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What are your thoughts on hunting?

Nick

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    • Seen May 9, 2024
    As someone who doesn't support the mass killing for consumption of animals, on an individual level I don't have even the slightest oppositional thought towards hunting animals. I don't necessarily support killing animals for sport, but I think hunting is very admirable if you hunt for food.
     

    Sir Codin

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    Meat from hunted animals tends to have less chemicals and growth hormones in them.

    Not that I give a shit about meat containing those things or mass slaughter of domestic animals or anything, but sometimes I can't help but enjoy something that someone went out, stalked, and killed like Rambo. Once in my life, I need to take up hunting. I'd feel like a badass eating something I killed myself. Even more so if I killed it with my bare hands. Be great dinner talk.

    I do agree that hunting for sport is pointless though. Unless you kill it with your bare hands. That's the only time you should ever display a hunted animal as a trophy.
     

    ANARCHit3cht

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    I'm against hunting for pure sport and any gains apart from food. That is, like ivory, fur etc. It just ain't cool man.

    I've never been hunting, but I think I'd find it really enjoyable. Especially the part when I get to cook whatever I killed!
     
    Yoshikko

    Yoshikko

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    It just depends. I'm against hunting for sport. I don't really agree with making it a sport to kill other beings just for fun, it's just wrong to me. Hunting for food or out of necessity though, by all means.
     
    Her

    Her

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    I don't support hunting unless it's for food, but even then I find that people use the justification of 'it's just for food!' to go shoot the shit out of whatever they want regardless. In my eyes, if you're financially well off enough to choose to hunt for food rather than out of necessity, you're dressing up hunting for sport under false pretenses.
    The exclusions to this are animals that are deemed pests by the government of the area.

    However, that being said, I eat a lot of fish that my mother's boyfriend had caught only a few hours previously that we could have bought at a store. I think the difference though is that fish are a lot more plentiful than big game and are easier to replenish sources of than, say, deer.

    I just don't see what is admirable about hunting, perhaps it's a masculinity thing.
     
    Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer

    Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer

    I burn!
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    • If its for Food or pest control, its ok.
    However I don't really get the "hunter culture" where people go out just because they like killing things such as Hare coursing, its banned here but it happens all the time (I saw some guys hare coursing today even).
    Another aspect of hunting that's interesting is it relation to class. For example hunting with dogs was banned in the UK in 2005. To this day I think the then labour government only did it because fox hunting is considered an upper class.
    In regard to Fox hunting the law is aggressively upheld but as regards to hare coursing(which isn't seen as a upper class past time) as mentioned above, is not taken very seriously by the authorities.
    Ironically some may argue Fox hunting is a form of pest control and is often done with landowners consent whereas Hare coursing is killing a threatened species which does no harm to agriculture or people and is mostly done without landowners consent so it is trespass as well.

    Personally I doubt I would ever go hunting (I have eaten game (pheasants etc) that other people have shot however), I just doesn't appeal to me.
     
    Sylphiel

    Sylphiel

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    • I can't say I'm all too fond of doing it for sport. Doing it just because you want something to kill? Needless and cruel, I would not ever support it.

    For other reasons though, especially if it's with the intent of eating what you catch? Go for it. As long as it's not done in an inordinately cruel manner, I have no problems with people hunting for those reasons. I couldn't do it myself since I'm too much of a wuss to shoot anything but I have no problems with others doing it.
     

    CoffeeDrink

    GET WHILE THE GETTIN'S GOOD
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    • I think a little bit of both.

    I think making a sport out of the hunt itself is okay. While just strolling up to an elephant and putting a round in it's skull is a totally different thing. I'd like to remind several people here that 'sport' doesn't necessarily mean 'I'm going to shoot this and take only these hooves'. The sport piece comes in to play when on the trail. Hunting isn't all fun and games, either. There is lots and lots of waiting involved more often than not, and most times that wait is even longer than if you went fishing for unicorn-rainbow-lady-mermaid-sandwich-fishes. Oft times you'll go home empty handed.

    Sport itself isn't a 'dirty' word when used with hunting, but 'poaching' is so let's not get confused here guys.
    Poachers = Bad. Hunters = Good. Poachers will cut off what they want and leave it at that, which is more than likely illegal wherever you reside, but hunting requires you to have licenses and limits what you can kill to what you can carry (I think it's around 3 game birds in this area). Also, I would consider hunting the preferred method of obtaining meat as opposed to farming them 'a-la-Old McDonald's'.

    One more time for the TL;DR crowd: Poaching ≠ Sport
     
    kuzronk

    kuzronk

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    • It's semi wrong if you do it for good unless if you are really poor but hunting them for fun is so wrong. I'm thinking of going vegan anyway.
     

    Pendraflare

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    • Another one of those things that I just don't have a stance on. I mean, we eat food that come from animals all the time. But if I needed to choose right now I wouldn't hunt, mostly because I feel sorry for the wildlife that gets assassinated so suddenly.
     

    Lucid

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    Hunting is not a sport.

    Hunting is when you go out, shoot something and then take it home, skin it, and eat it. I hunt. I'm not starving. But at the same time, shooting a duck is way more civilized then the way a chicken is killed at a factory. To hunt is to eat what you kill, you don't just shoot things for the heck of it, and you don't shoot things that are endangered or you shouldn't. There are game wardens and ever changing laws, you have to get a license to even hunt in the first place in the US, it's not as simple as "get gun. shoot animal.", there are severe fines and even jail time to shoot the wrong animal out of season. You actually need to know nature, the law, gun safety, and in general what you're doing.

    Shooting clay pidgins or skeet, is a sport.
     

    ANARCHit3cht

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    Harley Quinn said:
    I don't support hunting unless it's for food, but even then I find that people use the justification of 'it's just for food!' to go shoot the shit out of whatever they want regardless. In my eyes, if you're financially well off enough to choose to hunt for food rather than out of necessity, you're dressing up hunting for sport under false pretenses.
    The exclusions to this are animals that are deemed pests by the government of the area.

    However, that being said, I eat a lot of fish that my mother's boyfriend had caught only a few hours previously that we could have bought at a store. I think the difference though is that fish are a lot more plentiful than big game and are easier to replenish sources of than, say, deer.

    I just don't see what is admirable about hunting, perhaps it's a masculinity thing.
    Click to expand...
    That is somewhat true, living next to one of the oldest lakes in the North America and THE largest natural lake to be entirely in California, I know that preservation of fish is no easy task. Take for instance, the Steelhead Trout. There are 15 different populations of these fish that run along the west coast. Of those 15, 11 are protected by the Endangered Species Act. 10 of them being "threatened" while 1 is "endangered."

    Granted that isn't the species as a whole, but rather a subset of their population. Nevertheless, it is an extremely troubling matter. Especially when fishing is such a popular sport. Granted its often "catch and release" but that isn't always the case and many fish even still wind up dead after being caught. Let me tell you, nothing like walking the shores of a lake after a fishing competition and having to step around the dozens of carcases that are littered around.
     
    Rogue planet

    Rogue planet

     
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    I'm not sure what's particularly admirable about hunting. The effort and expertise required I would think; but there's hard work in farming the land also, it doesn't have the same romanticized image going for it though.

    I'd like for society to one day unanimously agree that killing things is no longer necessary. Everyone will put their weapons down, just read a book and relax for once.
     

    The Void

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    • It depends. There are animals that are actually bred for hunting, so that sport hunting doesn't damage the ecosystem. The US Fish and Wildlife Service states: "Hunting also provides an economic incentive for private landowners such as ranchers to continue to breed these species and maintain them as a genetic reservoir for future reintroduction or research, and as a repository for excess males from other captive herds."

    A badly fired shot could cause an animal a lot of pain. The ethical thing to do would be to make sure to track the animal down and end its suffering.
     
    Chikara

    Chikara

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    • (Clearly I'm alone in my opinion here, but)
    I'm honestly not against it. I'm not a fan of it, but I'm not against it.

    My older brother goes deer hunting every once in a while. Only in the peak of deer hunting season, and if he hits something, he always, always brings it home, cleans it and wraps it. He uses it to make a ridiculous amount of meals during the winter. He made some venison chili for me once, and it was the most delicious thing, let me tell you.

    Just because we don't "need" to go hunting for food anymore, doesn't mean the benefits of doing so are moot.

    Don't get me wrong, going out and killing things and just leaving them there to rot while you post about it on social media is disgusting. If you're going to kill something, at least use it. Also, whether you use it or not, it better be a game animal and it better be during it's gaming season, or you're even more disgusting.
     
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    Psychic

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    I don't have very strong feelings about this subject. I see the appeal of hunting in some ways, but it's also rather alien to me. I think it's fine if do it with the intention of taking your kill home and eating it.
    But as I once heard it said: It's not much of a sport if the other team doesn't know they're playing. Killing for no reason is just excessive.

    ~Psychic
     
    Livewire

    Livewire

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    • If you want to go shoot threatened or endangered animals like that cheerleader does then you belong in a prison, as far as I'm concerned. If you have a license, are responsibly trained in how to use a firearm/weapon of choice and use your kill, and you like or need to fish or hunt deer as means of feeding yourself, then that's cool, more power to you. Plus deer or venison jerky is yummy.
     

    CoffeeDrink

    GET WHILE THE GETTIN'S GOOD
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    • Harley Quinn said:
    I don't support hunting unless it's for food, but even then I find that people use the justification of 'it's just for food!' to go shoot the shit out of whatever they want regardless. In my eyes, if you're financially well off enough to choose to hunt for food rather than out of necessity, you're dressing up hunting for sport under false pretenses.
    The exclusions to this are animals that are deemed pests by the government of the area.

    However, that being said, I eat a lot of fish that my mother's boyfriend had caught only a few hours previously that we could have bought at a store. I think the difference though is that fish are a lot more plentiful than big game and are easier to replenish sources of than, say, deer.

    I just don't see what is admirable about hunting, perhaps it's a masculinity thing.
    Click to expand...

    I also think you'd need to look at the 'big picture' when it came to fishing. Venison normally isn't a meat you can just up and buy at the local store whenever you want some. Not many raise elk and deer on farms (do people raise them on farms?) and the main source of the meat comes from wild game. While fish can be farmed, it is widely accepted that fresh fish taste best (along with grass fed-free range beef/chicken/pork/etc) and raising fish takes a up a lot of resources. Tuna, for instance, has been fished heavily in the East, restricting their numbers and reducing the population, and the same could be said of salmon over in the West. Over fishing a population has become a topic that is ever increasing in the fish and game department for years and more fish are making it onto the 'release' list. While I will admit that several land animals are being hunted much in the same fashion, I would have to say the reduction in the deer's prevalence is due to the destruction of their collective eco system, but that's another topic entirely. It's all about finding the right balance in everything I suppose.
     
    Entermaid

    Entermaid

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    • The deer population can definitely get out of hand without hunting, but that might be because of the shortage of wolves. Hunting should always be regulated carefully by ecologists.

    Fishing, I almost don't ever feel bad about fishing giving the nearly ubiquitous presence of well...fish. That is the only form of hunting I partake in personally, and fish don't share a similar social intelligence as deer. I will eat venison, but I don't have the heart to kill a deer. Call me a hypocrite.

    I do wonder about the ethics of killing intelligent animals, especially pigs, which are debated to be smarter than dogs. Why is it ethical to kill pigs and not dogs? Though, again, fish, and fowl don't have those intellectual capabilities and therefore I don't even begin to think of killing them as being an issue of ethics. Now, why should intelligence matter??? I don't know, it's a matter of possessing qualities of humanness which probably makes it more difficult for me to hunt mammals, though that doesn't seem like any real justification other than having sympathy.

    This is why I don't have a real stance on this issue, I'm not sure what to think as far as ethics go since I usually only think of human interactions.
     
    Her

    Her

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    The Dark Avenger said:
    The deer population can definitely get out of hand without hunting, but that might be because of the shortage of wolves. Hunting should always be regulated carefully by ecologists.

    Fishing, I almost don't ever feel bad about fishing giving the nearly ubiquitous presence of well...fish. That is the only form of hunting I partake in personally, and fish don't share a similar social intelligence as deer. I will eat venison, but I don't have the heart to kill a deer. Call me a hypocrite.

    I do wonder about the ethics of killing intelligent animals, especially pigs, which are debated to be smarter than dogs. Why is it ethical to kill pigs and not dogs? Though, again, fish, and fowl don't have those intellectual capabilities and therefore I don't even begin to think of killing them as being an issue of ethics. Now, why should intelligence matter??? I don't know, it's a matter of possessing qualities of humanness which probably makes it more difficult for me to hunt mammals, though that doesn't seem like any real justification other than having sympathy.

    This is why I don't have a real stance on this issue, I'm not sure what to think as far as ethics go since I usually only think of human interactions.
    Click to expand...

    It's all to do with the human romanticisation of certain animals. In the case of the domesticated dog, they're our friends, we love them, they're the definitive human companion. Pigs aren't extended this same courtesy because they're just not as cute, majestic or lovable as the dog, despite their possible superior intelligence.
    Furthermore, dogs & wolves are bred/born to kill, or at least have those latent instincts somewhere within them. They're bred to take lives, not have their lives taken.

    Of course, pigs also have the much more varied & desirable meats, but I digress.
     
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