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On Hunting and Ethical Choices
Everyone has to deal with their own morality. The problem exists when humans, most of whom have a generally good opinion of themselves, rationalize behavior they know is wrong. This sets you up to continually lower your beliefs about right and wrong until you find yourself in the place you said you’d never be. I’m no stranger to this folly, but I remain vigilant about it and ask the Spirit to guide me when I’m not being an impulsive fool.
I wrote once about a bird I injured when I was a kid. I must have been about seven — and I was lethal with that Daisy BB gun on starlings and the other trash birds I was allowed to shoot. Then there was the jay up in some tree. I felt some need to prove something. Busted wing. The darn thing was everywhere outside my house that summer, it’s broken wing reminding me of how bad a person I was when I shot it. That blue jay served a purpose though: it was a fitting allegory for my shame. The story would have been easier to tell if I’d taken my finger off the trigger.
I killed an Atlantic Salmon ( I think ) on the Rapid River in Maine. I spent a third of an hour stalking into position to angle for her. My wiry 12-year-old body, balancing on a rock, flicked a fiberglass fly rod with a Mickey Finn streamer over and over until I got a take. I remember the fight and the landing. The legal limit was 13 inches and this one was 12.5. I spent a lot of time stretching and smashing that fish. In the end, I filleted a fish I should have let go. The story would have been better if I’d have let her go.
I am not an avid hunter. I spend only 5-15 days a year hunting, most of it for birds. I follow the laws because I love the challenge and the killing part. Following the rules makes it fun. There are other rules (not binding) that I find more important than the legal ones because they define who you are: Respecting the environment. Respecting the land owners. Respecting the safety of everyone. Respecting your prey. Understanding your role in the greater scheme of nature. You are an apex predator with responsibilities.
One of those responsibilities is to be an example for younger hunters and fisherman. Integrity happens. If Mr Dentist did what he’s accused of, he has no friends in any of the hunting circles I know.
I shot my first elk last fall. An older patient of mine paid for the pricey hunt ($6,000) and I was excited to do it, practicing much of the summer at the range. When I arrived at the elk camp, I developed a real dislike for the head guy. He advertised this fair chase hunt, but it turned out he had a relatively tame herd of elk ( between two ranches) and that he was used to letting old men dodder up to them and shoot. I declined to kill one and had his old down-and-out assistant take me 10 miles and 3,000 feet up on horseback to look for animals instead.
We got one and it was a rush beyond compare. Back at camp, the head outfitter scored the 7×6 at 298. Anything over 300 and it can be entered in the Safari Club for Idaho. He was trying to talk me into saying it was 315 so I could have my name in some stupid book. I told him he had the wrong person. This story is easy to tell.
In the quiet of the night a person alone can lay back and have all kinds of strange thoughts. Do you like the company you keep in those moments?
Published in General
Yes, I usually do.
You’re a good man Arahant.
Either that or I have no conscience. Depends on whom you ask.
At least for me, your post described astoundingly well the paralyzing nature of shame which is, unfortunately, most fully understood when experienced firsthand. That our culture is obsessed with reinterpreting that experience into something honorable is . . . well, we’re seeing it now. No one tells how actual, for-real being honest is literally a freedom-giving act.
It’s not a hunting story, but when I was about 4 years old, I used to make pets of ladybugs at my grandmother’s house. After noticing that ladybugs, once they lift their red outer shells, look a lot like houseflies underneath, I wondered, childishly, whether houseflies were all ladybugs that had had their shells removed. So I took one of my pet ladybugs and pinched off the outer shells.
My grandmother, seeing what I had done, told me, “How could you be so cruel? You owe the ladybug you maimed a quick death now. Crush it.” I protested. The ladybug didn’t look very hurt, and killing it would be wrong. “Not as wrong as what you already did to it,” my grandmother replied. So I did as she ordered and killed it.
My grandmother had done exactly the right thing to teach me disgust for what I had done. It’s probably the most vivid formative moral lesson I remember.
As Jonathan Haidt has shown, Leftists are weak in the disgust (Sanctity/degradation) area of morality. Maybe they missed these formative lessons.
Anybody who has been trapped in a dentist’s chair knows they have a genetic predisposition towards sadism and wanton cruelty.
I’m not much of a hunter and have a pretty low opinion of the dentist who killed Cecile, especially if what I read about how he did it is true.
On the other hand, if the this dentist had gone to Iraq and bagged a truck load of ISIS jihadists .. I would buy him a case of Dom Perignon.
I consider myself to be the ethical of two of us, others might disagree.
Mine is decent.
Jetstream, I would bait a patch for Jihadis with pleasure. Ill even pay for the goats.
You only think that cuz of the Nitrous Oxide.
Nope. I have to avoid all drugs…except caffeine, which puts me asleep.
As your dentist is a confirmed sociopath (because the fact that he is a dentist is a priori proof of sociopathy, Q.E.D.) it’s pretty obvious that you are being gassed without your knowledge.
I don’t lose sleep over anything I have done. That is a blessing.
I worry about not doing enough right now.
Which is why I am going to get back to work.
As I remember my experience with nitrous oxide: I knew that it hurt, but I didn’t care. (weird)
Which probably means you’ve been taken advantage of while sleeping.
Doc, I hope you didn’t misunderstand my claim of ethical superiority .. I was referring to the dentist .. I know you’re a stud.
There is no “probably” about it.
(I sure do hope anti-dentism isn’t a CoC violation…)
Jetstream, never thought anything negative at all. My morality is similar to yours about Jihadis.
Thank you, Doc. People write a lot of obvious lies but I decided a while back that anything under your byline was going to be true.
I’ve lived hard, had blood on me for most of my life, and I’ve plenty to feel guilty about. None of that guilt ever had anything to do with animals, I think, but your broader point about the intersection of power and responsibility, and the guilt that comes from ignoring it, resonates.
The curse of knowing oneself holds the secret to redemption as well.
“But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”
— I don’t like to talk about it much but sometimes in the shower I will sing about it. Does that make me a bad person?
Yes, that and your gender identity crisis.
No, it doesn’t. I don’t think that even doing it would necessarily mean you’re a bad person. Not feeling any guilt over it might.
I’ve always held that the path to innocence runs thru the valley of death.
*Whistles innocently.*
Thread got promoted? That’s one way to keep you off the most popular on the Member Feed.
I’ll have to give hunting a try, someday.
It’s amazing, though, how some people can have a twisted sense of morality, holding others to higher standards than they hold themselves. I’m involved in an issue right now where I am plagued by a person who is utterly merciless when others make mistakes, and utter shameless when caught in their own. Yet they call me unethical when I say I do not trust their word about others.
Yeti removed that tinfoil yet with a smile. I’m happy an outdoor story got up front when there’s this national story of a very negative act from a hunter.