I’d just like to add that I personally know some of the members of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Hunt mentioned previously. The guys who hunt boar and bison with spear. They’re fine people and do take some pretty serious risks in what they do, they do it for many reasons but primarily as a component of their personal spirituality. This fall they’re planning a trip to hunt black bear, I wish them luck in their endeavor… I know they do it with the utmost preparation and reverence. I will say this threat has really heartened me with the large number of supportive and rational responses in defence of the hunter. We get used to being stereotyped as bloodthirsty, moronic rednecks and it’s refreshing to see that there are still alot of people who understand and can see the big picture.
I get the hunter thing, I just don’t agree with it. I think it sucks, and sadly, even though I know some decent guys who hunt, when ever I see a ‘hunter’ he’s always some strung-out psycho hillbilly full of beer and jerky, ready to kill as soon as something rustles in the brush.
honestly though, I’d love to see hunting and hunters be limited to just the weapons they have on hand or can fashion in the wild. Spears, bow and arrow (yes, I know there is much bowhunting) etc. and without the scent suits and the calls and the technology.
The idea that someone hunts for meat is just goofy to me, there are scores of cattle waiting to be slaughtered, drawn, quartered, drained, packed and carted, and slapped on your grill. and after that, we use the left overs for dog food, coats, shoes and belts.
We take care of that all for you, why the need to hunt, I’ll never understand.
Although, It would be amusing to hunt convicted child sex offenders ala running man, THAT I would do in a second.
I agree with that. Guns give humans way to much of an advantage. I could see poaching rates going way down if they had to take on a rhino with a bow. You’d lose the trigger happy psychos who just want to kill something and keep the ones who are just interested in the hunt. However this could cause a problem because less people would hunt so the animal populations would become way to high.
Bah, why is there never an easy answer?
How so? Our opposable thumbs and large brains are the only things we have ever had to hunt or fight with. Sharpened sticks, stone axes, bows, and firearms are all fundamentally the same as they are direct results of the sentience that evolution has endowed us with. Not to single you out here, Wearia, because I know what I am disagreeing with is not what you meant, and this post is closer to a straw man than a rebuttal, but the above quote is close enough to arguments I have heard before that I feel like using it.
Arguing that hunting with a bow is some how more noble than hunting with firearms is faulty. By doing so is forgetting that even the humble spear is technology, and the argument confuses difficulty with ethics. A lion isn’t likely to use only it’s teeth, and not it’s claws, to bring down its prey. There is nothing inherently wrong with just killing the prey the easiest way possible.
This doesn’t mean I’d find hunting buffalo with a Blackhawk especially fulfilling, but it does mean that the use of uniquely human skills is neither morally good nor morally wrong. Hunting isn’t about what is “fair”.
On a side note. I don’t hunt. I can’t stand hunting. Or, perhaps I should say “I can’t stand to hunt.” My reasons are not moral or ethical in nature, but merely that I don’t enjoy sitting in a tree stand at 5 AM and waiting … and waiting … and waiting. With my luck the only white tail buck I’ll ever see is a juvenile. The only time I ever did bring down a decent buck wasn’t really worth the time spent. Nope, I don’t like hunting. I will, however, fire up the grill if somebody has some venison 
I always am amused when the anti-hunters propose that only bows and arrows be used. Have you ever seen an animal die from an arrow? Ever seen one die from a bullet? Sure, you can miss with a gun, and cause a horrible wound, but the same can be said of a bow too. Even under the best circumstances an arrow will take much longer to kill than the bullet.
Maybe we should go back to being ‘real’ men and just stampede the whole herd over a cliff.
Wearia I love your logic, if only hunting with a bow is allowed, the poachers, who are hunting illegally to begin with, will stop. Sounds like a plan to me!
Um , did I miss something? I didnt see anyone advocateing going out and kiling anything for the “hell of it”. Aside from one person mentioning poachers , pretty much everyone said that they hunt for food. Maybe you should spend a little time out in the woods before you paint everyone with the smal pecker brush. Maybe if you had to hunt something in order to surive you would gain a little perspective on the subject. Then again , maybe you would stick to your high ideals and starve to death. **
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Then why did you answer my post arguing against “killingfor the hell of it”?
I guess I will state my case for the third time. You guys like to argue more than read. I have nothing against people who hunt for food. You guys must think I’m a vegetarian or some thing. I’m sure a lot of you would be surprised to know that I myself hunt Deer and Wild Turkey (for-food)! I actually agree with most of the people who are making cases against me (who don’t even know what the original post was). To sum it up, I am against Trophy hunting and killing the top predators of their natural habitat simply because they are there!
It is fucking up the balance of nature when the top predator is removed from the food web. How can anyone but a redneck argue with that?
On cats and weasels killing for no reason! Really, or do you think that they are perfecting their hunting skills. You take a wild cat domesticate it and feed it kibble and bits. The cat still has it’s wild instinct. The Grizzly, Wolf, Mountain Lion, BobCat and Lynx just to name a few are on the endangered species list because of Trophy Hunters. Wolves were exterminated from the lower 48 and were just recently reintroduced. I never heard of anyone fancying the taste of wolf, did you? My kids and grandchildren have every damn right to be allowed to see these animals living in the wild. These animals have not been placed on this earth by any friggin god for some asshole to kill for a friggin rush! They have earned their place in this world. You don’t have the right to take that away from them or anyone else who would like to see them 50 years from now!
In my area, the rural rat (deer) population is so out of control that they are wiping out the hemlocks and trillium by overgrazing. And now they’ve got Chronic Wasting disease too! There are far more deer in this area now than there were at the time of settlement. I am in complete favor of thinning the herd.
That not only goes for top predators oe endangered species.
If you ain’t gonna eat it, dont kill it!
There is no Justification for it!
All quotes by InLikeFlynn
Ok, gotcha. However, there have been some posters here who have expressed an aversion to hunting in general, even for food. So, undoubtedly some responses have been to those people.
Ok, do you have a cite to show that the balance of nature is being seriously affected by the limited hunting of top predators in N. America? Do you have a cite to the number of licenses issued for Bear or Mountain Lion over the past few years. By the way, have you stopped beating your wife?
Cite that the a) the animals are endangered and, b) that the cause is trophy hunting.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren’t wolves exterminated by government sponsored programs? Where were the trophy hunters?
Who was pulling the trigger?
The government knows it fucked up and is now paying millions to sustain a few packes in Yellowstone!
What are you dence?
Why do you think they are on the List?
You are one of the rednecks aren’t you?
Dork!
Beating my wife? No, I’ve been teaching yours about nature!
<sigh> Ok grasshopper let’s try this again. I’ll take it slow, maybe that way you can follow along.
Wolves were exterminated by ranchers, commercial hunters and bounty hunters, most effectively by using poison and traps. They were not exterminated by “trophy hunting.” Brief history of wolves in America. (PDF)
I am many things, but I am not familiar with this ‘dence’ word, and therefore deny being so.
Who? What list? Where is the proof? It’s your theory, not mine, go find a cite to prove it.
I’ll just ignore this, and let the mods deal with it.
**
Just so long as I get to hunt the old fashioned way. I get to bait, I get to use trained animals to assist me, and whenever possible I get to run whole herds of animals off of large cliffs. Oh, and expect whatever animal we kill to suffer a lot longer then it would had we just shot it.
Marc
Possibly psychopathic, but usually relatively few people hunt just for a trophy. I might try hunting non-food animals, but more to test myself in game of wits and power against rite of predation as old as single-celed bacteria.
As opposed to just giving strong people the advantage?
Alright, you are working from the assumption that they have an inalienable right to live. This was, in fact, not clear from your first rather incoherent post. Nevertheless, this is not a logical argument.
There is no balance of natrure. Nature is inherently out of balance, and usually changes at some slow or fast rate. It is an anthropocentric fallacy when one asumes humans are outside of or above nature. Mankind, too, has equal right to kill other species.
Strawman, Red Herring, Ad Hominem. You have yet to provide any rationale for your views.
You ignore the rest of the evidence. Your opponents here have not relied exclusively on domesticated examples of pointless killing in nature.
Interesting that you leave humans out of that equation.
Both statments are patently untrue. All those species were destroyed largely by farmers trying to protect their own animals, habitat loss, and age-old fears of competing predators. Trophy hunting has not been a notable factor in any of those. Wolves still exist in the wild in quite a number of North Western states, wihtout being reintroduced.
This is an incoherent and rather baseless accusation. I don’t believe anyone here argued for the extermination of wild predators.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this line.
Referencing govenment-sponsered wolfhunting:
A bunch of private hunters who would not have otherwise hunted wolves. They were well-payed for their efforts.
InLikeFLynn, I’ve seen a lot of people like you come and go. I strongly suggest you take a chill pill, find some citations or sources that provide meaningful statistics to support your… arguments, and stay far away from stereotypes and insulting other posters. You are probably about a wolfs tooth length away from being banned for sheer assininity.
I’ve never been a hunter, but in most cases see no problem in other people enjoying it. On the first day of dove season, it sounds like a war has begun around our house. Almost everyone in the neighborhood is somewhere along a tree line, waiting for a few doves to come in to feed. However, not too many miles from here is a road you really don’t want to drive down. That’s because of the fools sitting in lawn chairs right next to the road with their coolers filled with beer. My point is that in the attempt to justify hunting, you must not overlook the fact that there are abuses, which I believe was the main point the OP so poorly propounded.
It is very obvious that InLikeFlynn is after an argument instead of a debate.
Agreed, its more of a personal preference of mine. I like bows, you need a lot more strategy to use them. I don’t think its more noble, I just think that sniping off a deer from 200 yards away isn’t really hunting. If your hunting out of nessesity then by all means use a gun, you need any advantage you can get. But if its just for recreation then why not have more of a challenge? Its not big loss if the animal gets away.
First off, I’m not anti hunting at all. I just prefer bow hunting to firearm hunting. Neither is perfect at all, I just think that bow hunting even the odds a bit. Once again I’m talking about recreational hunting not nessesity hunting.
In a perfect world, but it was just a passing thought, I know it would never work.
Oh and InLikeFlynn, chill. Your not right on this one and name calling isn’t helping. Just move on.
I think is a perspective issue, that someone who shoots a dear or bear then walks over to it and watches its last few breathes exhausting from its lungs,and feels good about their deed, lacks sensitivity.
If you could feel the fear an animal has as it is being followed and wounded then followed and wounded and followed then eventually killed. If you could feel what the animal feels, the fear, anxiety, despair, and horror of dying slowly and painfully you might reconsider your actions.
The sense is that hunters FEEL less deeply. Some people feel about (wild) animals as deeply as they feel about pets and even other humans and so they can’t imagine how another person can appear to lack this depth of empathy and connectedness.
That some people could possibly enjoy killing is beyond the comprehension of others, even though they may be hypocrites if they eat meat.
Other animals are slaughter by humans in the tens of thousands every day., and if you eat the bodies of these animals as “meat products” you are not in very good position in terms of being an advocate for their lives.
Personally I don’t hunt and never have, and doubt that I would be able to pull the trigger unless in self defence, and I would prefer to use a spray.
I remember watching a show about this painter sitting at the edge of a large magnificent lake, trying to paint a duck off in the distance. He couldn’t quite get the depth of detail he was aiming for so he got his assistant to shoot and kill the animal and put it by his side on a stool. Now he could see and copy all the beauty of colour and details of the feathers. And I thought, what a stupid fucking idiot.
Sounds like a pretty lousy hunter to me. I suspect you’ll find that the typical death by natural causes of your average game animal is far more agonizingly painful and drawn out than the typical death by hunter.
You’re right that actually enjoying the killing aspect of things is somewhat twisted. I doubt you’ll find many hunters that hunt because they enjoy the killing, though. What they enjoy is the hunting. If they can be said to “enjoy” the moment of killing at all, it’s out of satisfaction at having made a clean kill without any drawn out pain on the animal’s part.
I would question whose feelings are out of whack here. People who equate deer with other people are the ones who ought to be reexamining their priorities.
[Moderator Hat: ON]
InLikeFlynn said:
While it may seem like a minor insult as far as insults go, nevertheless what we have here is indeed an insult. As such, it is against the rules of Great Debates. Watch yourself.
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: OFF]