I’m interested in hearing what Lemmings think about hunting. I started hunting deer years ago because I wanted to be a part of the process, like if I couldn’t handle killing and gutting an animal I shouldn’t be eating meat. IMO, it’s much more humane than what factory farmed animals endure. Less suffering overall than most natural deaths. Overpopulation causes disease and starvation and we killed off their predators, so we kind of owe it to nature to fill the ecological gap.
Also, I fucking love it. I watch the sun rise, think, record birds I’ve seen, think, watch squirrels play, think a bit more, and sometimes, I get some food.
Idk. I’m not looking for approval or trying to change your mind, just wondering what people think.
Hunting with a valid reason (for food, population control, etc.) is acceptable and/or a necessity.
Hunting for funsies only - including all the BS safari hunting that are essentially glorified high tech fishing trips - is disgusting
BS safari hunting funds conservation in ways that are unachievable otherwise
Well, then this funding source should not be pursued
Then animals die, populations drop, restoration programs end
Not if the funding is made up somewhere else?
It isn’t though, which is why conservation groups that hunt are a net positive in practice. The members also tend to discourage poaching, push harder for maintaining ecosystems, and other stuff beyond what funding can do on its own because the individuals who tend to be involved have ofher forms of influence and power.
It sucks that this is how the world works, but in this specific case it works.
Yeah, I’m less so making at argument about what is currently happening, and more just saying that I would prefer a world in which we fund conservation differently, and we should try to move things in that direction
Two kinds of people typically hunt endangered animals: rich assholes and starving people. A straight ban on hunting these animals does nothing to solve either problem.
We know rich assholes are going to do what they want by whatever means, including exploiting animals and the poor, so I don’t think I need to go into that.
Poor people will hunt endangered animals or take rich people to hunt them because both those paths lead to them and their families eating. They may care about the animals, they may not, but they and their families need food and money to live.
Legalized hunting of endangered game does a lot to solve all these problems. Poor people become legitimate guides. Poachers in places like Tanzania were for a while allowed to be killed legally. Now they aren’t shot for trying to provide food for people and are putting the money into their villages. The people now have economic incentive to protect these animals to protect their new local tourism. Associated services are created to make the destination attractive. Governments see the benefit of monitoring and protecting these species.
It’s not perfect. Anti-poaching measures leads to violence on both sides, just as things like the war on drugs. Things like legalized gambling, drugs, and prostitution help prevent exploitation, keeps participants safer in their activities, and allows monitoring and oversight by regulators. Some will still poach no matter what. But it brings more things to the open and people can work with facts and figures about their local situations.
I don’t like the idea of trophy hunting anymore than I like seeing people participate in other senseless and destructive vices, but we can ensure people do things in ways that are better and safe for all involved.
I do hunt for one deer a year myself. Where I am has a higher number than is sustainable, and with people having less money and time off than ever, the state cannot get all the deer they want to be hunted as things are. It lets me take one animal that gets me through most of the year instead of however many from the store, and I know it’s all natural and never spent a moment in captivity. Hunting is mostly a chore for me, though I do enjoy the time in the woods and spending a few days with my brother.
There’s an incredible Radio Lab episode called “the rhino hunter” that deep dives into this fact, and it’s honestly one of the most emotionally confusing pieces of media I’ve ever encountered. Highly recommend.
“Man, this baby grinding machine sure eats a lot of babies, but think of all the money it generates!”
Shooting a deer that’s lived wild and free, making every effort to make the kill as quick and painless as possible seems like just about the most ethical way to get meat that I can think of. And especially in areas where the deer population is too high, it’s really important for managing the ecosystem. Plus, ammo and equipment sales get taxed specifically to fund conservation, which is important.
I also feel like if you can’t stomach the process of killing and cleaning an animal, maybe you shouldn’t eat meat at all?
By and large, I think hunting for food is a great way to get more in touch with where your food comes from, one of the most ethical ways to acquire meat, and a nice excuse to sit quietly in the woods without interruption. Trophy hunters can fuck off tho.
if I couldn’t handle killing and gutting an animal I shouldn’t be eating meat
I had this exact line of thinking. But for me that means I don’t eat meat anymore. Killing really turns my stomach, and I don’t actually need meat to be healthy.
But I love hiking and camping, I just bring my own food instead of a gun or fishing pole.
Hunting for food is fine.
Hunting for trophies is not.
As long as it’s done responsibly and legally I have no issues with it.
It’s legal so it’s cool is such a weird mindset
Not in this case, because hunting legally means you are preserving the ecosystem, culling a population that would likely starve in the winter and preserving breeding stock to keep the species going in a healthy manner without genetic bottlenecks.
MIssouri has some absolutely amazing wildlife preservation because conservationist make common cause with hunters.
Great point. The people in charge of regulating hunting, are the same people that decided that they love nature enough to dedicate their lives to protecting it. They aren’t trying to “sell more licenses” or promote hunting, they’re just maintaining the balance, and keeping people and nature safer.
I mean, ideally, yes; I wouldn’t romanticize the entire hunting population, given the amount of garbage I see in the woods.
Oh of course, there are assholes in every group! But I also wasn’t even talking about the hunters themselves, but the DCNR or whatever your state calls them.
Yes. I just visited Missouri once and whatever department in charge of hunting/preservation put out this amazing magazine just absolutely dripping with love for nature, a combo of hunting advice, animal lore, and scenery porn. I remember one article in particular about how to stack brush to encourage critters to grow; sure, maybe you want to grow critters so your beagle can flush them out and you can shoot them, but still, kinda cool to have SOME responsible stewardship with the land instead of playing Playstation all day.
Obviously depends on the country, but in most develop countries the law is reasonable enough that it’s a useful shorthand for what is ok in day-to-day situations.
If you assume that legal means we’ve collectively decided that this is or is not okay, then it’s not a weird starting point. IMO it shouldn’t be the end point but it’s USUALLY a good starting point.
hunting for food is ethical, over killing, killing for profit, killing for sport are not.
It’s cool and good, but where I live it’s becoming increasingly expensive. Yes to locals/workers hunting their own food on communal land. No to upper class bastards flying in to hunt, getting themselves and their setters airlifted back to a lodge for lunch, etc. And trophy hunting should not be a thing.
I’m from Finland, which has a 1340km border with Russia.
When my grandad grew up you’d either hunt or fish if you wantes to eat. My dad hunted. I’m the only one of my siblings with a hunting license. I was raised with a lot of “when the Russians come”-mentality.
I’ve been moving countries, so I’ve had to give up my rifles and I’m not that passionate about it that I’d figure out where to go do it. But I do think it’s a good skill to have, and I keep my license active.
And my two spaniels would love it.
I don’t think the solution to the predators being gone is for humans to fill the gap, rather to let the predators make a return.
Here in Sweden we’re looking to shoot most of our wolves for no good reason. That is after a considerable effort to stabilise the population and bring genetic diversity back to it.
As a hunter myself, here are a few thoughts that come to mind on the subject:
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As is almost always the case, “hunters” are not a homogeneous group. There are many reasonable hunters who hunt, among other reasons, because it’s an honest, nature-oriented, and animal-welfare-conscious way to obtain meat for their own consumption. But there are also idiots who are just eager to kill and/or want to bag big trophies (perhaps because they need to compensate for personal shortcomings). In my experience, however, that’s only a tiny minority of the hunters I’ve met so far. Especially because of the pandemic, many people have been thinking about this topic, and I hope that young people will bring a breath of fresh air and sensible ideas to the community in this area as well. In my experience, the stereotype of the psychopathic gun nut is simply not true in the vast majority of cases.
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We live in a cultural landscape. We must live in a cultural landscape because our survival (yes, even
after we’re goneif we’re vegan) depends on our ability to grow enough crops to feed ourselves. In a cultural landscape heavily shaped by human activity, natural regulatory mechanisms (more on this below) do not function, or function only to a very limited extent, because, for example, wild boars find much more food than they would in a natural (forest) ecosystem, which results in correspondingly high reproduction rates (up to 200% for wild boars). So I don’t think we can manage in the long term without some form of regulation. (It should be noted here that I am a big fan of predators like wolves and bears, and that we should reintroduce them wherever possible if we can manage to coexist with them… Wolves and lynx, for example, are much better at regulating roe deer populations (or preventing overgrazing of young trees) than human hunters.) Furthermore, wildlife populations are only partially regulated by predators. For many species, disease and weather conditions play a more decisive role. These are, in and of themselves, natural processes that ensure populations do not get out of control and/or cannot permanently overuse local resources. In both cases, however, “natural regulation” is accompanied by an agonizing death for the individual, and it is this death itself that seems to be the main point of contention for some opponents of hunting, more on this below. -
Ethical Considerations. Assuming I do my job as a hunter correctly, the animal (let’s say a deer) dies on the spot within seconds without suffering for long. If I don’t shoot the animal (and, as is currently the case in many countries, there are no large predators because they have been exterminated), it dies after about 15 years “of old age,” as the saying goes. What does that mean for the individual in practice? Eventually, its teeth become so worn down that it can no longer feed itself properly; it grows weaker, will likely fall ill at some point because its immune system weakens, and will either be strangled by a red fox, starve to death, freeze to death, or succumb to disease. In any case, the agony is significantly longer than if it were killed by a clean shot. So no matter how you look at it: There is no chance that the roe deer will not die, and (at least from my perspective) death by a well-placed bullet is the quickest, least stressful, and most painless death a roe deer can expect in the wild.
/edit: removed some dashed because I’m not a native english speaker and use an AI translator for more elaborate answers.
Actually, we only have to do the hunting (aside from the meat), because we fucked the ecosystem up in the last two millennia.
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Just like humans have done for millennia and are meant too. Hunt. Cook. Feed. Then shit.
Rinse and repeat.
not the answer you’re looking for, but: i haven’t eaten meat in five years, am the healthiest I’ve ever been, and no longer feel guilty about eating
Do it responsibly and eat what you hunt?
Go to town.
It’s awful.
I get a lot of down votes for this but it’s important since we wiped out natural predators. One of my favorite days was cooking up some venison my students; we had a field day or whatever and no the meat came from another hunter.
I almost died when a a bunch crossed over the highway in the middle of the night. Tokyo drift instincts kicked in lol. Thankfully a buddy bought a Jeep XJ and it saved his ass.
Then there’s this ongoing argument against firearms; do you shoot the deer that ran into your car or beat it to it’s death with a blunt object? And I mean this in a humane question, otherwise you leave it die suffering in pain.
I only go for kill shots. None of this trophy bullshit. I’m not going to make a game of chasing around a wounded animal.
