Shut the fuck up, Ricky Gervais.

[Bumbershoot]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Can you explain why this photo in the OP is a problem, but this is not showing base depravity? I get having an emotional response to the first but not the second, but I’m not seeing a rational difference between the two pictures.

Keep in mind that I’ve never hunted (much less posed next to a picture of an animal I killed), whereas I have grilled burgers and grinningly presented them to my friends and family. My view on this is not based on what I’ve personally done.

@QuickSilver

I imagine that to an over-sensitive animal rights activist, this is probably just as disturbing as posing next to a freshly killed zebra. But to you and me, this is several levels removed from the corpse of a freshly killed animal. AND It’s about to be overcooked if you don’t stop posing for pictures and focus on your job.

I believe it’s similar to seeing the skeletal remains of a human who died 500 years ago compared to the image of a pale and bloated drowning victim being pulled out of the surf; the more relatable, the more visceral the reaction. It’s the underlying principal of empathy, I believe.

There’s another aspect to it, for me at least. The first picture is saying “Look at the animal I just killed.” The second picture is saying “Look at the food I’m about to eat.”

I don’t believe Ms. Francis is thinking “Look at the food I’m providing to the villagers.” And I don’t believe the guy behind the grill is thinking “Look at the cow I just killed.”

It’s what a lot of people have been saying all along. They don’t have a problem with hunting to put food on the table. They have a problem with people who take pleasure in killing, and people who hunt to put a trophy on the wall.

[VinylTurnip]

@FXMastermind

It’s funny when people who pay other people to kill and harm animals for them, get angry over somebody killing an animal.

I’m sick of this cow/bull farming!

[Peremensoe]

@Debaser

Consider giving other hunters the benefit of the doubt.

It’s bad enough that there are scores of completely ignorant anti-hunters willing to condemn hunters in just about any situation by always assuming the worst. We shouldn’t pile on to other hunters without good reason.

Antihunters have no real ammunition not given them by “hunters.”

[Quote=Tom Beck]
Antihunters may hold a spotlight on our behavior, but through our behavior we control what they see.
[/quote]

@Debaser

You mentioned baiting of deer. I’m inclined to agree with you about it not being ethical. Around here it’s also not legal. But baiting bears is basically the only way (other than dogs) to hunt them.

There is fair-chase hunting: pursue free wild quarry on foot. No vehicles, no traps, no dogs, no bait.

Yes, it’s harder.

[Quote=Allen Morris Jones]
If the purpose of hunting is only to kill an animal, then the process is moot; we contain the technological ability to kill all animals.
[/quote]

[Quote=Saxton Pope]
The true hunter counts his achievement in proportion to the effort involved and the fairness of the sport.
[/quote]

[Enola_Gay]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

YOU’RE made out of meat.
:stares at Enola Gray

Just wait a few years til I’m old & senile & rejected by the herd; then you can take me out with a crossbow & take a selfie with my corpse.

@Tibby or Not Tibby

I want the fixins’ that go with the chitlins, of course. God should have made pig livers out of greens, spleens out of sweet potatoes, blood out of gravy, corn-bread brains and their damned feet should come already pickled.

Further proof that this world was not created by a just God.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bumbershoot

There’s another aspect to it, for me at least. The first picture is saying “Look at the animal I just killed.” The second picture is saying “Look at the food I’m about to eat.”

I don’t believe Ms. Francis is thinking “Look at the food I’m providing to the villagers.” And I don’t believe the guy behind the grill is thinking “Look at the cow I just killed.”

It’s what a lot of people have been saying all along. They don’t have a problem with hunting to put food on the table. They have a problem with people who take pleasure in killing, and people who hunt to put a trophy on the wall.

Yes, I’m aware of the distinction people are drawing. It’s not that I don’t understand what distinction they’re drawing. My dispute is with the idea that it’s an ethical distinction.

In both cases, people are drawing pleasure from the death of an animal. It’s a luxury, not something they need to do for survival or health. It’s culturally linked: both hunting and meat-eating help people connect to their culture.

Yes, people find the picture of the carcass more viscerally repellent than pictures of the ground beef. I dispute that gut reactions are a basis for an ethical system; indeed, I think it’s very dangerous to consider the ick factor when deciding what behaviors are ethical or unethical.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

As an aside, The Stupidity of Dignity, an essay by Steven Pinker, touches tangentially on this issue, in its discussion of the inadvisibility of basing your ethical code on ick factors. Even if not specifically for this issue, the essay is well worth a read IMO.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Enola_Gay

Just wait a few years til I’m old & senile & rejected by the herd; then you can take me out with a crossbow & take a selfie with my corpse.

A few years? When was the last time you got to sit at the cool kids table? Just sayin–I’m not a hunter, but if I were you I’d stay away from armed and grinning blondes.

[Bumbershoot]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Yes, I’m aware of the distinction people are drawing. It’s not that I don’t understand what distinction they’re drawing. My dispute is with the idea that it’s an ethical distinction.

In both cases, people are drawing pleasure from the death of an animal. It’s a luxury, not something they need to do for survival or health. It’s culturally linked: both hunting and meat-eating help people connect to their culture.

Yes, people find the picture of the carcass more viscerally repellent than pictures of the ground beef. I dispute that gut reactions are a basis for an ethical system; indeed, I think it’s very dangerous to consider the ick factor when deciding what behaviors are ethical or unethical.

I disagree that “in both cases, people are drawing pleasure from the death of an animal.” I think only the first photo shows that. The second photo could just as easily be a salad or a pumpkin pie. The subject of the photo is food, not a dead animal. In this case the food used to be part of an animal but that is not the subject of the photo.

[QuickSilver]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

I dispute that gut reactions are a basis for an ethical system; indeed, I think it’s very dangerous to consider the ick factor when deciding what behaviors are ethical or unethical.

But we are not discussing the “ick factor”. You asked what the difference was between a freshly killed animal in it’s environment and a hamburger on a grill in your back yard. And while there is a world of difference between the two to me, I will concede your point that it is a distiction without much difference to you.

Be that as it may, we’re not talking about the corpse of a dead animal killed for food. We are talking about the corpse of a dead animal needlessly killed for sport with the killer taking/showing gleeful pleasure in having done so.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@QuickSilver

Be that as it may, we’re not talking about the corpse of a dead animal killed for food. We are talking about the corpse of a dead animal needlessly killed for sport with the killer taking/showing gleeful pleasure in having done so.

Yes, I know that’s what we’re talking about. It’s not that I’m unaware of that–it’s that I think that’s an ethically irrelevant distinction.

I think the relevant ethical details are:

1. An animal died
2. Unnecessarily
3. For someone’s pleasure
4. And the person is pleased with this outcome.

There’s a question whether it’s ethical for someone to derive pleasure from actions that require the death of an animal. But I think the question is the same whether the animal died for the pleasure of a hunt, or whether the animal died for the pleasure of a tasty burger.

You might draw a distinction between causing the death directly (by firing a crossbow) and causing the death indirectly (by purchasing meat from a slaughterhouse). I’m not sure why this is a relevant ethical distinction.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bumbershoot

I disagree that “in both cases, people are drawing pleasure from the death of an animal.” I think only the first photo shows that. The second photo could just as easily be a salad or a pumpkin pie. The subject of the photo is food, not a dead animal. In this case the food used to be part of an animal but that is not the subject of the photo.

But it’s not a salad. It’s not a pumpkin pie. And in the first picture, it could just as easily be a tennis trophy.

The fact is that the first and second picture, whatever else they COULD show, actually show a dead animal, and in those particular pictures, the human subjects are deriving pleasure from the body of that dead animal.

Again: I eat meat. I’m not drawing this parallel to condemn meat-eaters. I’m drawing it because I don’t think the normal condemnations of trophy hunters hold much water, UNLESS there’s a similar condemnation of burger-eaters.

[Tibby]

Does Rebecca’s (or any hunters) intent really matter all that much? I don’t think so. Intent matters, at times, with regard to the legal and moral intricacies of homicide, but not so much with regard to responsible hunting of animals. Do hunters enjoy hunting? I have no doubt the vast majority of them do. And, I don’t have a problem with that as long as they hunt legally and responsibly.

I don’t hunt. I don’t because I have a high degree of empathy toward most animals that are hunted (mammals). But, I don’t hold my empathy toward animals to be a morally superior attribute; it could just as well be viewed as a short-coming (you don’t want to rely on me when Western Society crumbles and all the Piggly Wiggly’s shut down).

I do fish and I enjoy it very much. I have a pang of guilt the moment I actually kill the fish, but I dispatch them quickly and catch and release most of them. The ones I keep, I eat. I can kill a fish more easily than I could kill a mammal, because I believe mammals have a more highly developed consciousness—but, at least on some level, isn’t that just a type of bigotry (I don’t kill the smart, cute animals because they’re more like me…no snickers, ok)?

Hunters, I’m confident, don’t possess my degree of empathy toward mammals, and that’s ok. If they are responsible and legal, then they don’t kill endangered animals; they are not cruel to the animals they hunt; they attempt to dispatch them quickly and they put the carcasses to good use. That’s good enough for me, no matter what their “intent”.

Of course, if I had my druthers, I’d prefer hunters only kill animals that are middle aged or above, because it’s nice to think all conscious animals have a chance to experience a fair amount of life on Earth. And, let’s face it, when animals reach their twilight years in the wild, the hunters are probably doing them a big favor—they will dispatch the old and infirmed much less cruelly than nature will. Give me a good kill-shot in the heart over starvation, or a painful mauling any day.

I must say that I would not want to be friends with a hunter who kills for the pleasure of causing death to an animal. But, really, don’t you think that type of mentality, if it exists at all in responsible hunters, is at least rare? I do. I don’t believe Rebecca hunts because she enjoys snuffing out the life of an animal, she does it because the sport of hunting is something she enjoys; she’s good at it; and she has every right to be proud of her skill and accomplishments.

I’m confident Rebecca isn’t smiling while lying next to the giraffe because she’s happy to have snuffed out a creature’s life, nor is she smiling because she’s thinking of all the food the carcass will provide to the village. The truth is somewhere between those two extremes. She’s smiling because she’s proud to have bagged an animal that was the goal of her hunt. She did good in her sport. She made a mistake posting her photos where the general population could see them. She would have saved herself a lot of aggravation if she just posted them where her family, friends and other hunters could see them.

We eat animals; we need to kill animals to eat them and. As long as the animal is killed humanely and the species of animal isn’t endangered and can provide some type of benefit from its slaughter, that should be the end of the story.

Certainly, there must be some hunters who do kill solely for the pleasure of killing, but just like murderers who kill for the thrill of killing, they are sociopaths. They are the subset of hunters/society to be shunned and put away.

[Pedro]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Yes, I know that’s what we’re talking about. It’s not that I’m unaware of that–it’s that I think that’s an ethically irrelevant distinction.

I think the relevant ethical details are:

1. An animal died
2. Unnecessarily
3. For someone’s pleasure
4. And the person is pleased with this outcome.

There’s a question whether it’s ethical for someone to derive pleasure from actions that require the death of an animal. But I think the question is the same whether the animal died for the pleasure of a hunt, or whether the animal died for the pleasure of a tasty burger.

You might draw a distinction between causing the death directly (by firing a crossbow) and causing the death indirectly (by purchasing meat from a slaughterhouse). I’m not sure why this is a relevant ethical distinction.

I find it ironic that you are so adamant that you don’t miss anything.

1. Killed how? For what purpose? What animal? Where does it sit in the food chain? What is the role that animal plays in the balance of its ecosystem? How healthy is that ecosystem? How fast does its population grow? Etc.

2. You seem to think of eating meat as an unecessary luxury equivalent to an Buffalo’s head in the mantelpiece.

3. Someone’s eating pleasure is not morally equivalent to someone pleasure laying beside a dead corpse, doofus.

4. Fuck that backpeddaling slimeball.

[Pedro]

Sorry, double post, timeout issues.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Pedro

I find it ironic that you are so adamant that you don’t miss anything.

1. Killed how? For what purpose?

Sure–how it’s killed is relevant. But if we’re bringing that up, we should probably bring up how it lived its life as well. Sure you want to open that can o’ worms? As for “for what purpose,” there we go into item #3; I already addressed this question.

What animal? Where does it sit in the food chain? What is the role that animal plays in the balance of its ecosystem? How healthy is that ecosystem? How fast does its population grow? Etc.

Okay, sure, we can address these questions, but before we do, let me ask: are you going to suggest that trophy hunting is more damaging to the environment than meat-eating?

2. You seem to think of eating meat as an unecessary luxury equivalent to an Buffalo’s head in the mantelpiece.

For middle-class folks in a modern society, I do. If you don’t, want to explain why?

3. Someone’s eating pleasure is not morally equivalent to someone pleasure laying beside a dead corpse, doofus.

Why not, doofus?

4. Fuck that backpeddaling slimeball.

What?

[FXMastermind]

Best thread ever

[billfish678]

Everybody but some food snobs would probably be happy with good artificial meat.

How many hunters that hunt for fun would be happy with simulated kills?

[QuickSilver]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

You might draw a distinction between causing the death directly (by firing a crossbow) and causing the death indirectly (by purchasing meat from a slaughterhouse). I’m not sure why this is a relevant ethical distinction.

While I enjoy grilled meat as much as the next meat eater, I eat it primarily as a matter of prefered sustenance. I derive no pleasure from knowing an animal had to die in order to provide me with sustenance. If I had to kill the animal myself in order to avail myself of this sustenance, I would without any ick factor but also without deriving any pleasure in the taking of its life. Like I said, I’m a pragmatist when it comes to the food chain and arguably that’s an easy position to hold given that as a human I’m pretty much the apex predator.

The difference we continue to have is all in the motive of why you fired that crossbow and the reaction it evokes in you having done so. Are you happy because you can now put food on the table, or are you happy because, “Look at what I killed! It might have got away were I not such a great white hunter!”

Also, as a meat consumer (not a trophy hunter), I never buy meat I don’t intend to eat.

[FXMastermind]

Some snipers in combat actually enjoy killing humans. Farmers hate wolves and get satisfaction from killing them. People who pay others to raise animals (in often nightmarish conditions), and to kill them, butcher them and deliver them, they enjoy eating the dead animal parts.

But somebody who enjoys game hunting, something humans have done since before history starts, they are bad people. How dare they? The inhumanity of killing a wild animal.

Of course in the time it took to type that, people killed (and ate) millions of animals. They are eating them, and killing them, as you read this.

But getting angry over the pig farms, the cattle ranches, or the chicken factories, who has time for that? Lets hate on one person. It’s so much easier, and we can all feel so superior.

[QuickSilver]

@FXMastermind

Some snipers in combat actually enjoy killing humans.

We call them sociopaths and their fellow soldiers know that about them.

@FXMastermind

Farmers hate wolves and get satisfaction from killing them.

Do they kill them for sport or to protect their livestock?

@FXMastermind

People who pay others to raise animals (in often nightmarish conditions), and to kill them, butcher them and deliver them, they enjoy eating the dead animal parts.

Do they pose for photos with them? I’m sure some do. I have no delusions about the depths of human depravity.

@FXMastermind

But somebody who enjoys game hunting, something humans have done since before history starts, they are bad people. How dare they? The inhumanity of killing a wild animal.

Who is saying this? I have made every effort not to paint all hunters with the same brush.

@FXMastermind

Of course in the time it took to type that, people killed (and ate) millions of animals. They are eating them, and killing them, as you read this.

But getting angry over the pig farms, the cattle ranches, or the chicken factories, who has time for that? Lets hate on one person. It’s so much easier, and we can all feel so superior.

I’m not the least bit happy about the conditions under which farmed animals are raised. But I pick my battles and support all sensible ideas, initiatives, laws and food trends that lead to more humane treatment of food animals.