I’m not talking about the consumption of animals here, to be clear. What I’m talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they’re obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Miss me with the “tradition” stuff, it’s just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument. Don’t tell me it’s to eat, like I said, I’m not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point. And don’t tell me you’re respectful to the animals you kill; I don’t believe the planning, stalking, and killing is a good way to show respect.
Agreed as far as sport hunting goes.
I grew up in the boonies where this was commonplace (and expected), and I realized early in life that there was just something “wrong” about trophy hunting and the people who relished in it. Don’t get me wrong: I hunted in my youth and still go hunting on occasion, but I eat everything I kill and find taxidermy distasteful.
On the flip side, there is a legitimate population control aspect for hunting seasons. Left unchecked, deer population explodes to become a nuisance to humans (causing car accidents, eating crops, etc) as well as limiting resources for the deer (hence the strict laws / regulations surrounding it). So, it does have its purpose, but it also seems like it appeals mostly to the “psychopath” types you’re describing.
I realize this doesn’t cover fishing, but I don’t have a horse in that race. Fishing is so damn boring that I could never get into it. But I’ll agree with you on trophy fishing as it’s the same mindset.
Fishing to me is a niche, and it’s been a thing for so long that I don’t really care about people who go out on weekends and fish. Most fisherman I know are catch and release anyway.
Sport hunting though I agree. “Men” who are really just trying desperately to prove how manly they are by taking a compound bow or rifles with night vision and perfect scopes to go out and kill a deer in a field. It’s posturing, and killing something for posturing is stupid as hell to me
Fishing to me is a niche, and it’s been a thing for so long that I don’t really care about people who go out on weekends and fish. Most fisherman I know are catch and release anyway.
Yeah, same here. Most of the people I know who fish are all married and just use it as an excuse to get out and drink beer. I don’t really need that excuse since I’m single, and if I want to go out (or stay in) and drink, I just do it lol.
My personal opinion on fishing as a pastime is funny. The idea of sitting by the lake for a few hours with friends and beers sounds like good fun, but as soon as you add that I’ll also be waiting for a fish to strike, it suddenly sounds dreadfully boring to me. I just hate waiting on things.
I grew up in a small village, and there are far less hunters there now, in a place where deer have no natural predators left. This means the deer population has exploded, which sounds like a good thing until you consider there are too many deer now.
The deer are all dying of disease and hunger now at a much higher rate than with hunting. This is the price of ‘hunting bad’ mentality, at least in that particular area of America. Humans have destroyed nature, so because of that it’s our job to ensure it doesn’t deteriorate further, hunting serves its purpose for this, and must be considered.
Yeah, deer do have a real impact on environments. Japan has an interesting relationship with them, too, that I learned about recently https://youtu.be/tYuGeqBVXFk
Ohh, nice. Somewhat related, I recommend Radiolab’s episode on the Galápagos and how conservationists used Judas goats to track and eradicate the population that was destroying the island. It’s one of my favorites.
I’m not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point
You can not talk about it all you want but you’re being intellectually dishonest by refusing to do so.
Eating meat that you know comes from a factory farm, a literal SAW like tortured life of cruelty, just to be on a conveyor assembly line to be slaughtered and you to eat, feels less psychopathic in the moment but in reality is just disassociating yourself from the literal torture you are causing.
What I’m talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they’re obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beers all day.
The majority of the time spent hunting and fishing is spent hanging out in nature with your friends. There’s lot ls of reasons to enjoy it, even if you don’t enjoy the actual killing.
And if you’re going to eat meat anyways, then forcing yourself to nut up and kill the animal yourself arguably leaves less suffering in the world than plugging your ears and contributing to factory farming. Both require disassociating from the evil you’re committing, and our brains are good at that because disassociation from violence was an unfortunately necessary part of our survival.
While I agree with the ethical considerations here, there’s a reason there are laws about slaughtering animals. Unless you’re killing sick animals, I don’t think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
If you think a factory farm where thousands of animals are slammed into cages next to each other watching their peers get slaughtered, is more ethical than shooting a solitary moose and getting several hundred pounds of meat then you are not arguing honestly or actually thinking through the scenario.
Quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a clean kill, it’s still more ethical per pound of meat by orders of magnitude even if it’s not, and your guess that most hunters don’t get clean kills is pretty based on nothing to begin with.
I don’t think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
That’s because you’re completely unfamiliar with the subject you’re arguing about. Ethical hunters don’t take the shot unless they’re 100% sure they can kill the animal swiftly, and do it without endangering anything else. They drill this into your head throughout the 30-40 hour long hunter safety course which is required to obtain your hunting license.
Ehhh, mine was like six hours, I’m pretty sure. But even then they do drill this point.
Aside from that, literally no respectful hunter wants to maim an animal. Aside from the practical aspect of having to track a blood trail and hope you find the animal deceased, no hunter wants to inflict pointless suffering.
Nothing about it would be enjoyable. As a hunter it’s at the top of my list for things that could go wrong but can be pretty much be easily avoided.
Omg, it was to avoid exactly this. Bad commenter. Where’s my spray bottle?
Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
Why would that require cognitive dissonance? A) cognitive dissonance isn’t the right term, there’s no two conflicting things that that requires you to believe and B) None of that is hard or unpleasant. It takes like 10min to get a fishing license, fishing rods and tackle are relatively cheap compared to most other camping gear and people love obsessing over and buying new camping gear and then spending time in nature with their friends.
The only part that requires mental disassociation is killing an animal, then cleaning it, then butchering it, then eating it. Why do you draw the disassociation line at the killing and cleaning, but not the butchering and eating?
Vis a vis means something like “in relation to” and I was using the cognitive dissonance to mean the people who eat meat but don’t like thinking about how it got there, not hunters. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I know it’s hyperbole, but it takes more than ten minutes to get a license because you are have to go to the place that issues them or wait days if it’s a mail thing. Relatively cheap is very different from not buying at all. So there’s any amount of effort and output of money done in anticipation of the stalking/killing/eviscerating. It’s not the relative cost compared to camping that’s in question.
Miss me with the “tradition” stuff, it’s just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument. Don’t tell me it’s to eat, like I said, I’m not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point.
Well you’re clearly not literate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_management
The population is managed through hunting to as to avoid the overpopulation of deer, which is catastrophic for the ecology.
Not because every single hunter is some sort of psychopath. What a childish notion.
This entire thread is giving me deja vu from a thread I thought I read on Reddit years ago.
Not saying this one was, but I wonder how many posts are copy pasted from old reddit posts and placed her now. The comments all seem familiar as well. Maybe I’m just tired.
I don’t copypaste, but I have argued the same thing on Reddit before, so you may have seen me arguing the exact same thing.
Or someone else, because it’s pretty common sense.
If you’re having an honest conversation here, the appeal to common sense is a fallacy.
You’re coming off pretty self-righteous and judgmental. If you’re wanting to change minds I doubt a accusatory stance is helpful.
This is a manmade problem though. We exterminated all or most of the predators that would usually do the duty of population control in our stead, because said predators didn’t differentiate between livestock and wild animals.
What of it?
Would you happen to have a time machine so we can go back and change history so humans never replace said apex predators, or does the fact that “we did it” mean that we don’t need to keep hunting and we can just let species overpopulate and destroy the ecology completely, even for themselves and other species of plants and animals?
Thanks for not bringing up eating! I really appreciate it.
Yes, population management is a real thing. Not denying that, and I probably should have mentioned it.
I still find the people that want to participate in it for fun very creepy.
I still find the people that want to participate in it for fun very creepy.
Some are rather weird, but I can understand liking nature hobbies in which you are alone or with a few buddies if you’ve had social problems. (Talking about some people I know.) But yeah. Some are weird. But also, some aren’t. I don’t think killing an animal means you’re a psychopath, per se.
Most of the hobby isn’t about the kill. Hell, most of the year killing them isn’t even allowed.
Since you mentioned eating though, I’ll say that I actually really enjoy game meat. It’s relatively cruelty free. An optimal killshot might not still instantly kill (as in you don’t aim for the brain, but the heart), but at least they’ve lived an actually free life, unlike powerfarmed cattle, from which you can almost taste the misery. (I’m a flexitarian and try to make somewhat moral choices at least most of the time.)
Since you mentioned eating
No, I specifically tried to avoid it, but go ahead and ignore that 🤦
Hiking is a thing you can do in nature alone or is groups that doesn’t involve killing, so I don’t understand your point about that making hunting less creepy. And even if most of the hobby isn’t the actual killing, the rest of it is planning, setting up for, fantasizing about, talking about, etc., the killing, so that’s not very convincing either. Like I get that if you have, say, cooking as a hobby that you look up recipes, buy ingredients, and eat, but nobody that has cooking as a hobby buys ingredients to not cook (raw vegans excepted 🥁🥁🛎️).
And telling me about how different flesh tastes depending on how you kill them sounds pretty creepy.
I get that we have some species that need to be culled for the sake of the greater good /circle of life / balance of nature, etc., but I have no desire to do that work myself.
Hunting is hobby-murder regardless of the justification you put behind it.
Not all killing is murder — and to pretend the killing of any animal is takes away from actual homicide.
“I realise this is a necessary part for society to function the way it does, but I think every single person who does it is doing it for the sheer pleasure of killing”
Using that same logic, all plumbers have a scat-fetish?
It’s beyond amazing to me how disconnected some people are from nature. Death is seen as something horrible, instead of something that literally every single organism will one day face.
Yes there are really weird dudes in hunting groups, but there are also completely normal, non-psychopathic non-murderers, and if you pretend there isn’t, then I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about the subject.
Until the animals are able to speak up for themselves and tell us that they want to die, killing is murder regardless of the mental gymnastics you perform around it.
You seriously think they are hunting because of a population issue? That is just why they are allowed to hunt so freely…
The hunters do not give a fuck, just want to kill some shit
You don’t know a single hunter, nor did you grow up in the country.
That’s painfully obvious.
You don’t even know what country I’m in.
You’re beyond arrogant, simplistic and naive.
They aren’t allowed to hunt freely here, there’s a very specific amount of felling permits.
You don’t know shit and you’re not willing to learn.
That’s a lot of assumptions 😂 Almost all of which are completely wrong
I don’t care if your butt hurt, stop whining and look inward
You don’t need to kill, period.
I know a lot of hunters and none of them like killing. They experience a complex series of emotions when they’re successful with a hunt. Triumph over all their hard work paying off, excitement over having a successful hunt, joy over having meat for half a year, and remorse, over having killed a beautiful animal. I do not know a single hunter who doesn’t experience remorse. I even know some people who have cried over what they’ve done. But in the end, they’ll do it again, because they’ve chosen a lifestyle where they’re willing to be active participants in the cycle of life, and aren’t willing to just outsource all of the killing for their meat needs.
This is kind of a weird argument to make. Are specifically talking about only hunting/ fishing where the animal is killed and not consumed in any way?
Since I’ve personally never seen that as someone who’s been hunting a couple times and around people who hunt.
And how do you not expect people to bring eating animals when that’s basically half the purpose. People don’t just go around hunting without the intent to utilise the meat.
Also do you kill roaches or worms etc. In which case what makes the thoughtless killing of one better than the other.
Also I personally love it as an outdoor activity which I rarely get.
Personally I don’t see anything immoral with taxidermy either.
Upvoted for actual unpopular opinion tho.
It was more to preemptively stop the people that bring up that they do it for the purposes of consumption. Like you can consume meat without hunting and many people do and just deal with the cognitive dissonance of somebody else doing the killing. Actually going out to hunt is a much more active choice and not something you can do without getting gear, maybe a license, and making time for it.
As for taxidermy, I guess it’s just an extension of the planning/killing/cleaning into even more thinking about it, remembering it, celebrating it. Otherwise, it’s pretty goth and I’ve got no issue with it.
There were some Buddhists that wore masks to avoid breathing in insects and accumulating karma (though iirc most sects now say insects don’t cause karma that way). But there were also Buddhists warriors that justified killing people as helping the dead get to their next reincarnation faster. But yeah, why do people think cats deserve better treatment than chickens or cows or deer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cats are spayed and neutered at the humane society to protect their population. I’ll give you one guess as to what open-season is about.
Yeah, I’m not saying there’s not legitimate cases for population control. It’s the people and their hobby I have opinions about. Would it be weird for people to go hunt cats, pose by their corpses for pictures, etc., like is done with deer if it was because cats impact the environment when it comes to bird population? If not, why bother spaying and neutering instead of just killing?
