Why is fishing socially acceptable but hunting is not (or less so?)

Great Debates
41

This is the sort of thing I pictured when I read the title of the thread. After reading the OP, I didn’t know if I should mention it.

In old movies, hunters were often portrayed in a number of ways. There were the nasty poachers, the ones that had to poach or starve, the hillbilly subsistence hunter, the farmer supplementing the family diet, and the Nasty Trophy Hunter. Another character type I recall is The Outdoorsman. This character was an upstanding, sober, reasonable person who enjoyed The Outdoors. His flannel shirt was tucked into his woollen trousers, and he often wore an A-2 flying jacket and a fedora. Maybe he smoked a pipe. The Outdoorsman was helpful to the rangers, often helped people who were lost, and kind to the environment. He was wise and frequently was well-educated. He might even be a City Boy who only spends his vacations in the forest. The Outdoorsman was a positive stereotype of the hunter.

When I think of hunters today, the image that comes to mind is a camouflage-wearing yahoo who has at least one American flag displayed on his person or pick-up truck. He’s very conservative and drinks large quantities of beer. In short, he’s a redneck. Certainly this is an unfair portrayal; but the rednecks get the reality shows. I think that hunting may not be socially acceptable to certain people because those people and the stereotypical redneck hunter are diametrically opposed in their world-views. ‘If you’re a hunter, then you’re a hick. If you’re a hick, you’re not as enlightened as i am. If you like guns, there’s something wrong with you.’

Most people don’t fish with guns. I’ve never heard of a high-capacity assault fishing pole. The hunter stalks his unsuspecting prey with murder in his heart. He is equipped with a killing machine that he is not only ready to use, he’s practically itching to use. The hunter is a killer. The stereotypical fisherman stands next to or in a pretty river. He dresses in a manner similar to The Outdoorsman from the old movies. He is quiet and contemplative. An intellectual. He and his activities fit urban sensibilities. Many people who live in large cities fear guns. They can’t imagine themselves sneaking through a forest and coldly shooting and killing a cute woodland creature. But they can imagine themselves standing by a stream having Great and Noble Thoughts, perhaps composing some poetry or prose on the virtues of Nature. They imagine the thrill of catching a fish, and then the contentment of frying them over an open fire. They skip over the bit about killing the fish, scaling it, slicing it open, and pulling its guts out.

Admitting a broad brush for the sake of rhetoric, I think that the reason fishing is more socially acceptable in some circles is that the people in those circles see themselves as Thinkers; intelligent people who are sensitive to Nature, the cCircle of Life, The Great Mandala, the cosmic interconnections of things, and who have heard of Thoreau. They don’t see themselves as people who drink beer out of cans, drive jack-up pick-up trucks, hooting and hollering as they bounce through mud holes, and killing Bambi with an evil firearm.

42

Best not to dwell on hypocrisy or consistency of principle. We do what we do so that we can feel good, not because it’s actually consistent with theoretical belief structure.

Bambi v A River Runs Through It.

Few people have thought through why they do what they do in almost any arena, and fewer still are able to maintain a consistency of application.

I have a Jain friend willing to take oral, but not IV, antibiotics for liver flukes. Hello?

I have wealthy friends living large (not to mention their CO2 footprint in the hundreds of tons) who donate to PETA…save the cows but consume the world. Hello?

43

You have to distinguish between those who hunt because they enjoy the actual killing—or, worse, suffering—of animals, and those who hunt because they enjoy other aspects of hunting. I agree that the former is pathological, but I believe it’s the latter that’s the norm among sport hunters (of which I am not one, so I’m not the best person to explain the sport’s appeal).

44

I actually disagree, I know/hear a lot about the gun control crowd in America and I wouldn’t say they are generally opposed to hunting. In fact, in the United States most gun control types that are in the mainstream are fine with rifles or shotguns that can hold a limited capacity of rounds as these are primarily used for hunting. It’s the “military looking” rifles with high capacity and handguns that seem to have their attention and those are mostly not associated with hunting.

I actually wouldn’t say that I’ve seen much organized opposition to hunting. Some people have an aversion to it, but that’s not the same thing. Some people have an aversion to eating raw fish or to going camping, but I don’t know that it’s the same as those things being “socially unacceptable.” Where I do see actual, legitimate opposition to hunting it’s almost always based on animal rights arguments. I believe that’s what did fox hunting in over in Britain, as it was seen as a cruel blood sport. I think you guys are imagining any significant opposition to hunting (at least in the United States) based on gun control politics.

45

Why? Ethics involves morality, what is immoral about killing an animal?

The concept that we “lose a part of our humanity” when we kill an animal is what triggered that. We’re literally a species that developed tool use largely for organized hunting purposes first and foremost. The idea that us killing an animal dehumanizes us is like saying a bear killing a bear de-ursines the bear. Of course it doesn’t, it’s natural for a bear to kill a deer.

People can have whatever attitude toward animals they wish, I think a lot of farmers and hunters definitely have a level of respect towards their animals. Some don’t. I wouldn’t say either position is immoral, but I personally have more respect for hunters that respect what they’re doing versus the whooping red necks.

But there’s nothing wrong or immoral about hunting for sport. That’s like saying there’s something wrong with camping for fun, or farming for fun, or fishing for fun, or various other activities that serve no purpose in the modern world but which damage the environment and all three of which kill some number of animals. It’s really to me a nice break from modern life to at least be out in the woods or nature doing these activities. We’re using modern tools and equipment, but it’s an ancient practice and it’s nonsense to try to paint it as immoral as it tries to separate us from the part of nature that we actually are, we’re a natural apex predator and it’s asinine to pretend otherwise.

46

  1. What’s wrong with drinking beer out of cans. Canned beer tastes better than bottled beers, always and forever. Because it protects the beer from the light. Now, since canning is more expensive than bottling, canned beers tend to be the macrobrews since lots of craft brewers can’t afford canning. But lots of good beer comes in cans now, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adams has various canned varieties, Harpoon cans, Oskar Blue’s cans beer now etc.

  2. I know a lot of rednecks who drink beer and hunt. I don’t know a single one who combine the two activities. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but combining alcohol with hunting is insanely dangerous, and I know and interact with a lot of low brow red necks and have never known one to do something so stupid. And note, some of them are unashamed poachers who kill far in excess of Virginia bag limits each year, bait animals and etc–but none of them I know actually combine drinking and hunting at the same time.

  3. I think part of what I like about hunting is it strips away the layers of falsehood inherent in modern society. We’re all killers. Humanity lives off the deaths of other species. For the vast majority of humanity, quite literally we eat the dead flesh of animals and in fact have a great love for it. Most of these animals are factory raised, hardly ever touch the ground, can barely move for most of their lives and die on an assembly line.

Many vegetarians still will of course make use of various goods (leather as an example) derived from the deaths of animals. Finally, even those who insist on trying to be totally vegan, all farming known to man results in the killing of animals. Plowing fields, whether it be on a family owned organic heirloom farm in Vermont or a factory farm operated by a corporation, kills tons of small mammals as fields tend to have lots of burrows in them and the animals get cut up during plowing. Farms also tend to specifically kill pest mammals and such, like mice and rabbits (even the organic heirloom farms and such won’t allow pest animals to destroy their crops.)

Hunting to me is almost like an act of truth or honesty, in that you’re asserting yourself as a human and not hiding behind layers of industrial food production.

47

I’d say the socially unacceptable parts of hunting are mainly the trophy hunters, people who seem to some to be hunting to just to take pleasure from killing an animal, and the so-called hunters who are nothing but gun nuts who like to shoot anything and use hunting as an excuse to go out in the woods and shoot trees, rocks, farm animals and pets because they couldn’t find real game if they tried.

48

Michigan also only lags Pennsylvania wrt the number of deer-on-car collisions, which tells you something about why hunting is so popular in those states. Deer overpopulation is a major problem, and if it wasn’t for controlled hunting, the deer would first be even more of a problem for motorists and farmers than they are now, and then come winter a lot of them would starve anyway.

This goes for animals other than deer. I remember reading a paper a few years ago about lion hunting in Africa, and they were arguing that lion populations are actually healthier in places where they allow hunting. Hunters apparently preferentially kill the males, which means there are fewer single males roaming around killing the babies of their rivals (which is a thing lions are somewhat famous for doing).

You’re probably right that Philadelphia people aren’t much into hunting, but I think hunting is quite popular in Pittsburgh, which again is a major urban area and definitely not ‘Pennysltucky’. In my experience (which isn’t much) the hunting vs. non-hunting divide is as much regional as urban vs. rural- hunting is much more popular in Midwestern cities than in East Coast ones.

49

Yeah, this. I don’t hunt, partly because I wasn’t raised as a hunter and had never had the time to get properly trained with using a gun, but if I had the time and opportunity I would totally get into it. Venison is one of the tastiest meats I know (maybe second only to a couple wild game meats I’ve eaten in Africa), and I’d feel better about eating meat from a hunted deer than from a factory-farm-raised chicken or pig.

50

The organized anti- gun groups are against ALL guns. The reason they make a distinction between “assault” weapons and hunting guns is that pesky 2nd Amendment. They know they can’t go after all the guns at once. The last guns to be taken away will be the hunting guns. I agree that hunting is a cruel sport. I don’t make a distinction between military style guns and hunting arms. The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with hunting.

Now days I believe anti-gun sentiment contributes to negative views regarding hunting.

51

Yeah, as an aside I wish venison was more widely available in supermarkets and on restaurant menus. It’s just an incredibly tasty meat. In a lot of states there are slow efforts to start larger scale deer farming for just this purpose, but due to political issues there’s a lot of regulations holding it up in many places. Oddly many hunter/sportsmen associations are very opposed to deer farming and are often heavily involved in making it as hard as possible to get permits for it and as hard as possible to actually profit from it or sell the meat to consumers.

52

(this is not an attack on your line of thought, i do understand it, just using it as a good intro for my thoughts here)

It’s still hiding behind layers of industrial gun production. Go out and kill something with your bare hands if you want assert yourself as a human truthfully and honestly. Or at least make your weapon with your hands. Chip some rocks and use them to make a pointy stick or even a bow and arrow. If you smelt ore and make gunpowder that’s fine too, but good luck getting anything smaller than a cannon to work even if you can pull off the smelting part.

(sorry, just had to get that out).

53

I doubt the hunting guns will ever be taken away. Even in Europe most countries allow hunting, and even in Europe you can typically get non-hunting guns. The regulatory regime makes it so you have to really want them, though, whereas in America you can just casually buy them.

I don’t actually think there’s much negative sentiment for hunting associated with the gun control movement. As I said, I follow the gun control types pretty closely and their rhetoric is almost never directed at hunting. In fact they are often express in their desire to not ban what they view as “normal” hunting guns. Some certainly hate all guns as they are irrational crazy people, but they are typically smart enough to know where to pick their battles.

Of course even their restricted arguments get no play in the Congress and anytime something like Sandy Hook is more than a few months in the past most people tend not to care.

Hunting isn’t intrinsically linked to firearms by the way, myself and many others hunt quite a lot with bows. Bow hunting is at least in my opinion, the most fun of any type of hunting.

54

That’s not a fair argument, and it’s one I expected (not phrased exactly as you phrased it), but many people respond negatively to the “hunting is natural” argument by bitching about the modern tools we use. The reality though is that specialization and tool use are also entirely natural human behaviors. I wouldn’t smith my own horse shoes in the past or forge my own iron tools anymore than I’m going to make my own firearms.

The fact that you even mention “with your bare hands” just shows ignorance. Cro-magnon man didn’t hunt with their bare hands, and even before we used thrown spears to hunt we used tools. Chimpanzees use tools to kill animals as well.

It’s likely that even in cro-magnon social groups they had specialization. There were probably a few guys who were particularly good at making arrow heads and carving spears, some guys (or gals–women were believed to take part in hunting a good bit in many tribes) who were especially skilled at hunting, some who were especially skilled at various other things. We weren’t as specialized as we were even in the Bronze age, but I think there’s decent evidence that at least as long as humans have lived in tribes and had rudimentary tool use their was some level of specialization. I believe some of the stuff found on Ötzi was believed to have been crafted by specialists.

But living totally unconnected to where you food comes from is actually a pretty new thing, 19th century and later, because up until then almost all of humanity was involved day-to-day in the production of food (agriculture employed upwards of 80-90% of the population, and was still over 50% even in industrialized countries in the 19th century.) Even the minority of people who lived/worked in cities in the past were usually much more closely connected to their food, as it wasn’t uncommon for them to buy animals to kill them at home and cook (on the occasions when they could afford meat at all.) Hell, most people today can’t even buy flour and make bread from it, and basically all households used to do that all the time (aside from the true nobility etc.)

I actually do have a friend who has made his own functioning cannons, though. I don’t believe it’s actually that hard to make your own functioning gun, either, if you’re actually into smithing as a hobby.

55

I blame Elmer Fudd. Hunting that humorous rabbit who made him look like an idiot. Hell, that moron couldn’t even shoot that Daffy Duck.

56

Sure he could; he just needed help.

57

The bare hands part is exagerration as I’m sure you know. So I qualified it with the part about making your own weapons. When you use a weapon made by someone else you’re no longer asserting yourself as a human, you’re asserting mankind as humans. There’s no individuality left to the act. There’s nothing wrong with that, we are humans, and our societies are the great tools that we have built. But the same applies to food production and just about everything else we do.

58

I see, you misunderstood my argument that hunting connects us more with humanity’s natural behavior as an individualist argument–which it was not. Humans are not individualist animals, we’re social animals. Like all social animals there are certainly some lone wolfs in our species, but they are outside the norm. Sometimes expressed by just living in really rural areas and trying to go into town as minimally as possible, up to people that are basically modern day hermits and try to live entirely off the land. But that’s not what I’m talking about, that’s just a modern expression of what has always been a minority behavior.

59

When my mother lived in France during the Nazi occupation, the Germans came and took their food, their hunting guns, and their young men. If someone powerful enough wants to take your gun, they will.

Don’t believe the rhetoric of a movement that has at it’s core, the disarmament of an entire population. It’s a European conceit that the anti-gun lobby is about making America more like Europe. That’s just the first step.

60

Yeah, I don’t see that happening here. That’s conspiracist woo, if they haven’t banned hunting guns in places like Britain which is one of the more extreme anti-gun countries in Europe (which itself is anti-gun), I wouldn’t hold my breath for it happening in America anytime in our lifetime or even in the next 200 years.