The other thing is that I think we rape the world , destroy fisheries, destroy the environment etc, not because we are bd, or evil. We just want the stuff and we pay somebody to go and get it for us. We are not face to face with the consequences of our needs and wants and rampant consumerism.
Go out in the woods nd harvest a deer and you are face to face with it. It made me a Little bit more appreciative and careful concerning the environment, and my impact upon it.
I don’t have too much of an opinion over all regarding the hunting. I will leave that up to the environmentalists to sort out whether separating trigger happy Americans from their cash in exchange for a chance blast away at the local fauna is good or bad for the conservation of the species, but using the excuse of feeding the hungry village irks me.
It doesn irk me because I have anything against some hungry villagers dining on giraffe, but because it seems to fit into the tired old stereotype of Great White bwana comes to save backward African natives with his magic boomstick. All thing being equal the natives could probably kill their own giraffe. But all things aren’t equal because they can’t afford the however many thousands of dollars a permit costs. And the reason that permit is required is that otherwise those hungry native villagers probably would go out and hunt giraffe in unsustainable numbers. Which brings us back to the point that if the hunter really wanted to provide meat for the village they would have been much better off using the money they spend on the hunt to buy cows and goats to give to the village.
So if you want to pay the big bucks to kill a giraffe, don’t pretend that you are doing so purely for humanitarian reasons. You are doing it because you enjoy killing stuff. That you don’t have anything better to do with the 2000 pounds of dead giraffe than let the locals have it, is a secondary consideration at best.
I’m reminded of the time that a friend and I went to a boxing match at a bar in college. We were both aficionados of the sport, having grown up somewhat exposed to it- in my case, my grandfather was a Golden Gloves lightweight boxer in the 1930s, and had taught me how as I grew up, and we would watch and critique fights together, and appreciate the skill, strategy and toughness involved. My buddy’s background was more as an amateur boxer himself. So we went to the bar to watch this boxing match assuming that the other fans would be like us.
Nope, 99% of them were there to see one guy beat the shit out of the other. They were bitching when it was in my mind, a good boxing match. When it turned into a beat-down, they got louder and more emphatic, even though the match was essentially done and all that was happening is that the losing guy was getting pounded senseless. I could entirely have seen this crowd cheering on gladiators, or baiting bears, or whatever other horrible, bloody event they were watching… for the sheer violence and savagery of it. I was stunned, to say the least.
For me, and probably others in the thread, sport hunters more similar in mindset to my buddy and I with respect to boxing are not the problem here. If someone feels like hunting some animal is a true test of his hunting abilities, and the killing is just the normal outcome of the process, that’s one thing.
It’s the hunters who literally get a visceral thrill out of killing things that unnerve me. I don’t understand that, and find it to be disturbing and to a great extent, reprehensible. And I do feel like trophy hunts to that crowd are somehow wrong. Not because the animal’s killed, but because of the motivation of the hunters.
Broadly, I’m sure there are exceptions or things I am unaware of:
North American model - I don’t know as much about Canada, but I understand there are more similarities than differences (their public lands are called crown lands, and are treated slightly differently). Has mostly been wildly successful, there are more whitetail deer now than any time in history, including before European contact. Hunters and anglers pay tons of money to do the work of conservation, and the state governments carefully monitor population levels and habitat using that money. Poaching still occurs, but compliance is overall high and consequences of breaking the law are high.
There are [del]two[/del] (three, thanks bump) sub-categories in the US. In the west (roughly Montana down to New Mexico, and everything west of that, including Alaska. Not sure how the Dakotas work), there is tons of public land, and big game and turkey is mostly a lottery system, you pay for a chance at actually getting a tag. In the east you often need permission to hunt land or own it yourself, and in some cases they will give tags to anyone who asks because deer populations are very high (other species might have restrictions). Texas has unprotected pigs as mentioned, but they also have private high-fence game preserves, often with imported African game. For these, the process is similar to Africa (and $$$).
Africa, which is mostly the southern part of the continent. People pay high dollars to hunt in most cases. The benefits to the local economy can be great, but it also depends on government stability and level of corruption - Namibia probably gets more benefit than Zimbabwe. In many cases the animals are “wild” - they are surrounded by fences that they can’t cross, albeit the areas are very large. In some cases (like with rhinos) they tell you which one you can hunt, and hopefully carefully monitored. In other cases it’s sort of an a la carte menu (Impala? That’s $2000. Wildebeest? $6000).
The local people make sometimes less than 1000x the cost of a hunt in a year, so they don’t hunt. Poaching occurs if the costs for doing so are low and the reward high, and this cases an order of magnitude more damage than any number of managed legal hunters do. They are sometimes criticized for being pure trophy hunters who don’t even eat the meat, but as I understand it you can’t take the meat to the US - concerns about parasites etc. So it’s usually donated to the local people, and parts are enjoyed while there.
European model - maybe I should say parts of Europe, I think the Nordic countries might be more free than the UK. Game is privatized: landowners have a right to animals on the land (and IIRC their meat), so back in the day the king had exclusive right. Now it’s often seen as an upper class thing (pheasant and quail hunters with $2000 shotguns and tweed. Fox hunting!) Robin Hood is now known for stealing physical property from the rich, but he was also a poacher. Market hunting destroyed American animals like buffalo, so now it’s illegal to sell game meat. All venison you get in US restaurants are farmed, usually red deer from Australia or NZ, or possibly US farmed whitetail. In Europe, this may not be the case.
It seems to have a larger emphasis on hunting as a sport than as a means to get meat (that you happen to enjoy).
Australia and NZ have tons of feral animals. Pigs, deer, goats, etc. NZ has zero predators and Australia only has dingoes, who aren’t the apex predators as much as wolves are. The imported animals threaten native fauna and flora. So native animals still have protections, but ferals are fair game, with limited or no protections. The environmental solution is to kill 'em.
And some places might disallow it completely, but of course there’s an exception if you’re well heeled.
I hope I didn’t make any mistakes. I’m not a lifetime hunter and haven’t done a whole lot of big game. I think the North American model is the best one that’s been tried (AusNZ is fine but out of necessity). I have my own issues with the ethics of some of these other types of hunts, but I think abandoning hunts completely is the wrong solution. It’s not easy to wrap your head around the concept that hunting can be good for the population if you’re not acquainted to it. But you have to give the majority of hunters some credit - they don’t want to kill the last animal, but want to preserve it for future generations. There are of course asshole exceptions, but they are a minority. I wish Ted Nugent wasn’t the most prominent hunter (of mostly non-wild fenced in animals), there are better representatives.
Upland game bird hunting in America is still seemingly the most ‘sporting’ - i.e. ‘to the manor born’ - form of hunting. It’s not like you need to be wealthy to do it, but in the main, it is a sporting pursuit similar to fly fishing. These pursuits seem to overlap more than other types of hunting and angling, and indeed they demand a similar set of skills.
The upland bird magazines are beautiful to behold, outstanding photography, layout, content etc, even the ads are beautiful - it’s a well-financed sport. And I know a number of friends who have invested staggering amounts of money and time into training the dogs that they use for it.
To some extent, sure. It’s by far the cheapest method of hunting. You only need a regular hunting license here (and in previous years, a license + $10 stamp). Duck requires a federal duck stamp plus more expensive lead-free ammo. Most people I know aren’t using fancy over/unders that uplanders did in the past but cheap pump shotguns.
I guess like fly fishing, it’s a high effort/low yield activity (as in fly fishermen tend to be catch and release). Chukarhunting is among the one of the more difficult things I’ve done and rarely successful but it beats the gym.
I killed one of those once.
Does it matter if my “gun” was a Dodge Caravan?
One of the biggest proponents of lower deer populations are auto insurers.
BTW, I can’t read the title of this thread without thinking of Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie fighting draugr.
Does this really even count as “hunting”? That term seems to imply that something is difficult to track down and kill. Giraffes are 3000-pound goats with 15 foot necks that live in flat, sparsely-wooded areas. You don’t hunt a giraffe so much as you go to where giraffes are and shoot one. As long as you can handle a big enough rifle and hit the broad side of a barn with it, you probably have all the requisite skill. (Well, that and writing a big check.) And I’m supposed to be impressed?
They’re apparently one of the harder antelope type creatures to hunt. Their height gives them more visual scan and they can lie down pretty flat when resting.
Geoffrey the Giraffe proved easy to kill, RIP.
I can, professional poker players, I could as an amateur buy into the world series of poker, a $10,000 entry fee BTW, and play against professionals who could be said are the best of the best. I could with enough money buy a football team and make myself quarterback, same with any other sports team.
When it comes to hunting, and yes I’ve hunted, look at ducks unlimited, they want to hunt ducks and while preserving duck habitat. Preserving duck habitat benefits not only ducks but many other forms of wildlife. So say we ban hunting, do you really think that duck unlimited would keep control, pay taxes, etc on land they can’t use for hunting, or would they sell it off to developers?
Others have pointed out that if an animal doesn’t have value the locals will kill it off to save other animal that do have value to them. So lions in general are considered a pest, but if said pest can bring in big dollars then it might be in the locals best interest if they keep lions and their habitat around. And that habitat benefits all the animals that use it not just the animals that are hunted.
When I see people up in arms over Cecil, Xanda, or this giraffe while wearing leather, eating meat, etc it tell me that Denis Leary was right, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZBAtd9rty8 we only want to save the cute animals.
I would bet my last dollar that if this woman had stalked a giraffe through the bush and killed it with a recurve bow, people would still be bitching and complaining.
Pardon me ma’am, your slip is showing.