2021 questions (37/365)

[nanila]

February 6

What do you think about hunting?

The answer to this question is going to be highly dependent on geographical location, culture, and socioeconomic positioning. As an affluent person who dwells about a mile from the nearest well-stocked supermarket, I don’t need to do it. I don't have livestock to protect and I wasn't raised in a culture that prized hunting skill or ascribed any religious, spiritual, or symbolic meaning to it. If you’re perfectly capable of surviving and obtaining food without hunting, I can’t see the point of setting out on a walk with the sole purpose of killing an animal simply because you can. I definitely don’t understand trophy-hunting. It’s cruel and wasteful.

Comments

[lilysea]

I abhor trophy hunting and think it should be banned in every country worldwide;

I support traditional hunting by Indigenous people as long as it is done sustainably eg not taking more animals each year than are replaced by breeding;

I support hunting deer/kangaroo for food by low-income people as long as it is done as humanely and sustainably as is possible and using lead-free bullets.

[azurelunatic]

In areas where the main limit on the deer population is human activity, I support anyone who needs meat hunting deer.

[liseuse]

My local butcher sells venison sourced entirely from local herds which need their populations controlled, and I happily buy as much of it as I can stand/afford because it's such an important part of local land management.

[bryangb]

In areas where the main limit on deer is humans, people really need to stop smashing holes in the local ecosystem - and especially stop vilifying and persecuting other predators.

[shirou]

I definitely don’t understand trophy-hunting. It’s cruel and wasteful.

It sounds to me like you understand trophy hunting perfectly.

[liseuse]

Hunting is such an odd thing for me because I spent so much of my life in areas which had local hunts. And I have never ever been comfortable with the fanfare and display of it, but it's a tricky situation because I cannot accept the idea of poison as a better method of control for fox populations - sheep farming where I grew up was always a subsistence affair and foxes wreak havoc on sheep herds so they need to be controlled somehow.

When the fox hunting ban came in I was living in a much more urbanised area and I just carefully didn't get involved in the conversations because I felt like I was coming across as a hunting apologist and actually my entire point was "I too disagree with the red jackets and the glorification of it, but I don't see poison as a better answer *shrug*". Where my dad lives, in rural France, the local chasse is a bunch of middle-aged men in high-vis with rifles, and they send out leaflets saying when and where they'll be active so people aren't scared by the gunshots. They tried not doing it for a couple of years and road traffic accidents because of deer and wild boar went up by about 200% and insurance claims for ruined herds and crops also went up. It's a really tricky conundrum.

[silveradept]

Where I was raised, hunting had a certain amount of "becoming a man" ritual associated with it (that was not my family, but societally), but it was at least wrapped in some veneer of population management, because the state itself only issued a limited number of permits to hunt does so as not to destroy the population. (Bucks were allowed in unlimited or nigh-unlimited quantities.)

Hunting for sport doesn't make sense to me, so I always sort of hope that the people who go out to hunt have a plan of what to do if they succeed, whether it is to feed themselves or others in need.