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Six Points in Defense of Hunting
My fourteen-year-old daughter got her buck last week, and a friend shot hers this evening. My husband posts photos on Facebook, and I admit I worry about backlash, since the practice of hunting is getting unpopular with the public. However, hunting is the culture where we live, and there’s even an official certificate for the first deer taken. Once I saw that there’s a group for sharing such photos, I felt better.
Although I’m no hunter myself, I’ve thought it through and do not believe hunting deserves moral outrage. I’m talking specifically about hunting deer and other animals for food, as well as killing pests. (Although the latest stir was over exotic animal hunting, some animal lovers hate all forms of it.) Here are six points in defense of hunting:
1.) Hunting is do-it-yourself meat. If you eat meat, you cannot be opposed to fair chase, quick-kill hunting. You may dislike the idea that the hunter perceives the challenge as a sport, but that doesn’t make the resulting meat less moral than packaged meat from farms. This is fresh, local, minimally processed food. Now, if you don’t eat meat, your position is consistent — I recognize that — but I disagree with the premise that eating meat is wrong.
2.) Hunting is a whole set of serious skills. The work has just begun once the hunter has located the deer and achieved a clean shot. Now begins the process of making sure the good meat is harvested. This is a long chore of gutting, skinning, butchering, packaging, and freezing. It takes hours and hours, at least for teenage girls. I should know; there’s a second deer of the season being processed in my basement right now. And the girls are fine taking care of this independently, and seem very knowledgeable explaining details to me. This is because the state recognizes responsible hunting as a skill and has done a decent job with its thorough hunters’ ed (with instruction in gun handling) before releasing young people to hunt. In a food crisis, I want to be next to people who can bag animals and prepare them for eating. Don’t you? I wouldn’t know the first thing about where to cut, what organs to remove, or how to skin the animal.
3.) Hunting for food is a long-standing tradition. I don’t think we should be too good for what sustained our ancestors for thousands of years. Yes, we are surrounded by plenty now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get some of our food in a way that is less conventional by modern standards. Taking issue with hunting then, seems an insular and pampered position, even for vegans.
4.) Hunting dispatches the animal quickly, as opposed to less swift ways to die in the wild. The forest isn’t paradise: animals are killed by predators or struggle for food. Hunters are taught where to shoot to ensure that death is quick.
5.) Hunting can be necessary for controlling an animal population. Deer are beautiful, but also prolific and pesky. Hunting season helps with that.
6.) Hunting has other benefits. It is one way to get sedentary kids outdoors with vigorous, prolonged activity. Often, kids, dads, and grandpas spend time together outside sharing the experience. And, a common culture of hunting can generate connections and camaraderie amongst acquaintances.
My family has made endless trays of jerky with my daughter’s buck. We have lots of white packages in the freezer. And while I don’t oppose the practice and culture that brought us this, I hope a good portion of it is cooked and eaten while I’m out of town this month.
Published in General
I’m on my way to Colorado for elk hunting. So this is good to read. Hunting and fishing are fun. I wish my nephews and nieces would go out with me. Of course, I can’t get any of them to golf with me either.
I’m not a hunter; my background is CCW and practical shooting, but the more I hunt, the more I realize there is a “do or die” element to hunting that can’t be replicated in the shooting sports.
If I run through a stage and miss a target, I’m points down and in jeopardy of losing the match. It’ll hurt my score, but it can be made up if I’m good. In hunting, there is no second chance, and that’s why I encourage everyone who shoots practical pistol or 3 Gun to hunting, because it puts the everything on the line for just one shot, rather than the 100+ shots I’ll shot at a match.
I had two rifles that I hunted with. For the Oregon Coast Range I used a Winchester 30/30 lever action rifle with iron sights. The Coast Range is heavy timber and dense undergrowth. A scoped rifle is virtually useless because if you move the rifle you’ll have a rough time relocating what you were looking at through the scope.
For Eastern Oregon I used a Mauser action 30/06 with a scope. The country is more wide open and a scoped rifle works just fine. I loved the Mauser action because it was a pre-WW I action that had originally been machined on a lathe rather than stamped steel. It had been retooled for the .06 round and was mounted on a nice stock.
I didn’t know deer were so troublesome. Having grown up in the suburbs of So. Cal (I know, boo..hiss), and not being from a family that hunts, I have seen deer in the wild only once, at Yellowstone in 2012. I’ve never eaten deer meat either.
Not your fault that you were raised there, I raised my girls there until they were 8 and 12, then we moved to the mountains in No. CA. The girls went hunting with their step-dad every year. He taught them gun safety, and how to shoot. Eating deer meat is something you get used to. Also, it has to be handled correctly when it is dressed or it will get a strong gamey smell and taste, and you won’t like it.
what kind of meat does it taste most like? or is it unique?
Venison tastes a bit like beef. There can be a gamy taste if you don’t bleed and dress the animal immediately, age the meat at least five days (seven to ten is better) before freezing, and remove all fat and tendons from the meat. Venison doesn’t have much fat, which is good because unlike beef fat, it tastes vile.
My anecdotal experience is that hunting instills a respect for life.
I am not a hunter (I too spent most of my life in the suburbs of southern California). But, about 15 years ago moved to western New York state, where there are lots of hunters.
I found that rather than the stereotype of a hunter being someone who was happy to kill for the sake of killing, I found that hunters have a better understanding of what “taking a life” means than I do. The kids who have been hunting with their families have universally learned through hunting how serious it is, and so they appreciate how valuable life is.
I don’t eat meat, and I do think eating meat is wrong. So my position is as consistent as it can be in a world such that perfect consistency would lead to the perfectly immoral position of Jainism, or suicide.
This is not particularly consistent. I feed meat to my seven cats, who are obligate carnivores and would otherwise die, and in that sense my household is probably a bigger net consumer of meat than one with no cats but one enthusiastic human carnivore. I am very grateful for the medical research performed on animals that is apt to keep my father alive and well for many more years.
I’m under no illusion that a vegetarian diet causes no suffering to animals. I know what happens to a bunny in a wheat thresher. I’m also full aware that the most dangerous animal in north America is the deer, and that their herds must be culled for our safety.
I would prefer they be hunted by those who responsibly maintain their habitats, and who appreciate the connection between their lives and what they eat, than they be raised in conditions of cruelty and suffering in factories and sold under saran-wrap as a product just like any other in the supermarket.
But I do not accept that an animal’s life has no value. One need not accept that it’s life has a value equivalent to a human’s to see that it has value beyond that of a rock, a coke-bottle, or a floating cork. I’ve observed that animals feel pain, fear, love, and a strong desire to live. I want no part in hurting or killing them, beyond the minimum necessary to keep my own species safe and fed; I would prefer that any killing necessary to keep us alive happen to animals whose nervous systems are as undeveloped and primitive as possible, and particularly, to those animals who are incapable of forming trusting and affectionate bonds with us: The betrayal involved seems all the greater when we know that under other circumstances, that animal might love us.
I accept that animals kill other animals, and don’t feel it our moral obligation to intervene. I fully accept that animals do not have a natural right to life in the sense that humans do. But I believe they have the right to our mercy: I despise insensate cruelty to any creature capable of suffering; and will accept much inconvenience and sacrifice to minimize it.
The argument for hunting, in my mind, is that it is a less cruel way to control a dangerous animal population — one that must be controlled — than any other I can imagine; and if eating the meat afterward gives people pleasure, I am all for pleasure. I am also against waste.
Killing an animal for no reason beyond the fun of it, however, does strike me as an act worthy of moral outrage. Where it is in our power to do no harm, we should do no harm.
I much prefer that people do the killing themselves — acquiring, as you say, a useful and potentially life-saving set of skills — than that they unthinkingly eat something that comes in a wrapped, anodyne package at the supermarket, giving no thought to the life of the once-living creature — separated too early from its mother, raised in a cage or crate; never allowed to see natural sunlight or smell fresh air, often injured from captivity in close quarters; restricted from normal exercise, foraging, or play; unable to nest or give birth naturally; and often rendered half-mad from social stress owed to overcrowding — then too-often scooped off the plate and into the garbage, half-eaten, because someone ordered more than he or she felt like eating.
So yes, I agree. But with caveats.
You missed a very important point, hunters provide money for conservation. Lots of it. In many states the entire DNR budget comes from license fees (fishing too). Organizations like Ducks Unlimited and the Rockyn Mountain Elk Foundation have restored and preserved millions of acres. Without hunters most of our national forest system wouldn’t exist, and there would be a lot less wildlife habitat. There just wouldn’t be enough money available.
I love animals. They’re delicious.
My best friend from high school is an anti-poaching officer for one of Canada’s largest national parks. He’s a walking fountain of knowledge about modern conservation theory and wildlife management. The fact is, there is no one who has more respect for nature and is more in favor of keeping large amounts of (tasty) animals out in the wild than hunters.
Chris Pratt explains it well in this (slightly NSFW, language) clip:
Here is your basic liberal take on hunting (please excuse some of the language):
I suscribe to the Ted Nugent theory on deer and hunting them:
I looked for the exact Nugent quote, but did not readily find it. Anyway, you get the picture. I hate deer. They are like rats with antlers. They destroy crops; they cause countless car wrecks; they spread disease.
Yes. Many people I have met since moving to California don’t know anyone who owns a gun let alone hunts. And many of them subscribe to the stereotype you mentioned. I don’t know where it originated, maybe Elmer Fudd?
Claire, do you know anyone like this or have someone in mind? Are you talking about high dollar big game trophy hunting, or do you know American whitetail or waterfowl hunters who fit this description?
Don’t many of the big game hunters donate the meat to the local villages?
From what I’ve read, yes. But I think that is a whole other debate than your conventional North American sportsman who pays a nominal fee for a license, tracks his own game without a professional guide, and eats what he harvests or gives it to family and friends.
I have a friend who is an Athabaskan Indian from Alaska. When she was 19 years old she took my 17 year old grandson hunting, taught him to hunt and brought in a deer. She also taught him to dress it out. Her family had maintained their family from subsistence for generations.
http://www.blm.gov/ak/st/en/prog/subsistence.html
But if we lived in Africa, what would we hunt, eh?
If you did it with the same down-home reasons and methods I described above, that’s one thing. If you’re a (relatively) super-wealthy foreigner paying 5- or 6-figure sums to hire a professional guide, hunt in a stocked game park, and killing endangered animals (biological arguments aside) which you have no intention of harvesting and eating, but are killing primarily for the thrill of it or the reputation you gain from a trophy of that species, that’s quite another. I’m not staking an argument against it, I’m only saying it’s a different category of sporting activity.
Kleptocrats?
Seawriter
Mark, I think you’ve gone off point. I have a friend who has gone on “safari” twice. He hunts deer and elk at home, too. Anyhooo, the safaris he’s done cull wild herds and feed the people (and whatever other parts they make use of are theirs, too. Jeff only brought home photos (I think). Let’s not bring up Cecil, ‘kay?
Let’s bring up Cecil.
LOL, Doug you are wicked!
Bang, bang! I am the warrior…
I’ve never met anyone who hunts deer who could be described this way, but have met people with a far-too-casual attitude toward hurting or killing other animals, including hunting them.
I’ve certainly seen people exhibit cruelty toward animals. I’ve saved many animals from cruel, sadistic people. (By the way, my brother just saved the life of a darling kitten he found on the street who had nearly been kicked to death. She’ll live and even flourish, now, after very difficult surgery to repair her diaphragm. She was given 50-50 odds, but she pulled through. So now our family has eight cats. But yes, there are people who think it’s good fun to kick a cat to death, and I’ve encountered them. We all recognize that there’s a connection between that impulse and other sociopathic impulses, and we all know someone who does that should never be allowed near a child.)
I’ve met some people who discuss hunting animals in a way that makes my skin crawl: I suspect they’ve found a socially-acceptable outlet for the same impulse. Most people I know who hunt for food and sport neither seem motivated by cruelty nor remotely sociopathic. It’s not my idea of a good time, but neither are many jobs that need to be done, and as I said, I accept fully that some animal populations have to be controlled. Having humans do it for sport and food seems a sensible way.
I’m more troubled by people who don’t grasp that what’s on their plate was an animal that wasn’t all that different, biologically, from a beloved pet. That so many of us cheerfully eat mammals who were born and lived and killed under conditions that would make us vomit if we had to see it — and that we know what we’re eating was an animal like that, intellectually, but choose not to think about it — is a moral stain.
I grew up enthusiastically eating meat in just that way, of course. I stopped after reading Matthew Scully’s book Dominion, about ten years ago. I was reading it with a cat I’d rescued in my lap. Somewhere midway through the book it hit me that I couldn’t reconcile my intuitions: If the animal on my lap obviously had an ability to feel pain, a preference for life, and a complex set of emotions, including the ability to feel love — for me, at that — not even a member of her species! — it made no sense to be so casual about eating other animals of a similar biological makeup. (I wrote about this at greater length here, although I’ve reluctantly come to doubt the effectiveness of no-kill shelters — the evidence is coming in that they encourage people to dump their pets even more thoughtlessly.)
I strongly recommend Dominion, by the way: It’s one of the few books that’s radically changed the way I behave. (Many books have changed the way I think, but that book occasioned a very big, daily change in my behavior, so it really stands out).
High-dollar big game trophy hunting seems obviously wrong to me. I haven’t met many American whitetail or waterfowl hunters who fit this description, no, although I do remember a conversation with one — only one — that suggested to me he had a profoundly sociopathic impulse to destroy life for fun; and I had a suspicion he had it in him to move on to people. But in my experience, he was very atypical.
Today, I sold the required-for-deer big-game tags to a guy who’s been hunting for meat his whole life. But his body is crappin’ out on him big time this year. He lives out in the country, and he says he’s just going to open his front door, sit down on his couch and wait. He’s counted at least 5 regulars to his yard in the last few days. He even set a mirror out on the front porch aimed so he can see them coming in from the side.
Cheerleaders, guns and 80’s hair bands. Some people got culture locked down sooooo right!
Ha! Says the first person to mention Cecil. What I described is a common occurrence and has been for a long time. I have a coworker who goes on African big game hunts annually with his sons.
I suppose another way to put it is to ask someone “Do you enjoy driving?” One man says yes because he likes to take his wife and kids on a trip to the park. Another man says yes because he likes to race one of his several Aston Martins at Laguna Seca. While both legal, these are entirely different things.
I asked my original question to try to feel out what Claire is talking about. I’m not sure why you think I’ve “gone off point”.
For deer, bow season started a month ago, muzzleloader two weeks ago and gun season starts this Saturday. I did about $900 in fees today. (Bit of a cheat – one was an expensive lifetime license) On Friday, someone will be working the license computer almost All. Day. Long. Lots of people use the start of deer season as a reminder to renew. There will be also be a bit of a line of people in camo early Saturday morning going “Omigod! I just looked at my license on the way out the door…”
As to the character of hunters, there are a few jackwagons, and lots of good, solid conservationists who are totally aware of the “cycle of life” thing in which they are participating.
But there are also many, I would say at least a third, who are really solid of character and squared away. The kind of people that make me want to say “Excuse me, but when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device, any way you have room for a fairly capable geezer on your team?”