Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

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Marscaleb
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Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Marscaleb »

So there was a random on the site asking what your attitude toward hunting was, and my answer, like most people, was "My opinion is too complex for an online poll."
I wanted to share that opinion, and I might as well open up this forum for others to share their "complex opinion" if they are so inclined.

To put it as simply as I can, I think that hunting is okay as long as you eat it.
If you go hunting just for sport; just to kill something and mount it on a wall, I think that's wrong, and also suggests that you have some emotional issues.

To elaborate more, I would iterate that life is precious. Now I'm not so narrow-minded that I would declare that and ignore the fact that everything dies or that many creatures (including humans) need to eat meat to stay alive. But I think it is important to respect life, and by extension, respect death.
I am reminded of many tribal societies that, when they would kill an animal for food, offer a prayer in respect to the fact that this animal has died so that they might live. It is a token of respect and gratitude.

Now in today's world you don't exactly starve if you fail to kill a deer. But even if you don't go hunting you still buy a lot of meat. I don't really see a difference between buying meat from a grocer and hunting meat in the woods. In both cases an animal died to feed your family. And so if you decide to add a recreational element to that killing, I have no fault with you. Even if you think of hunting as recreation more than as a source of food, I won't fault you. But the point remains that the animal's death should have a meaning to it, and that meaning is typically to provide sustenance. As long as the animal's death is not wasted, I am fine with it.
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Neveko
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Neveko »

Sometimes hunting is for other things than just eating, however, Marscaleb. It's easy for someone who perhaps is not from such a rural area to generalize, but you have to consider that sometimes there is a NEED to hunt some species just to cull the population.

For example, if you let the coyote population get too big, you lose the rabbits and other small prey animals that feed other predators like eagles, owls, wolves, and mountain lions. If you let the raccoon population get too big, they can become literal pests (breaking into houses and barns). Feral cats (domesticated cats which live wild) are another common problem in rural areas. They are a notoriously terrible invasive species, and it definitely does NOT help that people love feeding these creatures on top of it--their populations can get out of control disgustingly fast.

Even deer populations can get out of control. It used to be illegal to hunt deer within city limits in Des Moines, but their population got so big, they spread their territory closer to the city--even within the city limits in some cases. This caused many fatal or otherwise disastrous car accidents involving collisions with deer on the busy highways (where speed limits are usually over 60-65 MPH). But if you hunt deer, there's really no reason to not take the meat from that anyway.

Just in general, if you don't cull some populations, you set the population in the area up for a really rough future. You want to keep the animals healthy, so keeping their populations down keeps the stress off the food supplies (no matter whether the animal is herbivore or carnivore).

And you do realize you can stuff and mount an animal you've eaten too, right? People generally don't bother, though, because those would usually be common animals, and it's not as lucrative/interesting to look at.
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Marscaleb
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Marscaleb »

"Population control" isn't hunting though. What you describe with coyotes attacking your rabbit farm is a matter of protecting your property. This is the same as killing rodents or insects that are starting to invade your house, which is also acceptable. But you don't go out into the wilderness and look for wild rats to kill; you set out poison and traps to kill the ones on your property. Likewise with other wild animals.
You don't (shouldn't) go out into the wild to hunt problem animals, you kill, attack, and deter the ones that are on your property. Why? Because THOSE ones are the problem animals, the ones that aren't
strong enough to survive in the wild.
(Most) Animals are smart; if you kill a few that go onto your property the others learn that it is dangerous to go there. I grew up outiside the city limits, and we had a problem with peacocks on our land. (Yes, peafowl, and yes, in America.) Finally my dad blasted one away with a shotgun. The others all ran away and migrated into the city in a neighborhood where they were tolerated and they live there to this day, leaving giant poops and eating other people's cat food. True story. https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=3 ... 28,,0,25.4

Population control is really a different subject than hunting, but it's really a big load of crap. Are the people looking to control the population engaging in scientific studies to actively monitor the number of animals in an environment? Are they examining the food supplies and migration patterns? Are they carefully calculating the number of animals that need to be removed and collaborating with other hunters to ensure they are reducing no more than is absolutely necessary? Or are they just declaring that they have a problem with X animal and going into the wild and killing animals that are likely not even part of the problem?
In the wild, the populations control themselves. Human intervention only causes problems. If you kill the wolves then you have more deer.
And even if you do convince yourself that you have the authority and knowledge to control the population through killing random samples, these animal carcasses can still be used for meat and pelts; their death can still be respected. I stand by what I said.
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Kodyack
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Kodyack »

DNR spends a nice chunk of change doing research and such, and then collaborating with hunters with the release of licenses to cull off a specific number of the population. Are there people who ignore this? Yes, they're called Poachers.
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Marscaleb
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Marscaleb »

...Which is NOT the same thing as going out to kill coyotes because you lost some rabbits.
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Neveko
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Neveko »

Marscaleb wrote:...Which is NOT the same thing as going out to kill coyotes because you lost some rabbits.
And is something no one in this thread has brought up, so I don't see how it relates.
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Marscaleb
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Re: Attitude to hunting: My answer is too complex

Post by Marscaleb »

I just realized that I misread your earlier post.
I thought you were talking about a coyote eating someone's livestock (using rabbits as an example, why not,) and now I see you were probably talking about wild rabbits.
I'm sorry; that one was on me.

Still, I stand by the thought that culling the numbers of an animal should only be done in accordance with scientific studies to determine appropriate population numbers, (even though that isn't a counter-point to anything said.)
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