But that doesn't bother you, because you have paid people to do the dirty work of carnivorism for you. You seem to think that makes you better than those that do it for themselves.

? I've said if you're killing the animal to eat it, I'm fine with that.

If you think a cattle farmer killing wolves indiscriminately and a deer hunter are the same thing then nothing anybody can say will reach you.

They're both hunters, aren't they? They might be hunting for different reasons but they're still hunting.

And hunters can be unbelievably irresponsible. The passenger pigeon was driven extinct by gratuitous and excess hunting. They use lead shot which contaminates aquifers and poisons wildlife. The California condor was nearly driven extinct by a combination of powerline accidents, killing by hunters and poisoning by lead shot left in the environment by hunters. Powerlines serve a useful purpose. Shooting and poisoning condors does not.

The idea that hunters are environmental philanthropists is a spurious one. Most only care about the environment to the extent it supports the game animals they like to hunt. Have hunters offered their voice to global warming mitigation? Not that I can see. And the funds raised by hunters for wildlife management all too often is used to support the overpopulation of game species so hunters will have more animals to kill. Wildlife manager Dr. Gary Alt had to start wearing a bulletproof vest to work because he received so many death threats after recommending the PA deer population be culled by 2/3's.

There is a marked difference between the market hunting of a century ago that killed the passenger pigeon off and modern, legal, regulated game hunting. The former was deeply destructive, the latter has never led to any extinction and , as has been cited, is a tool (A tool, not THE tool) in wildlife population management.

And if you think hunters are not environmentalists, then you don't know any.

In all honesty, I don't think individuals hunt because of overpopulation, but hunting as an institution owes part of its existence to such. I think if hunting weren't doing some good then I couldn't justify it to myself, and I think there's enough people like me who hunt that anti-hunting movements would be much more successful if we weren't around. The huge organizations that manage wildlife exist almost entirely to manage populations, so there's that as well.

I really wasn't trying to change your mind, I was simply trying to distill if your opposition was really intellectually or morally based. Some of your comments led me to believe you were taking an intellectual stand, I now see you aren't, and concede that you're morality is different than mine. In no way does it offend me that other people have different moral values.

Have hunters offered their voice to global warming mitigation?

I think this is where Ray starts backing away from that ultraleft positioning of his ...

And if you think hunters are not environmentalists, then you don't know any.

They're environmentalists out of self-interest only. Once the environmental question migrates away from that interest, they don't care. That's not really environmentalism in the true sense. It runs more along the lines of favorite game species cultivation and management.

Repeat: you don't know any.

TD, riddle me this. Why was Alt's life threatened?

Don't know, never heard of him.

They're both hunters, aren't they? They might be hunting for different reasons but they're still hunting.

And hunters can be unbelievably irresponsible. The passenger pigeon was driven extinct by gratuitous and excess hunting. They use lead shot which contaminates aquifers and poisons wildlife. The California condor was nearly driven extinct by a combination of powerline accidents, killing by hunters and poisoning by lead shot left in the environment by hunters. Powerlines serve a useful purpose. Shooting and poisoning condors does not.

The idea that hunters are environmental philanthropists is a spurious one. Most only care about the environment to the extent it supports the game animals they like to hunt. Have hunters offered their voice to global warming mitigation? Not that I can see. And the funds raised by hunters for wildlife management all too often is used to support the overpopulation of game species so hunters will have more animals to kill. Wildlife manager Dr. Gary Alt had to start wearing a bulletproof vest to work because he received so many death threats after recommending the PA deer population be culled by 2/3's.

No, farmers don't have licenses and they're unregulated. They kill entirely for profit.

Lead shot's been illegal for a good while now, and as has been noted regulated hunting is a far cry from what your accusing the current generation of. Your arguing against a "hunting" culture that is effectively extinct except in cases were people behave illegally, are generally caught, and punished swiftly by the law.

I've never understood the go all in or go home concept with regards to things like the environment. I have to care about everything to care about anything? That's spurious.

As to the over-underpopulation allegation, you get a very incomplete picture simply by looking at population numbers. Unmanaged deer are less healthy and live shorter more stressful lives than deer in managed areas, the fact that managed areas can carry more healthy deer than unmanaged ones is a point for hunters, not against us.

TD, riddle me this. Why was Alt's life threatened?

I'll jump in. Because some people are crazy? Before you go too far down that rabbit hole, you should probably consider that a not insignificant number of those threats were probably from Greenpeace type extremists who would react violently to the killing of any animal.

So who among our contributors eschews a leather belt because of the cruelty it imposes on poor defenseless animals? PETA was just as likely to threaten Alt as was a hunter. Crazies know no particular political allegiance.

Sure, some hunters are irresponsible and do bad and/or stupid things. After all they are just people. If hunters were really just bloodthirsty thugs they would be using assault rifles to bag as many as they can. The vast majority, as with any other human endeavour, obey the law, and either get their limit or none at all because it's too damn hard.

Appealing to what hunters did before modern conservation measures were understood, appreciated and adopted is really pointless. Animals have been hunted to extinction throughout history; it is just in this era that we have got it right and you are still piling on.

I've said if you're killing the animal to eat it, I'm fine with that.

Why does that matter? I've never understood this. Maybe it was a rationale in the past, when eating animal meat was necessary for a healthy diet. Or in some cases, to avoid starving. But it doesn't anymore, at least not for the people posting here. It is clearly possible to survive - hell, it's probably healthier - on a vegetarian diet. So the only reason to eat meat is because you enjoy it more than soy protein or whateverthehellelse vegetarians eat. I dont see why the pleasure sought and experienced by Steak-Eater is more legitimate than the pleasure of Deer-Killer, except insofar as there are some hypocritical social mores that date from a time when people has to kill to survive.

Hitler was a vegetarian.

Thread over?

And no one is saying you have to KILL your own meat to have the right to eat it.

Well said. I've always been more of a carrion man myself.

Q: So, what did the one vulture say to the other?

A: "F*ck this sh*t. Let's kill something."

LOL

I have to admit, I'm the type that roots for the bull in a bullfight or that whispered to myself "Dumbass" when the tiger nearly killed Roy. I don't believe in gratuitously abusing animals.

As an established hunter/fisherman in this thread, I can support this. I'm very much in this camp. I own no pets, in part because they are still animals and I don't want them in my home. (This is also because I would be a lousy pet owner). You play with animals and if they attack you, that's part of the deal. Just as I prepare for my travels while hunting being prepared for these types of encounters is part of the deal. I fully recognize that if I ever hunt again in the Big Horns I may be stalked by a mountain lion. I'm in the food chain too, and that's their dominion.

I'm also the guy who lectures people when I'm in certain national parks and they are the idiots who simply have to get a picture of that bison from five feet away, instead of staying in their car when the beast is walking on its land. The amount of stupid behavior by city slickers (of which I am one) is overwhelming in these places. In speaking to my elders who have spent far more hours in these places than I, things have improved, but I've seen three bison gore people (two leading to obvious injury) in about 50 lifetime visits to Yellowstone.

I wonder what sort of Gaimenesque result would occur if every housecat on the planet growing to lion size overnight.

There would an awful lot of people unable to load their guns fast enough before they were breakfast.

I would pay at least 5$ to see a bison gore a tourist.

10$ if that tourist was ray.

10$ if that tourist was ray.

I think this should be "were" Ray.

Before you go too far down that rabbit hole, you should probably consider that a not insignificant number of those threats were probably from Greenpeace type extremists who would react violently to the killing of any animal.

Why would I consider that? It's both unsubstantiated and implausible.

One more question for the hunters in the thread (and I'm definitely in the factory farming is 100 times worse than hunting camp): how much less enjoyment would you get out of just going backpacking?

Edit: are other people having a problem with the site wanting to submit your post again if you refresh the thread after posting? I don't remember it happening before a couple days ago.

If by backpacking you include bedtime, you may have meant ultimately camping, then I would have negative enjoyment. I hate camping. Once it is time for bed, I'd rather sleep in my Outback.

I do enjoy those other activities (hiking, canoeing, etc.) but rather have accommodations even if sparse. Where I've duck hunted for years, we had a 'shack' basically a few bunks, a wood stove, an outhouse and it did have electricity. That's plenty, and it sure beats a tent and sleeping bag. Hunting is seasonal anyways, we're talking a 10 day gun season for deer in WI, I might do 6 days tops for an entire year now with two little girls at home. Bow hunting is a lot longer season, and birds offer more dates, but the most days I've hunted in one year is 12-14 days. I'm definitely a lightweight hunter compared to some of my colleagues. I've played more golf in a month, easily.

Hunting vs. backpacking:

A most interesting question. I'll probably have a clearer & better nuanced answer tomorrow after thinking it over, but off the cuff, here goes:

Though they are both outdoor activities, they are (to me) different. Points in random, stream of thought order:

-Hunting for me is mainly solitary. Not completely so, but mainly. I love dawn & dusk hunts (and in CA, that's most of it) to see, hear, smell & feel the woods waking up and going to sleep.

-Hunting also feeds a very primal love of wild food. I just love the taste of game. Just as grass fed beef is better than feed lot variety, wild game is better tatsing than store-bought, but by orders of magnitude. I also really enjoy the self made aspect of it, ie that I took it from binoculars to the table all myself. As a Certified Bay Area Food Snob, This is about the pinnacle of food pleasure

Camping & backpacking, though, are more about fellowship to me:

-My #1 favorite part of camping is taking my girls into the woods & showing them new things. Teaching them camp skills, new constellations, etc is a great thing.

-Camping with friends is a great experience too. We hike in the day, sip bourbon by the fire at night, lots of fun.

Hunting is solitary and cerebral, camping/backpacking is communal & social. Both are great fun. An interesting and thought-provoking question.

One more question for the hunters in the thread (and I'm definitely in the factory farming is 100 times worse than hunting camp): how much less enjoyment would you get out of just going backpacking?

I don't hunt land animals, but I do hunt crustaceans. I free dive for lobster. Snorkeling is great, but snorkeling with a purpose (hunting lobster), is much better.

I don't believe in gratuitously abusing animals. Deriving joy and satisfaction from killing a wild animal is anathema to my code of ethics.

This is my natural impulse regarding hunting. I don't think I would eat meat (in a modern society) if I had to kill it myself; I had a very difficult time dealing with the idea that I had killed a mouse in my home with a trap.

I don't have any issue with people hunting for food, defense, or population control. I'd happily eat freshly-killed game at someone's table.

I just can't shake the feeling that there's something ugly about killing anything for sport, even something as lowly as a fly. I have a couple of friends that hunt on occasion. I don't think they're evil but it does make me uncomfortable. If you hunt for sport, I don't think less of you as a person, but I feel disconnected from you, a person who experiences pleasure at something that would fill me with sadness and guilt.

Then again, I also feel guilty about eating meat, but not so guilty that I'm not eating it right now. Part of me wishes that I were enough of a better person not to eat meat, especially since I know quite well the suffering that many of these animals go through before ending up on my plate. But it really is incredibly delicious.

Appealing to what hunters did before modern conservation measures were understood, appreciated and adopted is really pointless. Animals have been hunted to extinction throughout history; it is just in this era that we have got it right and you are still piling on.

It was well understood then that what hunters were doing was irresponsible, but they just went ahead and did it anyway, well...because. And if you mean by "getting it right", penalizing the crap out of hunters that act irresponsibly, then you might be right. But that just supports my point. Hunters aren't acting responsibly because it's the right thing to do, they are doing it because if they don't, they'll go to jail or pay a draconian fine.

And have we really "gotten it right" yet? The rhino is being hunted to extinction for its horn. The great white shark is being hunted to extinction for its fin or because its a cool thing to do to kill a great white. The tiger is on the verge of extinction, and poaching is a large part of that.

-Hunting for me is mainly solitary. Not completely so, but mainly. I love dawn & dusk hunts (and in CA, that's most of it) to see, hear, smell & feel the woods waking up and going to sleep.

I love being in the woods/jungle/desert by myself. I hunt with my camera instead of a gun, is all.

I love the woods too. And the intertidal pools. And the mountains. And the rivers and ponds. There are so many things to see and smell and hear and wonder about.

Getting back to TraderDave's accusation that I don't know any hunters. I used to have a large property in the upper south that was rural in character and had a significant stream running through it. My property back up, through a wooded floodplain, to a gun club. Many of my neighbors were hunters, and they hunted locally. They thought it was their right to hunt on my property. I was working in the yard one weekend in the fall and all of a sudden I heard a rustle and this huge buck came running right up into my backyard from the stream and took off towards the rear of my property. Following shortly were a pack of hunting beagles. One of the beagles was exhausted and just sat next to my outdoor shed and watched me mow the lawn. I went over to check him out and his legs were all torn up from running through the underbrush. I called the number that was on his collar and asked to owner to come over and pick him up. After an hr or so, I called again. Finally, a pickup truck with a dog cage in the flatbed pulled in and a guy who could only be described as a "Bubba" got out and gathered the dog up and put him in the truck. I tried talking to him but he was clearly pissed that I interrupted his hunt to have to come and get the dog.

After thinking about it awhile though, I began to think "What nerve. Who does this guy think he is to assume he has the right to run his dogs through my property and kill my deer?" I suppose it is customary for landowners in that area to allow such a thing but still, if a homeowner like me objects, then that objection should be respected. He should have apologized to me and asked permission before running his dogs on my land that way.

The tiger is on the verge of extinction, and poaching is a large part of that

Well, but nobody's poaching tigers in New Jersey. It's a very broad brush to see controlled deer-hunting and rampant tiger-poaching as the same thing, or even the same impulse. It's like saying you can't stand watching bat-and-ball sports anymore since the Marlins held their last fire sale :)

And the intertidal pools

I am a tide pool freak and have been since I was 9 and my fourth grade class went to some tidal pools on a field trip. There's a great biography of Ed Ricketts (Doc Ricketts in Steinbeck's novels) that I'd recommend for anyone who loves tidal pools. Ricketts is the patron saint of tidal pool science and a really interesting guy outside of his portrayal by Steinbeck. One of my most treasured books is a book on tidal pools that Ricketts wrote that I managed to find on ebay, the edition with a forward by Steinbeck.

Re: 181. No, but bear poaching is a big problem on national park land.

Thanks, Shooty. I'll check it out.

When I was a child, I used to vacation by the ocean and there was an acre sized granite island just offshore that could be reached by walking along a jetty. It was a popular place for scuba divers to go looking for lobsters. But what I really dug were the numerous small tidal pools sunk into the rock surface. Each one seemed to have its own microecology. Most of the larger ones had minnows swimming around in them. The ones that were fed daily with fresh seawater splashed in from the waves had a red algae that coated the pool below the waterline. The ones that were fed mostly with rainwater had a green seaweed that attached itself to the rock and the minnows and crustaceans would feed on that. Every now and then, a lobster or large crab would get trapped in one of them and have to wait for high tide to come back to get back into the ocean. There were seagulls and cormorants everywhere. It was cool place for an amateur naturalist to scout around, which nearly every young boy seems to be.

Getting back to Ricketts, the Monterrey aquarium is the greatest aquarium in this or any other country. There is no argument about this.

Mind you, I'm entirely with Shooty and Publius on the outdoor experience, I don't like camping, but anywhere I can hike within a day's walk of a roof and a bed is for me. My last such trip was to the Muleshoe NWR in the Texas Panhandle, last month, to see the migratory sandhill cranes that roost there by the thousands. An awesome and wholly unexpected ecosystem out on the prairie amid thousands of acres of cottonfields. Cranes were hunted on commercial scales in the 19th century for their feathers, but they survived in great numbers into the late 20th thanks to conservation efforts. Now the much greater threat is loss of wetland habitat, a far more insidious threat than the rare (and quite illegal) poacher.

which nearly every young boy seems to be.

I sure was. In my early boyhood, in Hayward, California, my world was Garin Park (a small regional park on top of a hill where I could catch lizards, garter snakes and salamanders) and a drainage ditch that ran along the railroad and BART track behind our house where there were crawdads and a lot of frogs. Those places seemed immense at the time but now they seem tiny and, with respect to the ditch, kind of gross. Moving to Salinas and having access the that stretch of coastline near Monterey plus places like The Pinnacles was a revelation.

last month, to see the migratory sandhill cranes that roost there by the thousands.

I'm jealous. I really want to get to the Plains states to see some of the migrations but I'm handcuffed by limited vacation time. I was able to see the cranes doing their mating dance the last time I went home to California. There are spots in the Central Valley where they congregate in good numbers in the winter. In a couple of weeks I'm finally getting to the Salton Sea to check out some of the wildlife there and hopefully get some decent pictures.

You guys really need to read this hilarious account of a local (to me) hunter that tried to rope a whitetail with a lasso:

Deer roping

Getting back to Ricketts, the Monterrey aquarium is the greatest aquarium in this or any other country. There is no argument about this.

Word. There are many great aquiaria (aquiriums?), but that was the best I have ever been to. Just awesome.

As to the hypocrisy charge, what does me thinking it's silly that people boast about shooting a defenseless animal with a gun after needing half a dozen gizmos and gadgets to track the thing down before you kill it have to do with hypocrisy?

Gizmos and gadgets - people have used rifles for centuries, compasses for millenia, bows and arrows for many millenia. Does that mean that only using one's own claws and teeth for the kill is worthy? Another post expressed the opinion that taking satisfaction from killing an animal was anathema. Where does one draw the line? I take satisfaction in a well-seasoned woodpile that allows me to heat the house without adding more fossil-fuel CO2 to the atmosphere, but I killed trees to make it happen. I love carrots from my garden, especially uncooked, which means I'm eating them while they're still living. I enjoy wild game above all other meats, and above most other foods, and thus take satisfaction whenever I take a deer. Hunters who are into "chest thumping" over their kills are being silly, but non-hunters who consider themselves morally superior to anyone who hunts can be unsufferable as well. One of my favorite books ("The Year-Long Day'", a Svalbard adventure) includes the comment, "Life eats, and killing is part of the meal."

The whitetail deer has a greater potential for adversely affecting ecosystems than any other North American animal, though those 19-century bison herds might've come close. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry manages 2 million acres of state land there, and they nearly failed to earn certification for sustainable forest management simply because excessive deer in that state were changing the forest ecosystem by their preferential browsing of certain tree species. Humans have been hunting deer in this country since the glaciers retreated, and the best (though still unavoidably sketchy) records suggest that native Americans at the time of contact with European invaders took about the same number of whitetails as sport hunters kill today. Something is going to kill deer, whether it be firearms, fenders, or food shortages, and when it's the latter two, damage (to property, to ecosystems) is often part of the process.

Deer population control methods other than sport hunting have been proposed - birth control in food piles (but hugely expensive, and lots of animals other than the target species eat what's available), moving deer to areas having few (even more expensive, with significant capture/transport mortality, and where are the places with few deer?), and professional sharpshooters (costly, but sometimes justified, as on Maine's Monhegan Island with 200 critters on 800 acres and a huge population fo deer ticks.) I'm certainly biased, but IMO, sport hunting is the preferable option in dealing with the whitetail. Other folks obviously think otherwise, which is fine, but either side trying to claim some ethical superiority over the other (and only a few posts in this thread have gone there) seems of little merit.

I just can't shake the feeling that there's something ugly about killing anything for sport,

Concur. And for all of the justifications offered up here, at its core this is exactly what is going on.

Paying others to slaughter miserable factory farmed animals while you turn your noses up at people who take wild game themselves is even uglier.

Just to throw in a factoid that may or may not have been mentioned by now: According to the International Hunter Education Association, a bit over 1,000 North American hunters are accidentally shot each year, with slightly under 100 fatalities.

Just to throw in a factoid that may or may not have been mentioned by now: According to the International Hunter Education Association, a bit over 1,000 North American hunters are accidentally shot each year, with slightly under 100 fatalities.

Man: The Most Dangerous Game!

Just to throw in a factoid that may or may not have been mentioned by now: According to the International Hunter Education Association, a bit over 1,000 North American hunters are accidentally shot each year, with slightly under 100 fatalities.

How many were butchered & eaten?

Paying others to slaughter miserable factory farmed animals while you turn your noses up at people who take wild game themselves is even uglier.

I pay no one to slaughter anything.

And one bad behavior doesn't justify another.

Again, I'm not looking to do anything to you -- not take away your guns, not restrict the type of guns you use, not stop you from hunting and killing. What have I done? Expressed displeasure with what you're doing. Big whoop, learn to deal.

Getting back to TraderDave's accusation that I don't know any hunters. I used to have a large property in the upper south that was rural in character and had a significant stream running through it. My property back up, through a wooded floodplain, to a gun club. Many of my neighbors were hunters, and they hunted locally. They thought it was their right to hunt on my property. I was working in the yard one weekend in the fall and all of a sudden I heard a rustle and this huge buck came running right up into my backyard from the stream and took off towards the rear of my property. Following shortly were a pack of hunting beagles. One of the beagles was exhausted and just sat next to my outdoor shed and watched me mow the lawn. I went over to check him out and his legs were all torn up from running through the underbrush. I called the number that was on his collar and asked to owner to come over and pick him up. After an hr or so, I called again. Finally, a pickup truck with a dog cage in the flatbed pulled in and a guy who could only be described as a "Bubba" got out and gathered the dog up and put him in the truck. I tried talking to him but he was clearly pissed that I interrupted his hunt to have to come and get the dog.

After thinking about it awhile though, I began to think "What nerve. Who does this guy think he is to assume he has the right to run his dogs through my property and kill my deer?" I suppose it is customary for landowners in that area to allow such a thing but still, if a homeowner like me objects, then that objection should be respected. He should have apologized to me and asked permission before running his dogs on my land that way.

Ah, the ever-popular sample size of "ONE" hunter, whom you clearly don't know. Trespassing on your land is clearly out of line, but that is aberrant behavior that happens among a tiny minority of hunters. Knowing far more hunters than you, I feel qualified to make that statement, btw.

But the "Bubba" line was telling, and not in a good way.

I pay no one to slaughter anything

Of course. The meat you eat grows on trees.

197

Forgot to add that hunting deer with dogs is also an extreme minority practice.

Just to throw in a factoid that may or may not have been mentioned by now: According to the International Hunter Education Association, a bit over 1,000 North American hunters are accidentally shot each year, with slightly under 100 fatalities.

Some equally relevant (or equally irrelevant) factoids:
Over the past 20 years, Maine has averaged slightly under one hunting fatality per year among about 180,000 licensed hunters, and about 2 moose-collision human fatalities per year. Also 5-6 snowmobile fatals and probably twice that in boating-related drownings.

Deer aren't moose (though zoologically, moose are deer), but I once read that human fatalitiies average about 1 per 5,000 deer/vehicle collisions. Last I heard, Pennsylvania averaged somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 such collisions annually, and nationwide it must be well into the hundreds of thousands.