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Idk what animals eating other animals has to do with it but to counter your argument, think of what you just said in the most simplified way. We came in to THEIR environment, we overpopulated it with ourselves, therefore giving the deer a limited amount of natural habitat, causing them to overpopulate, then killing them. Should we start killing humans for overpopulating the world?
I think you're talking about different situations than what I've experienced. You must be meaning "hunting" as practiced in some small fenced-in enclave near a city. Or in areas where massive development has restricted wilderness to a great degree. Like what Cheney did. That's a different matter and is not what I was really thinking about much.
Hunting that I know takes place in an area where people are not densely populated at all. My county has a population density of about 28 per square mile. I guess maybe humans should have never settled the Americas, but that ship has kind of sailed. In this area overpopulation is not really because we pushed the little critters away to some small area. It's more because of the lack of predators.
I actually have somewhat mixed feelings about hunting, but I admit I
1) Know roughly speaking what it actually entails.
2) Am not an animal-rights person as such.
Last edited by Thomas R.; 07-26-2010 at 01:09 AM..
maybe points 1-3 are presumed because hunters hide in the woods, take a loaded rifle, aim it at a defenseless animal, pull the trigger and then call it "sport".
An animal is not defenseless. Hunters can't fly or run at 40 MPH.
BTW -- do eat meat? If you do, then let's talk about defenseless. As in the sense of that if you do, then you are only paying others to kill for you. And fat chance they have in a slaughterhouse.
I know what you mean, in fact if anybody has seen the video of Paul McCartney exposing the inhumane treatment of animals, I gaurentee nobody would get through the entire video without either crying or vomiting. But that doesn't justify hunting. I think the fact that hunting is so cruel is because people make a sport out of the killing of innocent animals. So if anyone decides to call me a tree-hugging hippie, go ahead, because I would much rather be labeled like so than take the life of an animal and find joy in it or see it as a "trophy".
As a hunter myself, I can honestly understand the objection to "trophy hunting."
With that said though, hunting (assuming one uses the meat, as most hunter do) needs no "justification", as you seem to imply.
If you eat meat, then condemning hunting is, at best, naive. Further down the road it is just plain self-righteous hypocricy.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people hunting animals for the meat and/or hide. After all, the native Americans did it. It's just the sport/trophy side of hunting that I disagree with.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people hunting animals for the meat and/or hide. After all, the native Americans did it. It's just the sport/trophy side of hunting that I disagree with.
Ok. Fair enough on many levels. As I said earlier, I too have some reservations about "trophy hunting" if the single purpose is just to put a head on the wall.
I personally do not hunt, but have several friends who do and I don't have a problem with it because they actually eat what they kill and only take what they need. Someone mentioned something about the deer being overpopulated, and blames man for invading the deers habitat. While that is partly true, as another poster also brought out, the deers natural predators have been eliminated and or reduced themselves. So, what happens if the deer are allowed to continuously multiply? One is they continue to invade more urban areas and wander into roadways, which if you hit a deer, it can do serious damage to your car, or even total it. And depending on how fast you are traveling(I see dead deer all the time along the interstates where I live) could even result in your death. Uncommon, but definitely possible. Another sad aspect of deer overpopulation is food supply for the deer. If there are too many deer then there is not enough food, so the deer begin to starve. To somebody from the city, you might wonder how that is possible with all that open forest land. Well, did I mention that deer reproduce like rabbits? Lots and lots of deer. What's more humane, letting all these deer just starve to death or put them out of their misery and actually use them for something worthwhile, like dinner? Another aspect to them not having enough food for the population is again the danger to motorists. The deer will wander to the roadsides in search of discarded food. After a while they learn to go to the roads to eat and it just perpetuates the problem. So yes, hunting does have it's place, and is not isolated to one geographic location in the country, it just so happens that people hunt all over the US, including the northeast, and west, and all over the world.
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
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Quote:
Originally Posted by choosing78
maybe points 1-3 are presumed because hunters hide in the woods, take a loaded rifle, aim it at a defenseless animal, pull the trigger and then call it "sport".
I think you would disagree that an elk, mulie or white tail was defenseless if you actually hiked into the woods with a loaded rifle and tried to kill one. I'm quite certain that if you attempted to harvest any of the above in a legal and sportsmanlike manner you would find yourself completely unable to do so.
It's actually quite fair, which is why one says "I'm going hunting" rather than "I'm going killing".
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
8,309 posts, read 38,784,973 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pittsteelers247
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people hunting animals for the meat and/or hide. After all, the native Americans did it. It's just the sport/trophy side of hunting that I disagree with.
Native Americans also kept hides, bone and antlers and used them for adornments and memorabilia, just like modern American hunters.
I know a lot of hunters and I know zero hunters who do not eat what they kill, whether or not the kill results in antlers on the wall. I don't think that there is the schism between trophy hunting and hunting for food that some people seem to imagine. For the most part it's all the same thing. I don't dispute that there are "canned hunters" and poor-ethics hunters, but these really are not very common.
Growing up as a hunter essentially forces you to be a conservationist, forces you to respect nature and forces you to be conscientious in your use and enjoyment of this beautiful land's natural resources. If it doesn't you have no heart.
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