservationally responsible kill–a rare kill. The news described it as one of “the rarest kinds” of deers. Now perhapsShagnasty is correct that this is not really the case; I’m not going to side with the podunk local news, and I’ll give my fellow Doper the benefit of the doubt on this one. But the fact remains: they’re celebrating having killed a very unusual animal. Ick.
b) Why not let nature sort it out? If the deer’s so damned to begin with anyway, why not let it live the rest of its short life naturally? Aren’t fawns also disadvantaged for no other reason than being so young and less able to help themselves? And isn’t that precisely why hunters would show discretion by not shooting them?
So it’s more ethical to eat animals that have been kept captive their whole lives and stuffed full of hormones and what not?
Deer have to be hunted because people got rid of all their predators, which was obviously a terrible idea but we can’t do anything about that now. Predators can’t be reintroduced in most places because they have no habitat. The only thing a ban on hunting would accomplish would be to allow the deer population to explode to the point that the ecological balance becomes even more damaged than it already is.
And no, I don’t agree with killing the largest and healthiest animals.
