Hunting is Stupid

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I saw some people here talking about how they liked hunting and it really annoyed me. Hunting is TOTALLY unneeded in modern society, frankly meat in general is unneeded actually. Hunting is killing for pleasure though, that's all it is, people think it's fun to go out into the wild and kill animals then they get all freaking proud about it. It's idiotic, what are we? Cave men? We certainly don't seem like an enlightened society looking at it from that POV, more like smart animals with technology...

Whilst I respect your opinion about not needing to eat meat at all (though I disagree with it somewhat), and whilst I consider myself to be quite the animal lover (though probably not as much as I used to be), I'm pro hunting in certain circumstances. Not for fun, of course, but not all hunting really is just for fun.

If someone hunts and uses what they've caught for meat, that's good with me. They're sourcing their own food from the wild and as a result they'll be buying one less meal from the supermarket, reducing the number of animals that are confined until they're slaughtered.

I used to be very against hunting in all of its forms, but now I do respect people that go out and hunt for their food. It doesn't matter if they get some enjoyment out of it in my eyes, as long as they definitely are using what they kill. To be honest it's more than I could manage. I'm a meat-eater but I could never kill and prepare an animal myself, so I'm quite selfish in that I care about animals...but apparently not enough to be more 'ethical' when getting my food. If I did have to hunt for my own food, I'd definitely become a vegetarian/vegan. If someone can take pressure off the 'organised' provision of packaged meat on our supermarket shelves because they're strong-stomached enough to kill their own rabbit, skin it, take it home and put it into the freezer, good for them.

Chasing foxes and setting dogs on them? There's never an excuse for that.

I'm... a little against hunting unless it's done as a necessity. That said, I believe there's nothing wrong with eating meat. Fact is, farm animals are bred to exist for consumption. If we weren't going to eat them, they wouldn't have a life. That said, I am firmly against battery farming, because it doesn't offer those animals a good quality of life.

If humans were bred to be eaten, I wouldn't have anything against it, so long as 1) we were allowed long lives and given freedom and 2) provided for by our consumers to make up for our shortened lifespans.

At the end of the day, the food chain is a thing.

It's far better to hunt than to eat farmed meat in my opinion. Hunting is natural. The predator goes after the prey for food. Usually, the weak are caught, and the strong survive. The animal lives its life free in the wild, eating foods that are natural for it to consume, and behaving in a natural manner, in a natural environment. It is not captive. It has the ability to escape.

Farmed animals are raised in captivity. They eat foods that are not natural to them. They cannot behave in a way that is natural for them. They aren't living in the environment that they evolved in, and they have little to no chance of escape. They aren't living fulfilling lives. They are slaves, essentially.

While I'd prefer to be pescetarian myself, humans evolved to eat meat. It's not immoral for us to do so. The most fair and healthiest (in my opinion) way of eating meat is to hunt for it in the wild, in an ethical manner (no super high-tech gadgets) and to kill it as painlessly as possible. The body should be used efficiently so that little is wasted. This shows a respect for the life of the animal. And it gives an understanding of what death really means.

To many, animals are just neat little packages of meat in the grocery store. I think it's important to consider the lives that were lost to bring us that food source, and to respect them.

Hunting is why we came to dominate our environment. Some people who do it are sick, those that go on a safari to shoot big game for example for no other reason than trophy hunting. Hunting to keep species under control is necessary though, culling. I've never killed a vertebrate before, but I wouldn't shun from doing it if I had to. I'd like to visit Alaska or Siberia and live in the woods for a month or two and subsistence live. That is an enlightening process. The first world is out of touch with the brutality of reality.

i agree. now wonder why civil-ization began with agriculture..
the word "civil" originally means ( treating "the other" with kindness, consideration and respect).

I'm alittle against the idea of it but us humans used to hunt for our food. We evolved to where we no longer need to but some people still have the hunter instinct in them.

You're looking at only one side of a two-way street. You look at a hunter taking game and saying "Well, he didn't need to do that, so he shouldn't have", but consider this; populations of game animals evolved facing predation pressure that is highly diminished in most western countries now. Take Sweden for instance: about 500 wolves and 300.000 moose, with an annual growth of 30% for the moose and nowhere near that for the wolves. Do you think 500 wolves can take 100.000 moose in a year? They can not. So then, without human hunting, what would happen is this: the population of moose would soar, and areas with less food availability would be stripped clean, forcing the population of that area to migrate to richer areas. Richer areas would become overpopulated, and either those area would soon be stripped as well, leading to starvation en masse, or the next outbreak of transmittable disease would devastate the population.

Modern hunting is all about the natural balance. The meat that comes from it is just an added bonus, taking advantage of a natural resource.



Debatable, but I'm sure there's a case to be made for it.




If people didn't enjoy hunitng and did it for their own pleasure, many countries would have to hire people to do the bulk of the hunting that's done by enthusiasts today. That would not be free.




Evolutionarily speaking, pretty much, yes.



I don't see a contradiction here.

Well, that's like your opinion, man.

In areas where there are no natural predators you need hunting to prevent disease and over grazing.Its more humane then factory farmed meat.Many rural poor depend on it for food.
In the case of feral hogs,they are not a native species and do an incredible amount of damage to native plants and ground nesting animals,they should be shot and BBQed on sight.

Without hunting you wouldn't be able to go 10 feet without crossing paths with a deer in certain part of the country which is extremely dangerous if you cross paths with this deer going 55 mph down some dark highway, I've known many people have their cars totaled and I have known more than one person that has died in accidents like that. Culling the herd is a integral part of conservationism, without it the entire ecosystem could go out of wack. As mentioned, disease becomes a major problem with overpopulation. Hunting is absolutely necessary and I think it is a shame that we are so far removed from our own food.

I'm not a big time hunter but it has been something that has been in my family for generations and thru hunting my father taught me to respect the land and all its creatures, it taught me how to responsibly handle and respect a firearm, more than anything that was probably the one way my father who had an awful drinking problem really tried to connect to me as a child so they are memories I cherish. Maybe this way of father-son bounding isn't that common anymore but it is a part my culture and something I think is very important. It wasn't about killing, I didn't take joy in the act of killing, there is respect in the essence of everything we do and to violate that is doing it wrong. We always tried to eat whatever we hunted, that has included squirrels(not those nasty city rat ones) to fish to turkey to deer to even bear and there is plenty in between.

I think in hunting, at least the way we've done it, there are so many valuable life lessons that you might not get otherwise. It makes me sad thinking about the youth in America today; they sit in front of their TVs, their computers, their phones, kids barely play outside today and I can't imagine their parents are making up for it in other areas. A lot people never set foot out of the concrete jungles they 'live' in, to me it seems more like an imprisonment. There is a mass negligence in our culture; we are the most self-absorbed people in history and delegate raising and instilling values in our kids to brain washing corporations so it really shouldn't be any wonder why people are increasingly anti-social, obese, and just lack of common sense.

I find factory farming infinitely worse than I do hunting, hunting is part of human nature and completely fundamental whereas all I can think about when I pass these huge processing plants is disgust. Have you've seen these fields with tens of thousands of heads of cattle all packed into relatively small space? These places remind me of Nazi concentration camps, I wish I had the money so I never had to eat meat from a place like this ever again. Being able to live off the land and too be off the grid is somewhat of a dream of mine, that's real independence and real freedom.

Hunting is actually more humane than factory farming, IMO. I love meat, but even I will admit that factory farmed animals live sh***y lives. I am just thankful that by the time they end up in the grocery store, they're already dead and out of their misery.

Hunted animals on the other hand live out their lives in their natural habitats, and the only human intervention really comes when someone successfully puts a bullet through their vitals, ending their lives. Any good hunter that has an iota of respect for their prey will make things as quick and painless as possible for the animal. Hunting is not the violent free for all a lot of non-hunters picture it to be; there are rules and ethics that go along with it.

That all said, I think hunting purely for sport is stupid. If you want to go out and shoot a deer or a moose, make use of it! Wild meat is not only delicious, but also healthier for you than farmed meat with all the antibiotics and steroids and other crap that go into it.

You don't have to hunt or otherwise eat meat if you don't want to, I completely understand. I am just saying that hunting, done in a reasonable and proper manner, is more ethical than factory farming. And it's natural too; we were born with front-facing eyes, canine teeth, and superior intellect, all hallmarks of meat-eating animals.

In college, I worked for a telephone-polling business. One of our surveys was about hunting (Utah has a very large hunting community). By listening to the respondents' answers over several days, I learned more about hunting than I thought possible. In my state, at least, hunting isn't just a random shoot-em-up. It is highly regulated: the total number of hunters at any given time is maintained at a level to prohibit obliteration of any hunted species; the dates for hunting licenses are staggered; and hunters must have attended a certain number of instruction hours to maintain their license eligibility.

It is true that some hunters hunt their limit without consuming the hunted species, but that is because they hunt enough for their families ... and donate any extra to homeless shelters and other charities (after having paid for the species' butchering and wrapping, by the way). For many homeless and homebound individuals, this charity is like getting a $1,000 check in the mail.

As others have written here, without maintaining the herd numbers annually, the additional number of hunted species end up starving (becoming likely prey for more and more predators), eating farm crops (and other suburban plants) to survive, and roaming suburban and urban areas where they run through highway traffic scared to death. Many die in agony after being hit by motor vehicles. Until there is a birth-control pill for hunted species, managing their numbers is the best choice.

No, hunters themselves aren't to blame. They pay high prices to support their sport and livelihood as well as carefully managing the herds. And, I have never met a hunter who doesn't treat the whole experience with thoughtful kindness. Good hunters usually report bad hunters. Bad hunters never again get licensed.

<--- He's a Jain so he doesn't eat meat. Wouldn't even step on an ant or swat a fly. Our first tenet? Ahimsa - Non violence.

M father likes hunting and fishing, he's done it for as long as I can remember, but he doesn't seem like a bad and evil person. In fact he's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, and he's a good dad and husband.

But sometimes when he cooks wild game, which I don't like the taste of, I wish that pizzas lived in the woods.

I'm not going around telling people they *should* eat meat or hunt, so why are so many people telling us that we shouldn't and that we're cruel and horrible? I'm an omnivore and that's that.

Hunting is fun. Culling the herds is necessary to maintain the population at healthy levels. I prefer venison (deer) to rabbit or squirrel. Duck and goose are also tasty.