I count myself lucky to have seen the sharp end of animal husbandry. I’ve seen the same animals born in the spring meadows, grown on the high Pennine moors, brought down to market, sold, killed and butchered and been there at every stage.
I think if you are going to eat meat it does no harm to have a appreciation of what that means and that it is possible to raise animals for meat in a humane and respectful manner.
I should clarify that I’m not necessarily anti-hunting. It forms part of the natural order of things and it is a crucial part of conservation and humane animal management.
No, I suspect that I am more anti-arsehole-hunter and regarding the guy who shot the Lion on the documentary I’d be better disposed to him if he wept at the necessity of killing such a creature rather than in joy at what he’d “accomplished”.
Anyhow, on a less depressing note can I just say how pleasing it is to take part in such well balanced and respectful debate. Differences of opinion and yet no hint of it descending into a slanging match. Something of a rarity these days.
I grew up about as rural as you can get, and I find hunting big game to be very distasteful. I find hunting deer to be distasteful, however many I have killed with my car (it was mutual - they pretty much killed my cars, too.)
I have killed small pest animals on the farm. And, right now we are waging war with roof rats. We have dispatched about 10. I find no joy in it. I regret the necessity of killing them. I wish I didn’t have to. But you can’t catch and release rats.
I dont see the debate here, this is more of a rant. If you want a debate about trophy hunting, all well and good, but then there’s no need to publicly shame a private person over this.
Trophy hunting pays for game conservation measures. And it can be strictly controlled.
It’s poaching that is the problem, not trophy hunting.
Without those trophy hunters and their deep pockets, game conservation would be mostly gone in some nations/areas, allowing widespread uncontrolled poaching.
For the record, I find no joy in killing rats either. I just don’t find it viscerally unnerving. It’s just something that has to be done like mowing the lawn or repairing the porch.
I think my point might be better made in that typically I find that urban and suburban people are much more squeamish about such things, so the idea of finding joy in hunting is overpowered by the idea of killing something. I typically find that rural people don’t have that same negative emotions toward killing things, so they are able to find more joy in the action.
I personally don’t get much out of hunting these days. Our season coincides with Thanksgiving, so I usually just prefer to spend the time with my family. I’d rather not freeze my butt off for a week waiting for something to walk by. The only thing I really miss is the meat. I’ve become a deer meat hoarder and when I get a few pounds parcel it out over the course of the year instead of eating it for every meal. It’s a bit depressing to have so little and every now and again, I’ll think about heading out, but my desire for sleeping in a warm bed with my wife always overcomes my desire for deer meat.
I wasn’t directing those comments towards any particular poster, but yes, from where I sit it appears that most of the opposition to hunting is driven by emotional reactions and ignorance rather than logic and facts.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. Ricky Gervais called her a “spoilt c–t” and other celebrities echoed his opinion. I myself was neither ranting nor publicly shaming her.
Because she was at the center of the news story that prompted this question. Because this question was specifically about this case (and tangentially related to other cases similar to it.) Because I wanted people who searched for a thread about this story (as I did before I made this post) to be able to find this thread and not make a duplicate thread that the mods would later have to merge.
Is there some reason that you think that her anonymity should be protected? Because it’s too late for that. Her name is out there and firmly attached to this story.
Just poppin in to say, it never ceases to amaze me how off topic this shit gets and somehow, someway it always gets twisted into a liberal/conservative shitting match. You go dopers, you go.
Assuming the proper permits, wildlife conservation, and other rules were followed so that it was a legal taking and not poaching, I have no real issue with big game and trophy hunting. That does appear to be the facts in this case. I would expect an older giraffe to not taste particularly good, but I don’t see much of a difference between killing a targeted older giraffe and killing the biggest specimen you can find of a legal game animal in the United States because you want a deer or elk or moose (for example) with the biggest rack possible. Many people think little of paying many times more than a resident for an out-of-state permit for a chance to maybe take an animal, so the cost spent to get the permit and fly to Africa isn’t a convincing argument for me. Generally, some of the cost of the permit gets returned to a state conservation fund which can, among other things, result in the acquisition of more public land that I–having never hunted in my life–can still go onto for my own recreation. I assume the same is true for the sale of expensive permits for carefully-controlled big game hunting.
Frankly, the people who go out onto BLM land and dump their garbage or set up a shooting range and can’t be bothered to pick up their targets and brass when done infuriate me far more. But I won’t get a lot of outrage agreeing with me from complete strangers with pictures on Facebook and Twitter of an old couch, refrigerator, and tires dumped in the New Mexico desert.
Outrage over pretty young white female African hunters is motivated by sexism. The Cecil guy was an outlier, but nobody cares if an old fat guy shoots a giraffe.
As for hunting in general, the 5 main models are the North American, African, European, Aus/NZ, and restrictive. The North American model is absolutely beneficial for animal populations. 60 to 90 percent of the funding for animals and habitat is from hunting and fishing licenses, as well as firearms, ammo, and archery purchases. The Australian model is mostly involved in loosely restricted hunting of invasive species. I have personal issues with the European and African models, but particularly the latter can be done well and beneficial in a stable country with a good management system.
First, because its pissing me off, why the hell can’t these articles say where this happened. After way to much clicking I’ve found it is South Africa but then I can’t tell if it was on a private or government reserve. Africa’s fucking huge, the actual location would have been nice.
Second, the only way any locals are hunting giraffes for food is if they pay the stupid amounts of money for the privilege. There are no wild Giraffes just roaming around South Africa, they are in reserves. And the owners of those reserves in turn own the animals. And if the owners sell the animals to hunters then that’s their right. This goes for National or Provincial parks too.
It doesn’t appear to have been a canned hunt, it was just a giraffe, and the money she spent boosted the local economy. I’m not seeing a problem.
There’s also the Texas model, which is the N. American model, but with an exception for feral hogs, where if you have a hunting license, they pretty much encourage you to kill feral hogs by any means you possibly can.
It’s possible to understand that pumping money into conservation is a good thing, and also feel that people willing to pump money into conservation for the chance to kill a rare animal are gross.
I can’t think of any other job where we allow rich amateurs to buy their way in as a hobby.
Like, amputations need to happen, but I think we all sleep easy knowing that surgeons who perform them are professionals doing it because it needs to be done, not because they get some sick pleasure out of doing it. If rich people could fly to rural India, donate a ton of money to medical facilities there, and be allowed to perform amputations because they just really enjoyed cutting human limbs off… how would you feel about it? It’d undoubtedly be a good thing for the local population, but it’s also fucking disgusting.
Likewise, trophy hunting is disgusting. The fact that it’s a working option for animal conservation is a regrettable failure of society. I can’t see any other way to look at it.
Or you could look at it as a tremendous success. If we use your surgeon analogy, imagine if there were a class of people who just absolutely enjoyed performing surgery, spent a lot of their time and money on learning how to do it correctly and then paid their patients to perform surgery on them with a portion of those proceeds going toward disease prevention. I guess you could look at it as a societal failure, or you could see it as win-win.
After all, that’s essentially what Medecins sans Frontieres is. A group of doctors who (hopefully) enjoy helping the world and invest a lot of their time and resources into it. Maybe they get a thrill out of removing tumors from people and maybe they don’t, I don’t particularly care either way, I’m just glad they are doing it. If I discovered tomorrow that MSF surgeons were all part of some club where they sit around and discuss their most difficult cases with mixtures of pride and bragadoccio, I think I would honestly say, “Good on you. It’s good to enjoy what you do. Thanks for your help.” For all I care, they could keep a collection of all of the appendixes that they have removed for display providing they aren’t exploiting people for their appendix and followed all laws and got proper consent. I’d think they were weird, but I wouldn’t call them a function of a failing society. We’re all a little weird and they wouldn’t be the first people to do it. If they’re making the world a better place at their own expense, then I don’t care if they have display cabinets of human organs. If they are exploiting people to get them, then we have a problem, just like we’d have a problem if these trophy hunters were poaching or over-harvesting. But if it’s legal, doesn’t harm the population and preserves the species and wild land, then I fail to see exactly what the issue is. Just that it’s icky to some other people? To that I say that some people think tofu is icky, doesn’t mean we should start banning veganism.
First of all, the fact that Doctors without Borders is a thing is absolutely indicative of a failure of society, so there’s that. It’s great that they volunteer and all, but it’s pretty pathetic that we need them to in the first place.
Secondly, there’s absolutely a difference between someone who goes into OB/GYN because he wants to help women and get paid while doing it, and someone who does it because he gets sexual pleasure from looking at vaginas all day. So yeah, the motivation matters, and yeah, it’s because some motivations are “icky.” I don’t see anything wrong with that.
I’d like to address this. I moved to a farm in the country, and embraced hunting for about 10 years, or so, really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Then I had daughters and gave it up and literally got hardcore into dollhouses instead. Go figure.
The pleasure of hunting for me, was being in the outdoors, and the process and the application of skill, and such. Additionally, I know that my existence depends on the suffering of other lives. Every time I walk, I kill bugs and microbes. The meat that I buy at the grocery store comes from living creatures. Lots of products come from living creatures, etc.
By hunting and killing and butchering and eating my own meat, I was involved in the process from start to finish. The deer I killed had a much better life than the cows or chickens I bought at the supermarket. The meat was much healthier, and truly “organic.” It was good and satisfying to go through the process from start to finish and do it myself, in much the same way that it is satisfying to build a dollhouse with my daughters from scratch as opposed to just buying one at the toy store. The feeling was the same, and I geothermal the same pleasure out of it that I get from my vegetable garden today.
So, I think it’s a good thing, and I’m pretty sure that it was like that for most of my fellow deer hunters, and the cost of the license leads to good conservation.
Now that being said are there people who just take a perverse pleasure in killing things? I’m sure there are. Re some of them hunters? I’m sure they are. I never encountered anything like that, though.
There is another thing. I moved to the farm straight from NYC.
I learned quickly that nature does not share our sensibilities with regard to suffering and death. The farm itself was like a celebration of death. Hawks swooping down and eviscerating bunnies. Foxes mingling chickens and leaving behind a scene out of Friday the 13th. Every spring baby birds falling out of trees and splatting onto the ground like raindrops. I was literally surrounded by constant murder and suffering. Welcome to nature.
The big epiphany is that that is the norm, not the exception, and I am a part of it. It seems that modern society seems to hide from this and pretend that it’s not the case, and we get unrealistic ideas of what life means and what suffering is.
Hunting made me more accepting of suffering and death, and put front and center that my existence causes both, and it forced me to be more realistic about it, appreciate it, and be more judicious about inflicting it needlessly.
I personally have no desire to go killing a giraffe in Africa, but I don’t have a problem with somebody who does, especially when it is done ethically and responsibly and with conservation in mind, as this hunt appears to have gone down.
