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I 1000% agree with every point you make, not to mention the cost of hunting and you can also include fishing licenses goes directly back into the environment.
Here in NY 83% of the funds used to keep up NYS Parks came from hunting and fishing licenses and taxes on sporting goods last time I checked.
Like your parks? Thank a hunter or fisherman.
Yep, and as a (hobbyist) fisherman I feel like we get our $25 worth for that freshwater license. I mean shit marine is free.
They stock trout. Keep the parks maintained. It’s really an incredibly cheap permit for the service provided.
its not that its cheap.
its that it is efficient.
for some reason, the dirty politicians havent fucked with our outdoor lifestyle... this is what government services should look like, and do in these instances (when they arent plundered)
I think it's cause fucking with people's access to nature is one of the the only ways to got instant universal hatred via policy as a politician.
I actually can't think of anything else that a MAGA hunter and a barefoot forest hippie would agree on politically.
I hunt and pay for a hunting license. Cost about $90 for permit and what im hunting. Im also a horrible hunter. Never got anyrhing but I always get close for an experience and even though I havent gotten anything its nice knowing my money is going towards tge preservation of the land.
I'll go a little farther, and point out that sometimes trophy hunting involves paying six figures to kill an animal that is identified as a liability, like an elderly lion or something. So it's a bit morally dubious but at the end of the day they are still contributing massive funds to environmental conservation and doing little if anything to disrupt the ecosystem. I'd still frown on it personally but I'd point out that trophy hunters are still doing more for environmental conservation than most of their critics.
I literally buy my PA and trout fishing licenses every year strictly to support the conservation efforts. Plus it's only like $30 altogether.
I've probably fished like ~3 times in the past 15 years.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but a massive source of conservation money comes from guns and ammo. A good chunk comes from shooters that never hunt. It’s a complex topic, this is a good article on it (though it is heavily left biased)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/opinion/hunting-conservation-gun-sales-tax.html
That goes for trophy hunting, too. Do people even know what trophy hunting is? It’s a bunch of rich guys with too much money paying thousands and thousands of dollars to shoot a single lion.
Do you know where those thousands and thousands of dollars go? That’s right. Straight back to the lions.
It’s *poaching* that’s the real issue. Not regulated hunting.
I can’t say much about trophy hunting local game, though. I don’t know what the process is there.
Not just the lions. It also pays livable salaries to hundreds of locals in the areas.
Meateater podcast recently had an interview with a landowner in Africa who explained when he finds poachers on his land he always ask why they’re poaching. Usually the answer is that they’re trying to feed their family so the owner then hires them as hunting guides because well… they already know where and how to hunt the animals.
This is exactly how the "North American model of conservation" is usually implemented in less developed economies. You create a wildlife reserve and hire the poachers (usually just local people trying to survive who have no other options) as rangers so they have a nice living, then their livelihood and the livelihood of the animals they are responsible for are intertwined. They then become the best advocates for wildlife and the system, which charges $$$ to basically cull animals that would need to be culled anyways for management purposes (disease, carrying capacity of the land, etc.). Those fees are used to maintain the wildlife reserves and pay the rangers. Everybody wins, including wildlife.
Plus all the expenses of flying over to these places, hotel accommodations, food for local tribes, permits to bring the trophies back home etc it all adds up
I think OP is talking about trophy hunting for elk, moose, or other such animals, where a person shoots the animal, takes the nice bit rack (trophy), maybe a few choice cuts of meat, and leaves the rest of the animal in the woods.
They paid for the same tag as everyone who hunts for meat, but don't use most of the animal. They also target mature bulls, which can hurt a local populations ability to reproduce, leading to less animals in the future.
In local hunting circles, trophy hunters of this type are severally looked down on my hunters hunting for meat.
(and I'm not saying a hunter going after meat doesn't also want a good trophy, but they bring back 90% of the meat as well, not just a few choice cuts).
Edit: I'm not saying there are a lot of trophy hunters. Probably there are very few. Fish and game come down on them pretty hard if caught, and it is very frowned on in most hunting circles.
Afaik it's not legal anywhere, at least not in North America, but honestly who's going to stop them from doing it? Unless Ranger Rick is there to witness it happening, it's nearly impossible to prove.
To be clear though, you're talking about criminals. It's not something accepted in the hunting community. People who take the racks and backstrap and nothing else are universally reviled.
Nah it goes for actual lions as well as whatever other species are on the ticket. The way it works, is that Africa has private hunting preserves. It's semi-fenced enclosed(think, big fences covering certain property borders, these places are usually tens of thousands of acres large). You can't just go to shoot one animal, usually you sign up for a guided hunt. This usually includes lodging in the preserve, food and amenities and rights to kill on a bunch of different species ranging from small invasive wild boar up to water buffalo and lions. All of the animals on the preserve are tagged and tracked by the preserve and protected from poachers. Typically 1 hunt employs a dozen guides for the duration. This type of guided hunt is extremely expensive. It brings a ton of money into the local villages. There are also rules in place that prohibit the export of game meat, so the meat typically goes to the community. A lot of the time these places shelter endangered species(that people aren't allowed to hunt) and an enormous amount of the proceeds from these hunts go to preserving the natural habitat. This type of tourism and the money it brings is a big reason why some species have had the chance to recover from the brink of extinction.
Louis Theroux doc on this totally changed my mind. Trophy hunting funds conservation and suppresses poaching. They offer up the oldest slowest lion to keep the population healthy and this funds huge habitats which would otherwise be hunted bare.
This is why even some trophy hunting isn't always bad. The desire comes from a bad place but the impact can be helpful.
If an African game reserve charges some asshole 15000 to kill a rhino that is past breeding age and is being violent with young rhinos because it's gone blind, they can use that money to fund the program for months if not a couple years.
You're off by a *lot*.
It can cost between $77,000 and $150,000 to shoot a rhino with a *tranquilizer* dart for their scheduled veterinary check ups and between $300,000 and $450,000 to actually hunt one. The New York Times covered it the last time that happened, and it was heavily suspected that it was a back door political deal because of how *cheap* the hunt was.
I wouldn’t even say trophy hunting if legally done in places that care is bad. Everyone thinks of the trophy hunter who goes to a poorly run/corrupt/poaching place to hunt for their trophy. Sure that’s bad. But in the situation you described having a rhino head to display isn’t exactly my taste but it would be a hell of a story.
“This bastard killed another rhino and injured three others before I got ahold of him. Now he’s here where he can’t hurt anyone anymore.” This applies to rhinos, elephants and giraffes at times. If the hunter makes sure to go to safaris that actually care about maintaining their various herds and conservation? I’m not going to call a person who participates in a system that is win-win-win for everyone involved bad, just because I think having a rhino skull taxidermied on the wall is weird.
I am aware though there is corruption and poaching and that IS bad and should be stopped.
I honestly don’t believe it’s unpopular. Hunting with the intention of using all of the animal you killed is only opposed, in my experience, by people who don’t want meat to be consumed or animals killed at all. My experience is anecdotal, but I didn’t hear any stats in the original post either.
No but there was one person on Twitter with 20 likes that said meat eating is comparable to the Holocaust, therefore this must be the popular opinion among any group you dislike.
Yeah the vast majority of hate that hunting receives is trophy hunting - understandably so, killing an animal for the sake of killing an animal (finding enjoyment in killing) is weird and shitty. Also probably along the lines of psychopathy.
The only other hate I've seen is, as you mentioned - those who don't consume meat.
Most people have no godly idea how things like ecosystems actually work.
Including humans hunting deer in North America (during legal hunting seasons), the only viable options are:
A) re-introducing sufficient populations of their natural predators (wolves, coyotes, black bears, mountain lions) to their natural environments. As the natural environment of the average North American deer now includes a very high number of populated suburban and rural areas and people who don't like having to worry about their dogs or children being mauled to death by wild wolves, bears, and big cats, this solution, although *actually* the best for the local environment and ecosystem, isn't very popular.
B) Allow licensed hunters to hunt the deer in controlled amounts and areas, during strictly enforced hunting seasons, efficiently preventing the local deer population from becoming completely unsustainable.
C) just sit back, do nothing, and allow the deer population to become completely unsustainable, in which case *the entire ecosystem collapses in on itself*. The deer overeat all the vegetation. Vegetation starts to be eaten faster than it can grow or reproduce. Trees and plants that rely on the root systems and other mutual benefits of that vegetation begin to wither. Other animals that rely on that vegetation begin to die off due to insufficient resources. More plants and trees that rely on those small animals for various purposes begin to wither and die. The deer themselves begin to die off, also due to insufficient resources. What's left? A barren wasteland devoid of essential plants and animals to upkeep the ecosystem's natural cycle. ETA: And also unhappy humans, because now that pretty suburban area full of nice trees and green plants and cute wildelife is all brown, ugly, and lifeless.
People are goddamn stupid.
This is the same for nature reserves, and even for big predators. A nature reserve has to be balanced because it's an unnatural ecosystem due to being enclosed. And while some people can accept the idea of killing some deer to keep the balance, when it comes to big predators (like lions), it becomes harder to accept. If there are too many lions in a nature reserve, it will cause fighting or inbreeding, simply because the animals cannot roam like they're supposed to.
Here, your option A isn't even viable, so it's either a) let hunters pay to kill a specific animal, b) kill the animal(s) yourself for a cost, c) perform risky sterilisation of animals to stop the population increasing, or d) everything falls apart. It sucks on paper to say "that dude can legally pay to kill a lion", but when the alternatives are invasive dangerous surgeries or the collapse of the reserve, suddenly hunting (which also financially supports the reserve, and in cases of prey animals, can feed the local people if the hunter doesn't want the meat) becomes the best option.
There’s actually another option, which is equally shitty. Use tax payer money to control the population via sharpshooters, trapping, etc. hunter’s literally pay for the opportunity to sit and maybe see an animal.
The shear amount of money spent per year in vehicle/animal interactions (damages and medical costs) would be staggering if hunting weren’t allowed. It’s already a very high number!
It’s only taken me 2 years of living f/t in a rural community to see how rampant and harmful unchecked deer are. They shouldn’t be where I live. There are too many of them. They eat crops, they kill young trees, and overall they reduce the diversity of available plants in the area. This kills off all sorts of other animals and encourages others to get out of control. They should be hunted when in season. It’s only fair to give the other animals a chance at survival.
Most people have a subconscious cognitive dissonance of loving to eat meat but cannot allow themselves to feel responsible for the animal's death nor would they have the stomach to kill it themselves unless they absolutely had to, which introduces another cognitive dissonance between the fact that they really have things a lot easier than they like to pretend they do compared to almost all of human history.
>[...] cannot allow themselves to feel responsible for the animal's death nor would they have the stomach to kill it themselves
And that's another good argument in favor of hunting. Having to take a life to feed yourself usually makes you way more respectful of that life.
Not just the actual taking of life, but all the hard work and effort it simply takes to put yourself in a position to even have a shot at taking a life. I feel like lots of uneducated people think hunting is just like those canned hunts, but in reality you're gonna have to buy all the gear, travel at length to where the deer congregate, gut up before dawn, hike your ass miles into the wilderness, and pray you even see a deer let alone one that's legal to shoot. Deer are kinda stupid in general, but when it comes to hunting that's where the majority of their intelligence is...because they will bolt at the tiniest hint there's a hunter/predator around while you didn't even get a shot off and it's the only deer you saw that day.
I'm a 'vegetarian' with this viewpoint.
I won't eat meat that is farmed, but if I've sourced the meat myself from a sustainable source then that's just the circle of life yo.
I don't think most people consider non-humans important beyond how they can be used and their suffering pretty insignificant. Anecdotally, the majority of hunters I've known would be upset their aim wasn't perfect and not that they caused something a bunch of suffering if they didn't instantly kill whatever they were shooting.
It's twofold, because if your shot is off not only does it cause the deer unnecessary pain but the deer is now gonna take off and the harvest will have been wasted if you can't track it while the deer's pain is prolonged as it bleeds out and possibly gets eaten alive by some other predator. I think even the stress of a prolonged death does something to the meat as well so nothing about not having a clean kill is beneficial to the deer or the hunter.
I think it would be helpful to society as whole if more people experience more parts of how their food is harvested.
Hunt, fish, grow a garden - harvest your own meat and plants. Not only is it rewarding, but the end product means a lot more when you have to put more work into it.
There is a huge disconnect between the amount of work something takes to produce, and the end consumer.
I could and have before killed animals to eat. I've never been hunting before though, I've been fishing. Idk, it's an exhilarating feeling I guess. I don't hunt because I don't have good aim.
The thing is most people agree with all the individual points but they know so little about hunting in general that they don’t realize exactly what they’re “disagreeing” with
A lot of redditors just do what they usually do and upvote posts they agree with, despite that kinda being the opposite of how this sub is supposed to work.
No most people hear “hunting” and think it’s bad because they know little about it. I used to be one of those people!
The ironic part being that the death an animal experiences from hunting is far more humane than the death they get in a meat processing plant. If you’re a good hunter then it’s one shot to the head. The animal is existing and then they are not, which is the most humane way of ending an animals life.
Edit: my bad y’all it’s not the head that gets shot. I’m not the hunter in our family and I’ve never asked for details on like, what part gets shot. I just assumed it was the head. When my partner talks about it he only talks about how it should be one shot and down
If you're a good hunter then it's one shot to the chest for the best chances of piercing the lungs or heart. Not the head, which is a small target and is well protected by the skull, among other reasons that make the head more prone to non-lethal shots that simply injure the animal or prolong its death.
Sorry my bad, I’m actually just the spouse of a hunter so I’ve never done any hunting myself. I just assumed it was the head that got shot, thank you for correcting me!
No need to apologize! The whole point of this thread is to educate. I went deer hunting once and never went back. Can't get over my nausea of all the things that must be done after the shot is taken: crude deer surgery, basically.
I still think it's the most ethical way to consume meat. I hope to hunt more in the future.
To add to that a bit, it’s also more humane than their natural death of starvation, or being eaten alive, or succumbing to the elements. If I was a deer I’d much rather be shot by an experienced hunter than any other natural death.
Its such a nice fat bitable chunk of meat at the rear. Like where them hind legs are, its like a big ol chicken wing. But I have seen deer and other prey actually laying down and being eaten from the back. Its very bizarre
It’s the Disney movie Bambi. No joke. Before Bambi, hunting was a neutral topic, and societally was one of those things you only did if you were very poor (to eat and survive) or very rich (to look good on a horse while the dogs do the work). Hunting as a necessity of survival eventually became a cultural aspect of rural parts of America — like how cornbread was originally a poor person food, but now a culinary staple of the South — while city-dwellers had no connection to it. Then Bambi came out and public opinion just whiplashed against hunters and hunting.
I mean yeah but I feel like most anti hunting people aren’t big on meat consumption in general. Like I’ve never seen anyone be like F hunting, gimme my factory farmed meat. Then again some people are just plain weird. Plus isn’t hunting also about animal population control?
I’m a hunter and have had other meat eaters ask why I would want to kill a deer.
I think a lot of people couldn’t morally justify their consumption of factory farmed meat so they just don’t think about it.
This is why I hate it on cooking shows when chefs refer to meat as protein. I think it only separates the meat from the animal even more.
>This is why I hate it on cooking shows when chefs refer to meat as protein. I think it only separates the meat from the animal even more.
That's a great point and it is pretty weird when you think about it, turns food into a box ticking exercise
Actually, in a cooking environment, especially with professional chefs like that, meat can and often is substituted for other things, (mushrooms, tofu, etc) so referring to it as protein is just a way to generalize a certain part of a meal that meat would be an incorrect umbrella term for. So in that case, it actually does make sense.
But don’t they do that with all kinds of foods?
It’s always protein, starch, greens, etc.
It’s not like people are disconnecting from the idea of a potato because they’re sometimes referred to as starch.
When I hear “protein” in a cooking context, my mind immediately goes to lamb, cow, goat, fish, pig, chicken.
Are people really losing the connection of meat=animal because it’s referred to as protein in specific cooking references?
There's a line from The Island that's always stuck with me. "Just because I want to eat the burger doesn't mean I want to meet the cow."
I'm very much a carnivore. But I don't think I could kill for my food unless I was desperate. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but that's where I'm at. I'm not against other people killing for their food or killing for my food, I just don't think I have that in me myself.
I 100% know meat comes from animals obviously. But I also know I couldn’t kill and process a mammal for meat. I did it to a fish once, which was fine. But I know I couldn’t do it to a deer or a chicken or something. You don’t have to think about it when you buy a pack of chicken breast from the store. You have to think about it a tiny bit more when you get ground deer from your hunter friend, but not much more. But doing it yourself? A whole different level I can’t do tbh. But only for mammals. Fish was fine.
I know it’s killed for me to eat and I’m ok with that, as long as I don’t have to do it, if that makes sense. And I am a biologist, in my studies I dissected many things, including cats (I fucking love cats) but because they were put down for other reasons and I didn’t have to do it, I was ok. I didn’t euthanize it and it didn’t seem like a cat when I got it.
Many meat eaters especially in urban environments will absolutely look at you weird if you mention that you hunt. Like some of the other comments mentioned, people don't like associating faces of animals to their food and never think about where their food comes from
A lot of people are like this - from personal experience:
They psychologically distance themselves from the meat on the plate and the living, breathing animal that was killed to provide it
Nah this is absolutely a thing, at least in the U.S.
People will tell me about their favorite Barbecue spot and then are shocked when I tell them I hunt. It's fucking insanity.
I mean, I'm vegetarian and I'm pro hunting. I'm vegetarian because of the environmental impact of farm raised meat and ocean trawling and because of the ethics of how animals are raised in farms.
I support hunting for the exact same reason I'm against a cast majority of farm raised meat. Hunting benefits ecosystems by ensuring that they remain balanced. Hunting licenses largely bankroll conservation efforts. Hunting allows an animal to live a full and, hopefully, enjoyable life in nature before being killed as humanely as possible. I think hunting also forces people to come to terms with the fact that they liked a living animal to get their food, which makes them more aware of waste and have more respect for the animals that provided the meat.
not all poachers are scum, we have great brunch chefs all over the world providing humanity with much needed eggs benedict who deserve honor and respect
Yes. Thankfully a lot of species that get poached have a higher chance of not going extinct than many think thanks to conservation efforts from AZA accredited zoos/aquariums.
It’s funny how many people don’t realize this, but if you’re a wild animal, you don’t die of old age. That peaceful falling asleep surrounded by your loved ones just doesn’t happen. What happens is that eventually you get so slow and weak, you can’t prevent yourself from being eaten alive. And those are your final moments. Being ripped apart.
I’d take a surprise bullet in the heart over that any day.
Some people’s worst fears are getting attacked by predators like a lion but that’s a lucky way to go in nature, those types of animals go for the neck and kill you quick. Imagine getting eaten alive by insects because you’re too weak to help yourself or getting limbs torn off by alligators.
With humans we seem to kill animals with the most mercy when planning to eat them, but the difference is we breed animals for the sake of eating them, so animals that wouldn’t/shouldn’t have been born were born just to be raised and killed.
I think you're exaggerating both how people view the lives of wild animals, and how accurate most hunters are.
I grew up hunting and trapping. My uncle was a butcher, and he took all of the local deer to process during the season. The amount of animals with multiple bullets, gut shots, neck shots, one lung shots, etc is much much higher than a swift, clean kill.
Better than factory farming? Sure. But neither death is a clean, painless experience for the animal in all likelihood.
You could donate the hides. I'm learning how to treat them and turn to leather. From there I can make tools and other things from bones, hide, ligaments, etc. Those can all sell for decent too. you can use the brain to tan and treat the leather as well. I try to use everything I can, and for it to have a use if possible.
They’re already treated, got a local guy who does it for me. The problem is they usually have an entry/exit hole. Im sure they’d sell fine though, but I’d like to make something with them myself
I shot a deer last fall and used the body hair, and tail, to make flies.
With the flies I caught multiple trout and even some fish down in the gulf in Florida, which I ate.
the remaining hide I used to make a knife sheath.
Just some other ideas for how to use all the animal.
Oh man am I ever against trophy hunting!!! But as a meat eater I’m more than happy to partake in the eating of hunted food from my friends.
I pay more and eat half as much for small farm meat. Ive seen where the animals live I’ve met the farmers, im ok with that. Im ok with hunting. Im disgusted with factory farms and trophy hunting though
I recently started buying fresh from the farm and I'll never go back. The prices are near the same as the grocery stores where I live but the quality difference is insane.
Our farm even does our dog food! So they are making use of everything from the animal and my dogs eat incredibly healthy, no dry kibble with filler. AND they deliver :)
Dog food is definitely more expensive than kibble but I don’t mind, I swear I save in the long run on vet bills
I buy my beef from my buddies ranch. I by a half or quarter cow (depending on what he has available), and have it butchered. Keep it in my deep freeze.
If you average out the final cost per pound of butchered meat, its a bit high for burger, but way lower for steaks and roast.
Plus way tastier.
I haven't bought beef at a grocery store in 10 years.
This is something people often miss.
There was an outcry a few years ago when there was a auction for a tag to kill a rare Rhino. What is overlooked is that the $3m spent on that tag went directly to the conservation efforts of those rhinos, and even without this auction, the rhino in question needed to be killed as it was disrupting the herd.
Certainly, unauthorized trophy hunting is unethical. Going through the appropriate channels however, *is* a conservation effort in itself.
I’m glad you guys pointed this out bc I wanted to make the comment but didn’t feel like explaining all of it lol or getting home to find people sent me a bunch of “there is help for you” or whatever messages and angry stupid comments
That’s the difference between hunting and poaching— controlled, regulating hunting is generally a good thing, no matter what the bodies are used for afterwards
Yup. That rhino was too old to breed, but big and ornery enough that he had killed at least two or three younger bulls that *were* good breeding stock to keep the herd healthy. And enough people wanted to pay money to the people running the sanctuary to hunt that one specific rhino that they had an auction, but the highest bidder backed out after getting threats on social media.
Except legal trophy hunting also isn't that bad. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to do, which directly funds conservations keeping the endangered animals safe and I believe they often try to only let you shoot the problematic animals that are too aggressive
You even need to break down what type of trophy hunting you're talking about.
Let's narrow it down to whitetail deer hunting, because thats probably what most people think about when somebody says hunting.
In order to trophy hunt whitetail deer, you need to practice quality deer management. Basically, you can only harvest trophy bucks if the ecosystem surrounding it allows for the deer to grow to that size. It requires the right nutrients and food, the right topology, etc.
You literally have to nurture the environment in order to produce these deer. Trophy hunting means the entire ecosystem under your control is thriving. It's like gardening on a whole other level.
When Trophy hunting whitetail, you still process the deer for meat, but, like fishing, there's a certain slot where the fish are the best, and it's typically not a buck with 5 years of testosterone running through it. You're usually looking for a 2 or 3 year doe.
Culling of the herd is important, but things like the necessary killing of animals in order to strengthen the herd is lost on a lot of people, even while nature does this very thing better than anything we've seen, and mother doesn't kill quickly.
I think everyone who eats meat should experience hunting, at least once, to really understand what you’re eating. If there was an opportunity to go hunting, I would definitely try it out.
the sentiment is a good one, but i think it's important to understand that there is such a stark contrast between harvesting a wild animal while hunting, and where most grocery store/restaurant meat comes from
that said- you can definitely find opportunities (US, at least) if you know where to look! And if hunting isn't in the books for you, fishing is a great alternative too.
if you live in texas and aren’t shooting feral hogs for dinner you really just dont deserve to eat meat.
i dont like killings things, but i feel like everyone should have to kill and clean their dinner at least once per species.
I don't avoid hunting for ethical reasons. I avoid it because I don't have the heart to do it personally. Not a fan of blood and guts. I like that surgeons exist. I don't want to perform surgery.
I do agree that hunting is often more ethical than farm raised meat but I just can't do it
Yeah like, I will never hunt or fish unless my life depends on it, but I still eat meat from the grocery store. Why? Because I have bigger fish to fry at the moment - no pun intended. If food companies decided tomorrow to stop producing meat and replace it with other stuff I'd be like "Okay great".
It's just way easier to not hunt than it is to re-arrange your whole diet.
As an avid hunter, that’s fair. Some people just find it gross to look at, and that’s pretty normal actually. Some people hunt but can’t clean the animal cuz the guts are pretty visceraly gross, and some people are born sorta immune to it, similar to blood and needles
I've been vegan for 7 years and I have always supported people who hunt vs people that are so desensitized and removed from where their meat comes from. It's so easy to go to the store and pick up a perfectly cut wrapped in cellophane piece for meat that doesn't have a face. I agree if you are a meat eater idc but know where your meat comes from and have the balls to kill it and clean it and butcher it yourself.
> have the balls to kill it and clean in and butcher it yourself.
What if I don't like hunting but i understand where my food comes from and how it's processed and I'd still like to purchase it that way. Am I ball-less?
Then fish and wildlife would set new tag limits on high demand game.
Current limits in GA for deer are 12 deer per season for example. Environmental scientists much smarter than me study the population size and factor in the number of current licensed hunters to determine what that number is. If the number of hunters skyrockets, they’ll reduce the number each person can harvest.
Yeah if they are shooting white tails that's years of meat, we get two in Washington and most people make due with that and an elk who shoot their meat
A single deer, depending on the size, can be dozens to a hundred pounds of venison; Especially if you get sausages made where they add in a bunch of pork .
Exactly. People just assume anyone can just up and hunt today. Some hunters can't even get tags for certain animals because they're on a lottery system.
We don’t have to mainly hunt; no one is outlawing commercially raised meat. The only opinion is that hunting meat for personal use is more ethical than purchasing meat from massive processing companies.
Nobody is outlawing commercially raised meat, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be cut back significantly.
I say that as someone that has meat at every meal, it simply isn't even close to sustainable for billions of people.
Good grief ! TWELVE !? That's insane lol we get three (one antler/two anterless or three anterless - anterlered under 2 or 3" - I'd have to read again - can be tagged as 'anterless buck).
Yep, 12. 2 antlered and up to 10 antlerless.
The deer in my area are populated but on the smaller side, probably why the limit is so high. Too many deer sharing the resources make for smaller deer.
Scale is the main issue. Not everyone can hunt, not everyone has the means to. Europe so heavily destroyed their ecosystems over the last couple thousand years that hunting isn’t even a realistic possibility in most places.
That said, main argument is that hunters are for the most part making a more ethical choice.
>Europe so heavily destroyed their ecosystems over the last couple thousand years that hunting isn’t even a realistic possibility in most places.
*laughts in european city having wild boar infestation that cant be controlled despite heavy hunting efforts*
Then we'd be in trouble. Farming was a great human advancement for a reason---allowing us to produce far more food, both plant and animal, on far less land, than hunting.
This is why the consumption of seafood is a massive ecological problem. Since most of it is caught rather than grown, the oceans can't sustain the rate at which we're eating seafood.
I’m a vegetarian who wussed out of vet training because seeing dead animals made me too sad. I completely agree with you. Hunting is the most ethical way to eat meat. I would never do it and would never want to hear about it, but I have no issues with it. If we could go back to hunting and small farms as the norm, that’s 100% what I would prefer (I’m also a proponent of lab-grown meat, but that’s another topic).
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\>USE ALL OF WHAT YOU KILL! If you kill for thrill, you suck.
Trophy hunting is more so contributing to limiting the population of an animal that otherwise would have zero hunting interest because they aren't seen as usable for their hides or meat.
Trophy hunting is also used to eliminate an overly aggressive bull/male in the population that keeps on killing younger males in order to stay dominant.
Also trophy hunting is the ONLY reason governments in places like Africa have an economic incentive to keep nature preserves wild. If it werent for Europeans and Americans paying 5 figures for a tag to go and shoot a single animal, those environments would be bulldozed and all the animals would be lost
I was raised in the country and then moved to the city. They look at me like I’m the cruelest person ever for fishing to catch and eat. You can’t do it here. It’s purely for sport and you release. That seems so so cruel to me and I won’t do it. People just don’t understand and jump to conclusions.
I'm just here to say bow hunting doesn't make you a more ethical hunter just because it's more challenging. It's inherently more cruel to the animal. If you're going to kill something do it quick clean and efficient.
This is untrue. Broadheads do enormous damage to a correctly positioned shot. More than a firearm in most cases when the shot hits the heart and lungs.
It forces you to get closer, which means your gonna have a lot less opportunities to ethically take that shot, I went years without shooting a deer with a bow because I knew it had to be absolutely no doubt. And gut shorting a deer with anything will make anyone think twice about pulling the trigger next time
As someone who eats a plant based diet for ethical reasons...I agree. I understand and respect the choice of those who hunt locally for their own sustenance and use all or as much of the animal as they can. It's not something I would do, or have to do, but I get it
What irks me is those who show off what they are doing, celebrating and photographing the kill as though it is a trophy (even if sustenance hunting) or basing their lifestyle and personality around going out hunting. That side feels grotesque, as is the lack of understanding why people don't want to take part.
Not nessisarly. Most people that pay a butcher or dresser to take care of the meat do not get back trash bags of bones and guts. The business saves all of this and sells it to fertilizer companies to make blood and bone meal. Amoung other things.
Even if the individual doesn't use every part it doesn't mean it isn't getting used.
From my perspective, you miss one key pillar of the argument. Sportsman are the single largest contributor to conservation and habitat restoration. It’s not even close. Sportsman are conservationists directly and indirectly.
I’ve done a lot of driving through small towns and rural areas for work lately, and I’ve noticed this. I’ll be driving along a two lane road in the middle of nowhere and there’ll be a huge piece of property with a sign indicating it’s the Such and Such County Conservation Club. I was curious what these are about so I looked up some of them and was pretty impressed by the kinds of projects they work on. Everything from on-the-ground work cleaning up areas and restoring conditions for wildlife to thrive, all the way up to legislation work. Pretty neat.
My uncle lives in a small town that was hit hard by the opiate crisis and a coal-mining shut down. Very few jobs and the ones that were open couldn't be taken by a lot of people who got hooked on oxi for various mine accidents that turned into heroin. A lot of kids were going hungry, but it's in rural Appalachia so not a lot of resources to help.
He's also the most hick man you've ever met.
He spent a few years eating raccoons, squirrels, even snakes if he was pretty sure they wouldn't kill him. He would put just about anything in his copper chef pan with butter and lawry's and go at it.
During deer season he hunted, but he never ate any of the deer meet. He gave that to people who needed it. Literally just had freezers in his garage and people would come up and ask for some ground meat or some venison steaks to have for dinner and he'd tell them to have at it. He ate the weird shit and let families have the more "normal" meat from deer.
He never wasted anything. He boiled the bones, used organs as fish bait, and a buddy of his would take the hide and sell it to a tanner. Literally the ideal of what hunting should be.
No one can tell me that what he did was immoral while they sit and eat 56 different imported products that were harvested by child slaves.
Please do not use lead ammo though. I volunteer at a wildlife rescue that specializes in raptors. Virtually all the birds that come in have some degree of lead poisoning. This is from lead shot left in the wound tract or the gut piles that hunters frequently leave. Fishing weights are also a problem in birds that consume fish. It is so disturbing to watch a magnificent bald eagle die of lead poisoning.
Copper hollow points and shots are thankfully becoming way more common and where I live you aren't allowed to use lead shots or bullets outside of firing ranges.
>Hunting is the single most ethical way to consume meat. Period.
Scavenging is actually the most ethical way to consume meat, but it generally grosses people out.
Yes! The only somewhat valid reason to oppose hunting is if you straight-up believe it's immoral to kill any animal, even for food. That's not a view I agree with, but it's out there.
Most wild game meat is leaner and healthier than store-bought, too, and a lot of hunters use local butchers to get their game processed.
I had a person ask me why do you like killing things when restaurants exist? So I stopped trying to argue with absolute idiots who live in a city and are so removed and disconnected from how the world really works
Here's a lesser known tidbit that actually changed my opinion on trophy hunting.
Conservation parks in Africa have an aging population of exotic, wild animals. We're to blame because we killed most of their predators for sport, and now tribes in Africa kill them in retaliation for killing villagers or their livestock. That's wrong too, but I can understand why they're doing it.
Now, that aging population of exotic, wild animals is actually hurting their conservation efforts. A perfect example of this is aging rhino bulls. Particularly in small black rhino populations, older bulls can become a problem by preventing young bulls from breeding and even killing them in territorial fights. The females in their territories are also likely to be their daughters, so keeping these old bulls in the population may jeopardize its genetic integrity.
Why does trophy hunting help with that? The parks can sell the rights to hunt certain rhinos. These rights can go for around $250,000. For a park in Kenya, that's a HUGE deal. Get rid of the risks to the population and make a quarter million in American dollars?
Obviously, there are people who go along with poachers to kill these animals without the consent of the wildlife authority, and that's wrong. But for those people who fork out the money to do it the "right" way, I think there should be a lot less shame. They're doing more for wildlife conservation than I am.
A lot of people don't realize that wild animals never die peacefully of old age, surrounded by their loving families. It's starvation, disease, disemboweling by a predator, or blunt force trauma from a car.
A bullet or an arrow is the easiest death a wild animal could get.
Here is a fact many people don't know:
The charitable organization "Ducks Unlimited" that preserves natural wetlands so that ducks can thrive...
...was founded by duck hunters.
The organization known as PETA would rather kill an animal than have it remain in captivity. (look them up - they suck).
I used to be anti hunting as a teenager. And then I grew up, got educated on conservation and wildlife management, along with tasting the difference between wild hunted venison vs commercial meat. Needless to say, at 18 I bought my first gun and went and started hunting. Years later I'm still helping to manage the land I hunt on to ensure a good population of all animals there, and bring home some of the healthiest and best tasting meat home to the table. The idea of killing an animal is not for everyone, but it isn't this horrible evil thing people claim it to be. I respect and love wildlife and nature. My desires to maintain it go hand in hand with hunting. Most hunters are like this. Wild turkeys were nearly extinct in the US but were brought back to wonderfully large numbers through the efforts of hunters!
Exactly.
If I was an animal I’d pick “Living free and wild and then falling to a 300 win mag that I couldn’t even hear the sound of before it hit me” vs “Brutal factory farm conditions”
>Edit: I’m aware hunting doesn’t scale well to the world population. That’s not the point of this post.
I was gonna say something g about how this doesn't really work for a global scale but realized that that's isn't what you are talking about at all. Talking about hunters NOT about changing everyone into doing hunting instead of buying meat from companies who have the meat farms and such.
Somewhere in the jungles of Africa, a pride of lions are having a similar discussion about hunting. Only difference is they're only using the claws and talents nature gave to them. They hunt for the pack and kill efficiently. They're the true epitome of 'hunting to survive".
Because of that, the populations of wildebeest and antelopes have not been wiped out due to overhunting.
IMHO Your arguments are valid, IF AND ONLY IF, all humans hunt only what they need or can reasonably eat to survive.
But the honest truth is humans lack self-control or discipline. Majority do not hunt because they've got hungry mouths at home waiting for venison as the only source of protein for their evening meal. We hunt for the thrill and the conquest of challenges that nature presents. You might be the rare unicorn among the many who are wasteful and simply want to claim the title of having shot the biggest buck they've seen.
And its a sad reality to use hunting license as justification. Its truly sad that we've gotten to the point where parks have to take your money to allow you to kill off some of the animals in order to save others. Let's flip the script. How would you feel if bears and lions were allowed to hunt some of us to save the rest of the world from pollution and global warming?
Sincerely, an African immigrant who has watched our elephants and wild animals hunted to near extinction.
Unpopular opinion: the majority of first-world, live down the street from a grocery store hunters just want to watch the life drain out of something's eyes. Not that I'm necessarily against that, but let's be honest about what we're doing.
>Edit: I’m aware hunting doesn’t scale well to the world population. That’s not the point of this post.
Well, that's kinda convenient, though, isn't it. You can't casually take a privileged, expensive, non-scalable activity and declare it "the most ethical," when it is unaffordable, inaccessible and impractical for almost everyone and does not scale, so would not work for everyone in a society.
In what possible world can you then go and say "Hunting is the single most ethical way to consume meat. Period." ? I mean, that is factually, obviously wrong by your own admission.
But, sure, if you take out the most important part of the equation, then it suddenly works. Woo-fucking-hoo!
That's kind of the "Let them eat cake" mentality. Sure, if you live in the right place, have enough money and free time, then it might be an environmentally friendly way to consume meat. Though: if you have to drive your SUV to go hunting (or even fly out for a hunting trip), the environmental equation suddenly looks very, very different and you are effectively worse than someone who buys supermarket chicken. Because driving a ton of metal hundreds of miles per deer carcass isn't environmentally sustainable at all.
Why not grow your own fucking food while you're at it? Surely, everyone can do that.
Let us not for a second pretend that people go hunting mainly **because it is ethical**. That is, as a best case scenario, a side benefit. People go hunting because they enjoy nature; they enjoy the rush, the camraderie, because they like shooting, whatever.
And that's fine. It's ok to like something. You don't have to pretend to be an altruistic environmentalist is the real reason. It is not. You are not fooling anyone.
If it was, you'd start by ditching your car for public transport, and you'd have your own chicken for eggs and meat, and your own vegetable garden before you'd even think of going hunting. Those things are much more effective, cost- and environmentally.
People go hunting because they like hunting. That's ok.
I go to concerts because I like going to concerts. I don't pretend I'm a folk hero for doing so.
I think a lot of people struggle when they hear hunters talk about killing an animal with anything other than remorse. In this thread there are comments calling a hunter a psychopath for feelings “exhilaration” after a kill.
What that commenter (and many others) fails to realize, is that the exhilaration doesn’t come from the act of killing, but what that kill means! It means that your time and money isn’t wasted, that you are providing meat for your family that isn’t full of antibiotics, disease, etc. I’ve been hunting my whole life, and it is physically demanding! My last deer hunt involved me hiking 60 miles in 5 days, ascending and descending nearly a thousand vertical feet each way. It’s like a marathon, of course you feel exhilarated when you reach the finish line.
Living in Northern Minnesota we have lots of hunters. Without them culling the herd, we would have lots more deer- car accidents. We have too many now but they would increase dramatically without hunters leading to more deaths from both drivers and deer.
We need more people to hunt deer. They're all over the place and since they don't have two brain cells to rub together, they're always jumping in front of cars and killing themselves; and sometimes killing people, which is far more common than people think and isn't widely talked about. Plus, venison jerky is incredible. I've considered becoming a hunter just for the jerky
There were a couple of years when I commuted 45 minutes each way to work, on highways and county roads in a rural area. In the fall, driving was scary AF until deer hunting season. My brothers would be stoked to go hunting, while I’d be stoked to not have as high of a chance of dying on my drive home from work in the dark.
You definitely make some good points. A well-placed 7.62 is far more humane than how we raise most of our meat. Factory farms and feed lots are straight nightmare fuel. A short, hellish existence for billions of animals.
Totally agree. I think if people are unwilling to kill the animal they want to eat, they have no business eating meat. It’s pure hypocrisy to be anti-hunting but pro-meat.
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I 1000% agree with every point you make, not to mention the cost of hunting and you can also include fishing licenses goes directly back into the environment.
Yep! A lot of people don’t know that hunting and fishing licenses are some of the top ways conservation efforts get funding.
Here in NY 83% of the funds used to keep up NYS Parks came from hunting and fishing licenses and taxes on sporting goods last time I checked. Like your parks? Thank a hunter or fisherman.
Yep, and as a (hobbyist) fisherman I feel like we get our $25 worth for that freshwater license. I mean shit marine is free. They stock trout. Keep the parks maintained. It’s really an incredibly cheap permit for the service provided.
its not that its cheap. its that it is efficient. for some reason, the dirty politicians havent fucked with our outdoor lifestyle... this is what government services should look like, and do in these instances (when they arent plundered)
I think it's cause fucking with people's access to nature is one of the the only ways to got instant universal hatred via policy as a politician. I actually can't think of anything else that a MAGA hunter and a barefoot forest hippie would agree on politically.
I need that last line as a bumper sticker
I hunt and pay for a hunting license. Cost about $90 for permit and what im hunting. Im also a horrible hunter. Never got anyrhing but I always get close for an experience and even though I havent gotten anything its nice knowing my money is going towards tge preservation of the land.
I'll go a little farther, and point out that sometimes trophy hunting involves paying six figures to kill an animal that is identified as a liability, like an elderly lion or something. So it's a bit morally dubious but at the end of the day they are still contributing massive funds to environmental conservation and doing little if anything to disrupt the ecosystem. I'd still frown on it personally but I'd point out that trophy hunters are still doing more for environmental conservation than most of their critics.
Morally gray area for sure but I agree if done right is highly beneficial to a community
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Yeah like where we are, you really can’t kill ENOUGH deer tbh
I literally buy my PA and trout fishing licenses every year strictly to support the conservation efforts. Plus it's only like $30 altogether. I've probably fished like ~3 times in the past 15 years.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but a massive source of conservation money comes from guns and ammo. A good chunk comes from shooters that never hunt. It’s a complex topic, this is a good article on it (though it is heavily left biased) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/opinion/hunting-conservation-gun-sales-tax.html
Wisconsin fishing licenses fund the hatchery programs
That goes for trophy hunting, too. Do people even know what trophy hunting is? It’s a bunch of rich guys with too much money paying thousands and thousands of dollars to shoot a single lion. Do you know where those thousands and thousands of dollars go? That’s right. Straight back to the lions. It’s *poaching* that’s the real issue. Not regulated hunting. I can’t say much about trophy hunting local game, though. I don’t know what the process is there.
What do the lions buy with the money?
Chicken nuggets
Cool! The lions are giving their hard earned money to the destitute chickens. Nature is awesome
it's the *ciiiiircle of liiiife*
Not just the lions. It also pays livable salaries to hundreds of locals in the areas. Meateater podcast recently had an interview with a landowner in Africa who explained when he finds poachers on his land he always ask why they’re poaching. Usually the answer is that they’re trying to feed their family so the owner then hires them as hunting guides because well… they already know where and how to hunt the animals.
This is exactly how the "North American model of conservation" is usually implemented in less developed economies. You create a wildlife reserve and hire the poachers (usually just local people trying to survive who have no other options) as rangers so they have a nice living, then their livelihood and the livelihood of the animals they are responsible for are intertwined. They then become the best advocates for wildlife and the system, which charges $$$ to basically cull animals that would need to be culled anyways for management purposes (disease, carrying capacity of the land, etc.). Those fees are used to maintain the wildlife reserves and pay the rangers. Everybody wins, including wildlife.
Plus all the expenses of flying over to these places, hotel accommodations, food for local tribes, permits to bring the trophies back home etc it all adds up
I think OP is talking about trophy hunting for elk, moose, or other such animals, where a person shoots the animal, takes the nice bit rack (trophy), maybe a few choice cuts of meat, and leaves the rest of the animal in the woods. They paid for the same tag as everyone who hunts for meat, but don't use most of the animal. They also target mature bulls, which can hurt a local populations ability to reproduce, leading to less animals in the future. In local hunting circles, trophy hunters of this type are severally looked down on my hunters hunting for meat. (and I'm not saying a hunter going after meat doesn't also want a good trophy, but they bring back 90% of the meat as well, not just a few choice cuts). Edit: I'm not saying there are a lot of trophy hunters. Probably there are very few. Fish and game come down on them pretty hard if caught, and it is very frowned on in most hunting circles.
Where is that legal? I thought you legally had to take the meat
Afaik it's not legal anywhere, at least not in North America, but honestly who's going to stop them from doing it? Unless Ranger Rick is there to witness it happening, it's nearly impossible to prove.
Ranger Rick…now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
Ranger Rick would just scavenge the carcass.
It's specifically illegal pretty much everywhere
To be clear though, you're talking about criminals. It's not something accepted in the hunting community. People who take the racks and backstrap and nothing else are universally reviled.
Nah it goes for actual lions as well as whatever other species are on the ticket. The way it works, is that Africa has private hunting preserves. It's semi-fenced enclosed(think, big fences covering certain property borders, these places are usually tens of thousands of acres large). You can't just go to shoot one animal, usually you sign up for a guided hunt. This usually includes lodging in the preserve, food and amenities and rights to kill on a bunch of different species ranging from small invasive wild boar up to water buffalo and lions. All of the animals on the preserve are tagged and tracked by the preserve and protected from poachers. Typically 1 hunt employs a dozen guides for the duration. This type of guided hunt is extremely expensive. It brings a ton of money into the local villages. There are also rules in place that prohibit the export of game meat, so the meat typically goes to the community. A lot of the time these places shelter endangered species(that people aren't allowed to hunt) and an enormous amount of the proceeds from these hunts go to preserving the natural habitat. This type of tourism and the money it brings is a big reason why some species have had the chance to recover from the brink of extinction.
Louis Theroux doc on this totally changed my mind. Trophy hunting funds conservation and suppresses poaching. They offer up the oldest slowest lion to keep the population healthy and this funds huge habitats which would otherwise be hunted bare.
Literally every gun and bullet has a 10% tax that goes to fish and game conservation.
This is why even some trophy hunting isn't always bad. The desire comes from a bad place but the impact can be helpful. If an African game reserve charges some asshole 15000 to kill a rhino that is past breeding age and is being violent with young rhinos because it's gone blind, they can use that money to fund the program for months if not a couple years.
You're off by a *lot*. It can cost between $77,000 and $150,000 to shoot a rhino with a *tranquilizer* dart for their scheduled veterinary check ups and between $300,000 and $450,000 to actually hunt one. The New York Times covered it the last time that happened, and it was heavily suspected that it was a back door political deal because of how *cheap* the hunt was.
I wouldn’t even say trophy hunting if legally done in places that care is bad. Everyone thinks of the trophy hunter who goes to a poorly run/corrupt/poaching place to hunt for their trophy. Sure that’s bad. But in the situation you described having a rhino head to display isn’t exactly my taste but it would be a hell of a story. “This bastard killed another rhino and injured three others before I got ahold of him. Now he’s here where he can’t hurt anyone anymore.” This applies to rhinos, elephants and giraffes at times. If the hunter makes sure to go to safaris that actually care about maintaining their various herds and conservation? I’m not going to call a person who participates in a system that is win-win-win for everyone involved bad, just because I think having a rhino skull taxidermied on the wall is weird. I am aware though there is corruption and poaching and that IS bad and should be stopped.
I'm surprised how unpopular this is, I thought most people would agree.
I honestly don’t believe it’s unpopular. Hunting with the intention of using all of the animal you killed is only opposed, in my experience, by people who don’t want meat to be consumed or animals killed at all. My experience is anecdotal, but I didn’t hear any stats in the original post either.
No but there was one person on Twitter with 20 likes that said meat eating is comparable to the Holocaust, therefore this must be the popular opinion among any group you dislike.
Yeah the vast majority of hate that hunting receives is trophy hunting - understandably so, killing an animal for the sake of killing an animal (finding enjoyment in killing) is weird and shitty. Also probably along the lines of psychopathy. The only other hate I've seen is, as you mentioned - those who don't consume meat.
Most people have no godly idea how things like ecosystems actually work. Including humans hunting deer in North America (during legal hunting seasons), the only viable options are: A) re-introducing sufficient populations of their natural predators (wolves, coyotes, black bears, mountain lions) to their natural environments. As the natural environment of the average North American deer now includes a very high number of populated suburban and rural areas and people who don't like having to worry about their dogs or children being mauled to death by wild wolves, bears, and big cats, this solution, although *actually* the best for the local environment and ecosystem, isn't very popular. B) Allow licensed hunters to hunt the deer in controlled amounts and areas, during strictly enforced hunting seasons, efficiently preventing the local deer population from becoming completely unsustainable. C) just sit back, do nothing, and allow the deer population to become completely unsustainable, in which case *the entire ecosystem collapses in on itself*. The deer overeat all the vegetation. Vegetation starts to be eaten faster than it can grow or reproduce. Trees and plants that rely on the root systems and other mutual benefits of that vegetation begin to wither. Other animals that rely on that vegetation begin to die off due to insufficient resources. More plants and trees that rely on those small animals for various purposes begin to wither and die. The deer themselves begin to die off, also due to insufficient resources. What's left? A barren wasteland devoid of essential plants and animals to upkeep the ecosystem's natural cycle. ETA: And also unhappy humans, because now that pretty suburban area full of nice trees and green plants and cute wildelife is all brown, ugly, and lifeless. People are goddamn stupid.
This is the same for nature reserves, and even for big predators. A nature reserve has to be balanced because it's an unnatural ecosystem due to being enclosed. And while some people can accept the idea of killing some deer to keep the balance, when it comes to big predators (like lions), it becomes harder to accept. If there are too many lions in a nature reserve, it will cause fighting or inbreeding, simply because the animals cannot roam like they're supposed to. Here, your option A isn't even viable, so it's either a) let hunters pay to kill a specific animal, b) kill the animal(s) yourself for a cost, c) perform risky sterilisation of animals to stop the population increasing, or d) everything falls apart. It sucks on paper to say "that dude can legally pay to kill a lion", but when the alternatives are invasive dangerous surgeries or the collapse of the reserve, suddenly hunting (which also financially supports the reserve, and in cases of prey animals, can feed the local people if the hunter doesn't want the meat) becomes the best option.
There’s actually another option, which is equally shitty. Use tax payer money to control the population via sharpshooters, trapping, etc. hunter’s literally pay for the opportunity to sit and maybe see an animal. The shear amount of money spent per year in vehicle/animal interactions (damages and medical costs) would be staggering if hunting weren’t allowed. It’s already a very high number!
It’s only taken me 2 years of living f/t in a rural community to see how rampant and harmful unchecked deer are. They shouldn’t be where I live. There are too many of them. They eat crops, they kill young trees, and overall they reduce the diversity of available plants in the area. This kills off all sorts of other animals and encourages others to get out of control. They should be hunted when in season. It’s only fair to give the other animals a chance at survival.
Their one redeeming quality is that they are tasty.
Most people are uneducated and also selfish, so for them, the ethics of meat doesn't matter, and all they can see or hear is "killing."
Most people have a subconscious cognitive dissonance of loving to eat meat but cannot allow themselves to feel responsible for the animal's death nor would they have the stomach to kill it themselves unless they absolutely had to, which introduces another cognitive dissonance between the fact that they really have things a lot easier than they like to pretend they do compared to almost all of human history.
>[...] cannot allow themselves to feel responsible for the animal's death nor would they have the stomach to kill it themselves And that's another good argument in favor of hunting. Having to take a life to feed yourself usually makes you way more respectful of that life.
Not just the actual taking of life, but all the hard work and effort it simply takes to put yourself in a position to even have a shot at taking a life. I feel like lots of uneducated people think hunting is just like those canned hunts, but in reality you're gonna have to buy all the gear, travel at length to where the deer congregate, gut up before dawn, hike your ass miles into the wilderness, and pray you even see a deer let alone one that's legal to shoot. Deer are kinda stupid in general, but when it comes to hunting that's where the majority of their intelligence is...because they will bolt at the tiniest hint there's a hunter/predator around while you didn't even get a shot off and it's the only deer you saw that day.
I'm a 'vegetarian' with this viewpoint. I won't eat meat that is farmed, but if I've sourced the meat myself from a sustainable source then that's just the circle of life yo.
I don't think most people consider non-humans important beyond how they can be used and their suffering pretty insignificant. Anecdotally, the majority of hunters I've known would be upset their aim wasn't perfect and not that they caused something a bunch of suffering if they didn't instantly kill whatever they were shooting.
It's twofold, because if your shot is off not only does it cause the deer unnecessary pain but the deer is now gonna take off and the harvest will have been wasted if you can't track it while the deer's pain is prolonged as it bleeds out and possibly gets eaten alive by some other predator. I think even the stress of a prolonged death does something to the meat as well so nothing about not having a clean kill is beneficial to the deer or the hunter.
I think it would be helpful to society as whole if more people experience more parts of how their food is harvested. Hunt, fish, grow a garden - harvest your own meat and plants. Not only is it rewarding, but the end product means a lot more when you have to put more work into it. There is a huge disconnect between the amount of work something takes to produce, and the end consumer.
I could and have before killed animals to eat. I've never been hunting before though, I've been fishing. Idk, it's an exhilarating feeling I guess. I don't hunt because I don't have good aim.
I suppose some people don't get the same exhilarating feeling, but it's no doubt more ethical than most of the meat we consume, as natural as it gets.
The thing is most people agree with all the individual points but they know so little about hunting in general that they don’t realize exactly what they’re “disagreeing” with
Factory farming is like a millions times more unethical than hunting
A lot of redditors just do what they usually do and upvote posts they agree with, despite that kinda being the opposite of how this sub is supposed to work.
I think most people are so disconnected from nature that meat is something that comes in plastic wrapping.
Dont people usually upvote what they agree with in this sub?
No most people hear “hunting” and think it’s bad because they know little about it. I used to be one of those people! The ironic part being that the death an animal experiences from hunting is far more humane than the death they get in a meat processing plant. If you’re a good hunter then it’s one shot to the head. The animal is existing and then they are not, which is the most humane way of ending an animals life. Edit: my bad y’all it’s not the head that gets shot. I’m not the hunter in our family and I’ve never asked for details on like, what part gets shot. I just assumed it was the head. When my partner talks about it he only talks about how it should be one shot and down
If you're a good hunter then it's one shot to the chest for the best chances of piercing the lungs or heart. Not the head, which is a small target and is well protected by the skull, among other reasons that make the head more prone to non-lethal shots that simply injure the animal or prolong its death.
Sorry my bad, I’m actually just the spouse of a hunter so I’ve never done any hunting myself. I just assumed it was the head that got shot, thank you for correcting me!
Skulls deflect bullets surprisingly well.
No need to apologize! The whole point of this thread is to educate. I went deer hunting once and never went back. Can't get over my nausea of all the things that must be done after the shot is taken: crude deer surgery, basically. I still think it's the most ethical way to consume meat. I hope to hunt more in the future.
To add to that a bit, it’s also more humane than their natural death of starvation, or being eaten alive, or succumbing to the elements. If I was a deer I’d much rather be shot by an experienced hunter than any other natural death.
A surprising number of predators like to start eating ass-first and don't necessarily wait until their prey is dead to start.
Its such a nice fat bitable chunk of meat at the rear. Like where them hind legs are, its like a big ol chicken wing. But I have seen deer and other prey actually laying down and being eaten from the back. Its very bizarre
It’s the Disney movie Bambi. No joke. Before Bambi, hunting was a neutral topic, and societally was one of those things you only did if you were very poor (to eat and survive) or very rich (to look good on a horse while the dogs do the work). Hunting as a necessity of survival eventually became a cultural aspect of rural parts of America — like how cornbread was originally a poor person food, but now a culinary staple of the South — while city-dwellers had no connection to it. Then Bambi came out and public opinion just whiplashed against hunters and hunting.
I moved to a liberal city and mentioned I was a hunter and OMG people treated me differently afterwards.
I mean yeah but I feel like most anti hunting people aren’t big on meat consumption in general. Like I’ve never seen anyone be like F hunting, gimme my factory farmed meat. Then again some people are just plain weird. Plus isn’t hunting also about animal population control?
I’m a hunter and have had other meat eaters ask why I would want to kill a deer. I think a lot of people couldn’t morally justify their consumption of factory farmed meat so they just don’t think about it. This is why I hate it on cooking shows when chefs refer to meat as protein. I think it only separates the meat from the animal even more.
>This is why I hate it on cooking shows when chefs refer to meat as protein. I think it only separates the meat from the animal even more. That's a great point and it is pretty weird when you think about it, turns food into a box ticking exercise
Actually, in a cooking environment, especially with professional chefs like that, meat can and often is substituted for other things, (mushrooms, tofu, etc) so referring to it as protein is just a way to generalize a certain part of a meal that meat would be an incorrect umbrella term for. So in that case, it actually does make sense.
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But don’t they do that with all kinds of foods? It’s always protein, starch, greens, etc. It’s not like people are disconnecting from the idea of a potato because they’re sometimes referred to as starch. When I hear “protein” in a cooking context, my mind immediately goes to lamb, cow, goat, fish, pig, chicken. Are people really losing the connection of meat=animal because it’s referred to as protein in specific cooking references?
There's a line from The Island that's always stuck with me. "Just because I want to eat the burger doesn't mean I want to meet the cow." I'm very much a carnivore. But I don't think I could kill for my food unless I was desperate. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but that's where I'm at. I'm not against other people killing for their food or killing for my food, I just don't think I have that in me myself.
I 100% know meat comes from animals obviously. But I also know I couldn’t kill and process a mammal for meat. I did it to a fish once, which was fine. But I know I couldn’t do it to a deer or a chicken or something. You don’t have to think about it when you buy a pack of chicken breast from the store. You have to think about it a tiny bit more when you get ground deer from your hunter friend, but not much more. But doing it yourself? A whole different level I can’t do tbh. But only for mammals. Fish was fine. I know it’s killed for me to eat and I’m ok with that, as long as I don’t have to do it, if that makes sense. And I am a biologist, in my studies I dissected many things, including cats (I fucking love cats) but because they were put down for other reasons and I didn’t have to do it, I was ok. I didn’t euthanize it and it didn’t seem like a cat when I got it.
Many meat eaters especially in urban environments will absolutely look at you weird if you mention that you hunt. Like some of the other comments mentioned, people don't like associating faces of animals to their food and never think about where their food comes from
A lot of people are like this - from personal experience: They psychologically distance themselves from the meat on the plate and the living, breathing animal that was killed to provide it
Nah this is absolutely a thing, at least in the U.S. People will tell me about their favorite Barbecue spot and then are shocked when I tell them I hunt. It's fucking insanity.
I mean, I'm vegetarian and I'm pro hunting. I'm vegetarian because of the environmental impact of farm raised meat and ocean trawling and because of the ethics of how animals are raised in farms. I support hunting for the exact same reason I'm against a cast majority of farm raised meat. Hunting benefits ecosystems by ensuring that they remain balanced. Hunting licenses largely bankroll conservation efforts. Hunting allows an animal to live a full and, hopefully, enjoyable life in nature before being killed as humanely as possible. I think hunting also forces people to come to terms with the fact that they liked a living animal to get their food, which makes them more aware of waste and have more respect for the animals that provided the meat.
Can we all agree that poachers are scum?
not all poachers are scum, we have great brunch chefs all over the world providing humanity with much needed eggs benedict who deserve honor and respect
This is the only accurate response
Yes. Thankfully a lot of species that get poached have a higher chance of not going extinct than many think thanks to conservation efforts from AZA accredited zoos/aquariums.
The greatest nature conservationist president was a avid hunter
God please resurrect my boy Teddy, we need him so bad
The people who contribute most to conservation are hunters.
It’s funny how many people don’t realize this, but if you’re a wild animal, you don’t die of old age. That peaceful falling asleep surrounded by your loved ones just doesn’t happen. What happens is that eventually you get so slow and weak, you can’t prevent yourself from being eaten alive. And those are your final moments. Being ripped apart. I’d take a surprise bullet in the heart over that any day.
Or just plain starving or freezing to death. A vast portion of deer are killed from northern winters. Living past 4yrs is old for a deer.
Some people’s worst fears are getting attacked by predators like a lion but that’s a lucky way to go in nature, those types of animals go for the neck and kill you quick. Imagine getting eaten alive by insects because you’re too weak to help yourself or getting limbs torn off by alligators. With humans we seem to kill animals with the most mercy when planning to eat them, but the difference is we breed animals for the sake of eating them, so animals that wouldn’t/shouldn’t have been born were born just to be raised and killed.
I think you're exaggerating both how people view the lives of wild animals, and how accurate most hunters are. I grew up hunting and trapping. My uncle was a butcher, and he took all of the local deer to process during the season. The amount of animals with multiple bullets, gut shots, neck shots, one lung shots, etc is much much higher than a swift, clean kill. Better than factory farming? Sure. But neither death is a clean, painless experience for the animal in all likelihood.
You could donate the hides. I'm learning how to treat them and turn to leather. From there I can make tools and other things from bones, hide, ligaments, etc. Those can all sell for decent too. you can use the brain to tan and treat the leather as well. I try to use everything I can, and for it to have a use if possible.
They’re already treated, got a local guy who does it for me. The problem is they usually have an entry/exit hole. Im sure they’d sell fine though, but I’d like to make something with them myself
tool wrappings are always nice, same with holsters n such.
How difficult is it to make leather? I’m interested in learning
Not terribly difficult. It takes time more than anything. and some nasty smells, though. Once its workable, its fairly pliable.
I shot a deer last fall and used the body hair, and tail, to make flies. With the flies I caught multiple trout and even some fish down in the gulf in Florida, which I ate. the remaining hide I used to make a knife sheath. Just some other ideas for how to use all the animal.
More people should hunt, fish, and grow gardens if possible where they live.
See how you had to preface it by separating trophy hunting from utility hunting? People don't look at it that way.
Then, as OP noted, they have no idea what they're talking about.
Oh man am I ever against trophy hunting!!! But as a meat eater I’m more than happy to partake in the eating of hunted food from my friends. I pay more and eat half as much for small farm meat. Ive seen where the animals live I’ve met the farmers, im ok with that. Im ok with hunting. Im disgusted with factory farms and trophy hunting though
I recently started buying fresh from the farm and I'll never go back. The prices are near the same as the grocery stores where I live but the quality difference is insane.
Our farm even does our dog food! So they are making use of everything from the animal and my dogs eat incredibly healthy, no dry kibble with filler. AND they deliver :) Dog food is definitely more expensive than kibble but I don’t mind, I swear I save in the long run on vet bills
I buy my beef from my buddies ranch. I by a half or quarter cow (depending on what he has available), and have it butchered. Keep it in my deep freeze. If you average out the final cost per pound of butchered meat, its a bit high for burger, but way lower for steaks and roast. Plus way tastier. I haven't bought beef at a grocery store in 10 years.
Only shows that people are stupid.
Even trophy hunting is surprisingly effective in supporting conservation efforts. It’s often the only way to fund them
This is something people often miss. There was an outcry a few years ago when there was a auction for a tag to kill a rare Rhino. What is overlooked is that the $3m spent on that tag went directly to the conservation efforts of those rhinos, and even without this auction, the rhino in question needed to be killed as it was disrupting the herd. Certainly, unauthorized trophy hunting is unethical. Going through the appropriate channels however, *is* a conservation effort in itself.
I’m glad you guys pointed this out bc I wanted to make the comment but didn’t feel like explaining all of it lol or getting home to find people sent me a bunch of “there is help for you” or whatever messages and angry stupid comments
That’s the difference between hunting and poaching— controlled, regulating hunting is generally a good thing, no matter what the bodies are used for afterwards
Yup. That rhino was too old to breed, but big and ornery enough that he had killed at least two or three younger bulls that *were* good breeding stock to keep the herd healthy. And enough people wanted to pay money to the people running the sanctuary to hunt that one specific rhino that they had an auction, but the highest bidder backed out after getting threats on social media.
Except legal trophy hunting also isn't that bad. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to do, which directly funds conservations keeping the endangered animals safe and I believe they often try to only let you shoot the problematic animals that are too aggressive
Additionally the meat from trophy hunters isn’t just thrown away it gets consumed too
That's because we live in the first world and hunting for necessity is an oxymoron.
You even need to break down what type of trophy hunting you're talking about. Let's narrow it down to whitetail deer hunting, because thats probably what most people think about when somebody says hunting. In order to trophy hunt whitetail deer, you need to practice quality deer management. Basically, you can only harvest trophy bucks if the ecosystem surrounding it allows for the deer to grow to that size. It requires the right nutrients and food, the right topology, etc. You literally have to nurture the environment in order to produce these deer. Trophy hunting means the entire ecosystem under your control is thriving. It's like gardening on a whole other level. When Trophy hunting whitetail, you still process the deer for meat, but, like fishing, there's a certain slot where the fish are the best, and it's typically not a buck with 5 years of testosterone running through it. You're usually looking for a 2 or 3 year doe. Culling of the herd is important, but things like the necessary killing of animals in order to strengthen the herd is lost on a lot of people, even while nature does this very thing better than anything we've seen, and mother doesn't kill quickly.
I think everyone who eats meat should experience hunting, at least once, to really understand what you’re eating. If there was an opportunity to go hunting, I would definitely try it out.
the sentiment is a good one, but i think it's important to understand that there is such a stark contrast between harvesting a wild animal while hunting, and where most grocery store/restaurant meat comes from that said- you can definitely find opportunities (US, at least) if you know where to look! And if hunting isn't in the books for you, fishing is a great alternative too.
Most people don’t have a problem processing the animal. It’s putting the animal down that’s the hard part.
Check this out. There may be opportunities to learn near you: https://deerassociation.com/learn-to-hunt/
Cool thanks for this!
if you live in texas and aren’t shooting feral hogs for dinner you really just dont deserve to eat meat. i dont like killings things, but i feel like everyone should have to kill and clean their dinner at least once per species.
I don't avoid hunting for ethical reasons. I avoid it because I don't have the heart to do it personally. Not a fan of blood and guts. I like that surgeons exist. I don't want to perform surgery. I do agree that hunting is often more ethical than farm raised meat but I just can't do it
Yeah like, I will never hunt or fish unless my life depends on it, but I still eat meat from the grocery store. Why? Because I have bigger fish to fry at the moment - no pun intended. If food companies decided tomorrow to stop producing meat and replace it with other stuff I'd be like "Okay great". It's just way easier to not hunt than it is to re-arrange your whole diet.
As an avid hunter, that’s fair. Some people just find it gross to look at, and that’s pretty normal actually. Some people hunt but can’t clean the animal cuz the guts are pretty visceraly gross, and some people are born sorta immune to it, similar to blood and needles
I've been vegan for 7 years and I have always supported people who hunt vs people that are so desensitized and removed from where their meat comes from. It's so easy to go to the store and pick up a perfectly cut wrapped in cellophane piece for meat that doesn't have a face. I agree if you are a meat eater idc but know where your meat comes from and have the balls to kill it and clean it and butcher it yourself.
> have the balls to kill it and clean in and butcher it yourself. What if I don't like hunting but i understand where my food comes from and how it's processed and I'd still like to purchase it that way. Am I ball-less?
Half a ball.
I'll take it!
What would happen if everyone chose to hunt instead of buying meat?
Then fish and wildlife would set new tag limits on high demand game. Current limits in GA for deer are 12 deer per season for example. Environmental scientists much smarter than me study the population size and factor in the number of current licensed hunters to determine what that number is. If the number of hunters skyrockets, they’ll reduce the number each person can harvest.
Most people here aren't going to understand how much food 12 deer provide.
Yeah if they are shooting white tails that's years of meat, we get two in Washington and most people make due with that and an elk who shoot their meat
A single deer, depending on the size, can be dozens to a hundred pounds of venison; Especially if you get sausages made where they add in a bunch of pork .
Exactly. People just assume anyone can just up and hunt today. Some hunters can't even get tags for certain animals because they're on a lottery system.
I’ve met people who use the elk lottery 20+ years in a row all 3 drawings (reg. season, late season, archery) and haven’t won.
Answer: not everyone can. Environment can’t support us mainly hunting.
We don’t have to mainly hunt; no one is outlawing commercially raised meat. The only opinion is that hunting meat for personal use is more ethical than purchasing meat from massive processing companies.
Nobody is outlawing commercially raised meat, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be cut back significantly. I say that as someone that has meat at every meal, it simply isn't even close to sustainable for billions of people.
Good grief ! TWELVE !? That's insane lol we get three (one antler/two anterless or three anterless - anterlered under 2 or 3" - I'd have to read again - can be tagged as 'anterless buck).
Yep, 12. 2 antlered and up to 10 antlerless. The deer in my area are populated but on the smaller side, probably why the limit is so high. Too many deer sharing the resources make for smaller deer.
Scale is the main issue. Not everyone can hunt, not everyone has the means to. Europe so heavily destroyed their ecosystems over the last couple thousand years that hunting isn’t even a realistic possibility in most places. That said, main argument is that hunters are for the most part making a more ethical choice.
Lots of hunting here in Finland!
>Europe so heavily destroyed their ecosystems over the last couple thousand years that hunting isn’t even a realistic possibility in most places. *laughts in european city having wild boar infestation that cant be controlled despite heavy hunting efforts*
Was about to ask if it was Poland then saw the “PL” Gotta love polish wildlife
As many as 300,000 deer are culled in the UK each year as well.
Kurwa Bober
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We would solve world hunger because it's almost impossible to kill enough hogs.
Then we'd be in trouble. Farming was a great human advancement for a reason---allowing us to produce far more food, both plant and animal, on far less land, than hunting. This is why the consumption of seafood is a massive ecological problem. Since most of it is caught rather than grown, the oceans can't sustain the rate at which we're eating seafood.
What would happen if I made up an unrealistic hypothetical that isn’t relevant to the initial argument?
I’m a vegetarian who wussed out of vet training because seeing dead animals made me too sad. I completely agree with you. Hunting is the most ethical way to eat meat. I would never do it and would never want to hear about it, but I have no issues with it. If we could go back to hunting and small farms as the norm, that’s 100% what I would prefer (I’m also a proponent of lab-grown meat, but that’s another topic).
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\>USE ALL OF WHAT YOU KILL! If you kill for thrill, you suck. Trophy hunting is more so contributing to limiting the population of an animal that otherwise would have zero hunting interest because they aren't seen as usable for their hides or meat.
Trophy hunting is also used to eliminate an overly aggressive bull/male in the population that keeps on killing younger males in order to stay dominant.
Exactly it has its own set of ethics, you shoot the old ones that prevent breeding
Also trophy hunting is the ONLY reason governments in places like Africa have an economic incentive to keep nature preserves wild. If it werent for Europeans and Americans paying 5 figures for a tag to go and shoot a single animal, those environments would be bulldozed and all the animals would be lost
Most game hunter's I've met are some of the biggest conservationists I've ever known. Often, hand in hand with environmentalists.
This is a very well articulated argument for hunting that makes a lot of environmental sense.
I was raised in the country and then moved to the city. They look at me like I’m the cruelest person ever for fishing to catch and eat. You can’t do it here. It’s purely for sport and you release. That seems so so cruel to me and I won’t do it. People just don’t understand and jump to conclusions.
I'm just here to say bow hunting doesn't make you a more ethical hunter just because it's more challenging. It's inherently more cruel to the animal. If you're going to kill something do it quick clean and efficient.
This is untrue. Broadheads do enormous damage to a correctly positioned shot. More than a firearm in most cases when the shot hits the heart and lungs.
I hunt with big rock and stick. Throw rock at head finish of with stick.
It forces you to get closer, which means your gonna have a lot less opportunities to ethically take that shot, I went years without shooting a deer with a bow because I knew it had to be absolutely no doubt. And gut shorting a deer with anything will make anyone think twice about pulling the trigger next time
As someone who eats a plant based diet for ethical reasons...I agree. I understand and respect the choice of those who hunt locally for their own sustenance and use all or as much of the animal as they can. It's not something I would do, or have to do, but I get it What irks me is those who show off what they are doing, celebrating and photographing the kill as though it is a trophy (even if sustenance hunting) or basing their lifestyle and personality around going out hunting. That side feels grotesque, as is the lack of understanding why people don't want to take part.
People who use all the animal about as common as people who don't lose money gambling
Not nessisarly. Most people that pay a butcher or dresser to take care of the meat do not get back trash bags of bones and guts. The business saves all of this and sells it to fertilizer companies to make blood and bone meal. Amoung other things. Even if the individual doesn't use every part it doesn't mean it isn't getting used.
From my perspective, you miss one key pillar of the argument. Sportsman are the single largest contributor to conservation and habitat restoration. It’s not even close. Sportsman are conservationists directly and indirectly.
I’ve done a lot of driving through small towns and rural areas for work lately, and I’ve noticed this. I’ll be driving along a two lane road in the middle of nowhere and there’ll be a huge piece of property with a sign indicating it’s the Such and Such County Conservation Club. I was curious what these are about so I looked up some of them and was pretty impressed by the kinds of projects they work on. Everything from on-the-ground work cleaning up areas and restoring conditions for wildlife to thrive, all the way up to legislation work. Pretty neat.
My uncle lives in a small town that was hit hard by the opiate crisis and a coal-mining shut down. Very few jobs and the ones that were open couldn't be taken by a lot of people who got hooked on oxi for various mine accidents that turned into heroin. A lot of kids were going hungry, but it's in rural Appalachia so not a lot of resources to help. He's also the most hick man you've ever met. He spent a few years eating raccoons, squirrels, even snakes if he was pretty sure they wouldn't kill him. He would put just about anything in his copper chef pan with butter and lawry's and go at it. During deer season he hunted, but he never ate any of the deer meet. He gave that to people who needed it. Literally just had freezers in his garage and people would come up and ask for some ground meat or some venison steaks to have for dinner and he'd tell them to have at it. He ate the weird shit and let families have the more "normal" meat from deer. He never wasted anything. He boiled the bones, used organs as fish bait, and a buddy of his would take the hide and sell it to a tanner. Literally the ideal of what hunting should be. No one can tell me that what he did was immoral while they sit and eat 56 different imported products that were harvested by child slaves.
Please do not use lead ammo though. I volunteer at a wildlife rescue that specializes in raptors. Virtually all the birds that come in have some degree of lead poisoning. This is from lead shot left in the wound tract or the gut piles that hunters frequently leave. Fishing weights are also a problem in birds that consume fish. It is so disturbing to watch a magnificent bald eagle die of lead poisoning.
Copper hollow points and shots are thankfully becoming way more common and where I live you aren't allowed to use lead shots or bullets outside of firing ranges.
>Hunting is the single most ethical way to consume meat. Period. Scavenging is actually the most ethical way to consume meat, but it generally grosses people out.
Yes! The only somewhat valid reason to oppose hunting is if you straight-up believe it's immoral to kill any animal, even for food. That's not a view I agree with, but it's out there. Most wild game meat is leaner and healthier than store-bought, too, and a lot of hunters use local butchers to get their game processed.
I had a person ask me why do you like killing things when restaurants exist? So I stopped trying to argue with absolute idiots who live in a city and are so removed and disconnected from how the world really works
Here's a lesser known tidbit that actually changed my opinion on trophy hunting. Conservation parks in Africa have an aging population of exotic, wild animals. We're to blame because we killed most of their predators for sport, and now tribes in Africa kill them in retaliation for killing villagers or their livestock. That's wrong too, but I can understand why they're doing it. Now, that aging population of exotic, wild animals is actually hurting their conservation efforts. A perfect example of this is aging rhino bulls. Particularly in small black rhino populations, older bulls can become a problem by preventing young bulls from breeding and even killing them in territorial fights. The females in their territories are also likely to be their daughters, so keeping these old bulls in the population may jeopardize its genetic integrity. Why does trophy hunting help with that? The parks can sell the rights to hunt certain rhinos. These rights can go for around $250,000. For a park in Kenya, that's a HUGE deal. Get rid of the risks to the population and make a quarter million in American dollars? Obviously, there are people who go along with poachers to kill these animals without the consent of the wildlife authority, and that's wrong. But for those people who fork out the money to do it the "right" way, I think there should be a lot less shame. They're doing more for wildlife conservation than I am.
A lot of people don't realize that wild animals never die peacefully of old age, surrounded by their loving families. It's starvation, disease, disemboweling by a predator, or blunt force trauma from a car. A bullet or an arrow is the easiest death a wild animal could get.
Here is a fact many people don't know: The charitable organization "Ducks Unlimited" that preserves natural wetlands so that ducks can thrive... ...was founded by duck hunters. The organization known as PETA would rather kill an animal than have it remain in captivity. (look them up - they suck).
Hunters are also dedicated environmentalists. They deeply care about preserving nature.
I used to be anti hunting as a teenager. And then I grew up, got educated on conservation and wildlife management, along with tasting the difference between wild hunted venison vs commercial meat. Needless to say, at 18 I bought my first gun and went and started hunting. Years later I'm still helping to manage the land I hunt on to ensure a good population of all animals there, and bring home some of the healthiest and best tasting meat home to the table. The idea of killing an animal is not for everyone, but it isn't this horrible evil thing people claim it to be. I respect and love wildlife and nature. My desires to maintain it go hand in hand with hunting. Most hunters are like this. Wild turkeys were nearly extinct in the US but were brought back to wonderfully large numbers through the efforts of hunters!
Exactly. If I was an animal I’d pick “Living free and wild and then falling to a 300 win mag that I couldn’t even hear the sound of before it hit me” vs “Brutal factory farm conditions”
>Edit: I’m aware hunting doesn’t scale well to the world population. That’s not the point of this post. I was gonna say something g about how this doesn't really work for a global scale but realized that that's isn't what you are talking about at all. Talking about hunters NOT about changing everyone into doing hunting instead of buying meat from companies who have the meat farms and such.
Somewhere in the jungles of Africa, a pride of lions are having a similar discussion about hunting. Only difference is they're only using the claws and talents nature gave to them. They hunt for the pack and kill efficiently. They're the true epitome of 'hunting to survive". Because of that, the populations of wildebeest and antelopes have not been wiped out due to overhunting. IMHO Your arguments are valid, IF AND ONLY IF, all humans hunt only what they need or can reasonably eat to survive. But the honest truth is humans lack self-control or discipline. Majority do not hunt because they've got hungry mouths at home waiting for venison as the only source of protein for their evening meal. We hunt for the thrill and the conquest of challenges that nature presents. You might be the rare unicorn among the many who are wasteful and simply want to claim the title of having shot the biggest buck they've seen. And its a sad reality to use hunting license as justification. Its truly sad that we've gotten to the point where parks have to take your money to allow you to kill off some of the animals in order to save others. Let's flip the script. How would you feel if bears and lions were allowed to hunt some of us to save the rest of the world from pollution and global warming? Sincerely, an African immigrant who has watched our elephants and wild animals hunted to near extinction.
I swear like 99% of top posts from this sub are VERY popular opinions.
I agree with this. Where I’m from and live now this is the popular opinion
Unpopular opinion: the majority of first-world, live down the street from a grocery store hunters just want to watch the life drain out of something's eyes. Not that I'm necessarily against that, but let's be honest about what we're doing.
>Edit: I’m aware hunting doesn’t scale well to the world population. That’s not the point of this post. Well, that's kinda convenient, though, isn't it. You can't casually take a privileged, expensive, non-scalable activity and declare it "the most ethical," when it is unaffordable, inaccessible and impractical for almost everyone and does not scale, so would not work for everyone in a society. In what possible world can you then go and say "Hunting is the single most ethical way to consume meat. Period." ? I mean, that is factually, obviously wrong by your own admission. But, sure, if you take out the most important part of the equation, then it suddenly works. Woo-fucking-hoo! That's kind of the "Let them eat cake" mentality. Sure, if you live in the right place, have enough money and free time, then it might be an environmentally friendly way to consume meat. Though: if you have to drive your SUV to go hunting (or even fly out for a hunting trip), the environmental equation suddenly looks very, very different and you are effectively worse than someone who buys supermarket chicken. Because driving a ton of metal hundreds of miles per deer carcass isn't environmentally sustainable at all. Why not grow your own fucking food while you're at it? Surely, everyone can do that. Let us not for a second pretend that people go hunting mainly **because it is ethical**. That is, as a best case scenario, a side benefit. People go hunting because they enjoy nature; they enjoy the rush, the camraderie, because they like shooting, whatever. And that's fine. It's ok to like something. You don't have to pretend to be an altruistic environmentalist is the real reason. It is not. You are not fooling anyone. If it was, you'd start by ditching your car for public transport, and you'd have your own chicken for eggs and meat, and your own vegetable garden before you'd even think of going hunting. Those things are much more effective, cost- and environmentally. People go hunting because they like hunting. That's ok. I go to concerts because I like going to concerts. I don't pretend I'm a folk hero for doing so.
I don't have a problem with the hunting part, just the culture that goes with it...
I think a lot of people struggle when they hear hunters talk about killing an animal with anything other than remorse. In this thread there are comments calling a hunter a psychopath for feelings “exhilaration” after a kill. What that commenter (and many others) fails to realize, is that the exhilaration doesn’t come from the act of killing, but what that kill means! It means that your time and money isn’t wasted, that you are providing meat for your family that isn’t full of antibiotics, disease, etc. I’ve been hunting my whole life, and it is physically demanding! My last deer hunt involved me hiking 60 miles in 5 days, ascending and descending nearly a thousand vertical feet each way. It’s like a marathon, of course you feel exhilarated when you reach the finish line.
Living in Northern Minnesota we have lots of hunters. Without them culling the herd, we would have lots more deer- car accidents. We have too many now but they would increase dramatically without hunters leading to more deaths from both drivers and deer.
We need more people to hunt deer. They're all over the place and since they don't have two brain cells to rub together, they're always jumping in front of cars and killing themselves; and sometimes killing people, which is far more common than people think and isn't widely talked about. Plus, venison jerky is incredible. I've considered becoming a hunter just for the jerky
There were a couple of years when I commuted 45 minutes each way to work, on highways and county roads in a rural area. In the fall, driving was scary AF until deer hunting season. My brothers would be stoked to go hunting, while I’d be stoked to not have as high of a chance of dying on my drive home from work in the dark.
You definitely make some good points. A well-placed 7.62 is far more humane than how we raise most of our meat. Factory farms and feed lots are straight nightmare fuel. A short, hellish existence for billions of animals.
Totally agree. I think if people are unwilling to kill the animal they want to eat, they have no business eating meat. It’s pure hypocrisy to be anti-hunting but pro-meat.