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Okay,
I will most likely get banned for this post, since I'm guessing at least half the people on this forum are hunters, and the other half probably strongly support it even if they don't do it, but, meh what the heck, here goes regardless...
Here's what has been on my mind, and bothering me for over 12 years now, ever since I was first introduced to rifles when I turned 10 (which I became quite decent at shooting PAPER TARGETS with (I got to sharpshooter bar-1 very easily, and probably would have progressed further in the ranks if I hadn't quit shooting when I was 11 when I went off to junior high, and became more interested in playing sports and video games with my junior high school friends, and quit going to the range every saturday to shoot)).
Hunting.
Well... not just any old hunting...
Hunting SMART animals. I am talking about animals that are basically as intelligent and emotional as your pet cat or dog.
For example: This is how I evaluate the "ethics" or "morals" of slaying animals:
I weigh the benefit to myself of the animal dying against what the animal that is about to die is going to lose when it dies.
Here are a couple of examples:
Let's say I see a black widow crawling around my bedroom.
Here is how I will determine if it is "okay" to kill it:
1. I weigh the benefit that I gain by smashing it with my shoe:
The benefit is
a) I don't have to spend like 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get a sheet of cardboard and a plastic cup and trap it and take it outside without killing it and set it free, which wastes 5 minutes of my life (time which is valuable to me, since I only have about a 60-80 year lifespan, and as a highly intelligent animal, relatively speaking, 5 minutes is actually "worth something" to me, in my opinion.
b) I don't have to get bitten by the damned thing.
2. What does the spider lose upon it's death?
Well, it's life, obviously. But let's examine further. Is a black widow spider's life worth a lot? Actually, from a medical/phsychological/physiolical analysis, no, it's life is basically worth nothing. The reason is simple:
The spider has no emotions, or self awareness. It is never sad, and it is never happy, and it doesn't even understand the concept of being alive, or that it will die, or anything like that. It is completely oblivious to life, and has no capability to enjoy life in any way shape or form. It basically just has DNA that has it where, when it develops into a fully grown spider, it has the capability to keep itself alive long enough to reproduce, given it's typical living habitat, but nothing else. It doesn't have any fun in life or enjoy life in any way shape or form at all. So killing it really doesn't mean anything. It's like stepped on a crumpled soda can. It is meaningless. It isn't "bad" as far as I'm concerned.
end result: The spider dies. It loses nothing, as it's life is totally worthless, and I gain 5 minutes of extra free time for my limited lifespan to do with as I please, and the satisfaction of knowing I won't get a big painful spider bite when I go to sleep.
or another example:
Let's say I go fishing...
Fish are extraordinarily stupid animals. They can be fairly large in size, but don't let this fool you. They are EXTREMELY dumb. Although not QUITE as stupid as insects, they are NEARLY as dumb, and again, they do not have the capacity to enjoy life in any way. They do not have emotions or have any grasp of the concept of loss of family members, or sentimental value, or anything like that. They are never happy, never sad, they don't enjoy life. When they die, they die, and they don't really lose anything, because, as with the spider, life is basically worthless for them, as they are not able to enjoy it at all, due to not having enough brainpower.
So....
Should I go fishing?
Well, if I want to eat some fish, then sure, since;
a) I BENEFIT in that I get to eat yummy fish for dinner without having to waste my money buyin fish from the supermarket.
b) The fish does not "lose" anything, because it's life is completely worhtless, since it can't enjoy it.
So end result on the ethics/morals scale works out to:
end result: The fish get's caught and eaten for dinner.
But now let's take a different example:
Let's say you go bear hunting.
Bears are smart. They have emotions. They get happy. They get sad. They have fun in life. They have family bonds with their offspring. They have a solid grasp of life, and emotions, and have just as much ability to enjoy life as your pet dog or cat.
So now let's say you go out hunting, and you blow some bear's brains out.
Worse yet, let's say you don't even plan on eating it. You just want to sit behind it and have your photo taken with you holding the dead bear's head propped up on your knee to frame and put on your wall or something.
I don't understand how this can be thought of as "ok."
To me, this isn't really different than if you took a dog out into the wild, and let it run around in the grass, and then busted out the old hunting rifle and blew it away. I mean... wth?
And let's look further passed that even:
Let's take an even more complex argument, dealing with hunting, and analyze it:
Let's examine hunting, where you aren't just trophy hunting, but, instead have an actual genuine excuse of "I am going to eat it for dinner."
But let's say it is still an intelligent emotional animal, that enjoys life. Like a deer or something. Not a fish, or an insect, where when it dies, it doesn't matter, since it had no emotions, and no ability to enjoy life at all, but rather, an intelligent animal that has fun in life, and enjoys being alive.
Now, you still have the seemingly flawless excuse here to hunt it:
Quite simply, this:
Here is what you would say to me, if I asked you why you hunted deer (which you were going to eat after killing it):
"Do you eat cheeseburgers? Or steak?"
I say: "Yes, I do."
You say: "Well, that meat comes from cows. They are large mammals, most likely capable of basic emotions, and have the ability to have some, even if small, amount of fun and enjoyment and satisfaction out of their lives. But yet you are willing to let them get slaughtered, so that you can eat them. And now I want to eat some deer meat for dinner, and you think this is different? Don't be hypocritical sir."
Now, upon first glance, it would appear that I have been checkmated in this argument, logically speaking, however, let us examine further...
We did overlook one particular little detail, in my opinon:
And that detail isn't the fact that the animal has to die in order for us to eat it for dinner.
No.
The missing detail is the fact that you clearly ENJOY THE ACT OF KILLING THE ANIMAL.
How do I know this? Well, very simple: if you didn't, you would instead just go buy the meat from the store, instead of killing it yourself with a gun. The reason you went out all the way into the woods, spending a bunch of money on gasoline, and ammo, and hunting gear and so forth that more than outcosts the cost of buying the meat at a store vs the "free" meat from your kill is simply that you ENJOY the actual DOING of the kill. You like to point a gun at an intelligent animal, and end it's life, which it, until it died, was enjoying to some extent.
This, I think examined in the brutally honest and logical manner in which I examined it, is pretty messed up. It means you actually ENJOY ending the life of a relatively smart, life-enjoying, emotional animal. I am not so sure this is something to be proud of. Rather, I think when stated like that, it is pretty tough to consider it anything other than quite seriously messed up.
And we can't even use the excuse that you don't enjoy the actual ending of the life of the animal, but rather, you enjoy the other things that go with the shooting of the animal (aiming at a possibly moving target, and having to aim very well and hit it etc, which one could say is the same thing as why I enjoyed target shooting, or bowling, that, simply, aiming is fun!)
However even this excuse fails miserably, due to the fact that you can just go to a moving-sillhouette range and shoot at those, which is the same thing, as far as the actual act of aiming and shooting, as in hunting real animals, or skeet shooting or whatever. There are clearly alternatives that require the same aiming and hand-eye coordination with your hunting rifle, where you don't have to end an intelligent, life-enjoying animal's life.
So in the end, as I said before, we can determine that it really is simply that as a hunter, if you are shooting big game, you genuinely enjoy the actual act of ending an intelligent, emotional animal's life. An animal that was having fun and enjoying it's life. You liked the actual ACT of ending it's life SO MUCH that you decided to go ahead and do it yourself, rather than let it be done for you, and go pick up the meat at the supermarket, and avoid what SHOULD BE something that is NOT fun (the actual act of ending the animal's life).
Now, I am not attacking anyone here, although I am sure it really does look like I am.
The reason this isn't an attack on any of you guys who are hunters is this:
I think those of you who are hunters, or at the very least, the VAAAST majority of you who are hunters, either:
1. Never really thought about it like this. Just simply never gave any thought to it. You just sorta go out and do it, because your friends do it, and nothing is on TV, and you are bored, and your gun is sitting out in the garage, and you wanna shoot it, and it didn't pop into your head that you could just go shoot at sillhouettes or even moving sill's to get the full effect in terms of the fun of aiming that goes with hunting live animals, so you just go out there and kill a deer, haul it home, cut it up, cook it, and eat it with your family. And not a second thought about it. Thus, I will accept ignorance as a fair excuse here (and I honestly don't mean this in a "mean" or "condescending" way, because I am just about 100.0% sure there are MANY many many things that I PERSONALLY do in MY OWN life that are quite "messed up" just like hunting big game is, that I simply do, not because I want to do messed up stuff, but rather, because I never took the time to REALLY thoroughly think it through and logically analyze what exactly it was I was doing, and why it was messed up.
2. You actually do not enjoy the killing part of hunting. But, either your buddies, or your dad, or brother, or whomever always want to go out hunting with you likes hunting a lot, and you like going out and spending some time together with them, so, you just suck it up, and try to enjoy the whole experience, and although the actual putting the animal to death part you do not enjoy, and actually find to be distrubing and not very cool or fun, you do it anyway, because it is overall worth it to you, given that you got to spend a good day of fun times chatting with your buddy or family member or loved one out in the great outdoors, so it in the end is something you are willing to do, and that's the end of that pretty much.
So no, I am not attacking anyone here, and I actually understand WHY it is that people still go out and hunt big game, and other intelligent animals that clearly do have emotions, and do enjoy their lives, just like your pet cats or dogs or horses.
But, I just wanted to put my analysis out on my stance on the morals and ethics, in my personal opinion, on hunting big game (or animals of similar intelligence), just to give some of you guys something to think about.
I'm not asking any of you not to hunt any more, nor am I saying you guys are "bad people" because you hunt (because of the two big reasons I stated above). I am simply saying, if you analyze it carefully the way I did, I think most people, from an unbiased perspective would have to agree that killing big game or other intelligent animals via hunting, is not something that SHOULD normally be very fun for a normal human being. The ending of an animal of that type's life should not be something that is FUN for you to do. Not when you consider that it is really often no different at all from shooting a dog, or a cat, or a horse to death, in terms of the intelligence of the animal being killed, and how much the said animal enjoyed its life before you killed it.
I have wanted to make this post for quite a while, but I always decided not to, but it's 3:30 am, and what the heck, here it goes, I'll post it now I guess.
I am fully aware that I am about to get yelled at by about 10,000 people in the next few days about this lol. Oh well, I still think if you didn't SKIM this post I made, and actually read the WHOLE THING all the way through, it would be quite tough to argue that I am not correct in my analyses here.
-opp
Edit:
Oh, forgot to mention one last crucial argument:
For those who present the rebuttal that it is actually not the kill itself that you enjoy, but rather, the whole thing about getting out into the outdoors and wildlife, and setting up, and sitting quietly and patiently, and scanning to find the animal, and then waiting for that perfect shot to line up for you and all that, something which can't really be replicated by sillhouette or even mobile sil shooting at the range, you are still overlooking one clear alternative solution:
Photography.
Yes. It sounds ridiculous, but think about it. What if instead of putting a big scope on your hunting rifle, you put it on your camera? This would be EXACTLY the same thing, except, instead of the finish being, as you put it, the kill, which you do not even enjoy, since as you said, this isn't the part of hunting that you enjoy, you instead do not have it end with the intelligent, emotional animal, that enjoy's its life, dying, but rather, the animal lives, and you have a perfect photograph of it to take home with you.
Problem solved?
And if you still just HAAAVE to have that meat, obviously they sell it at the market.
I think I just won this argument. No?
I will most likely get banned for this post, since I'm guessing at least half the people on this forum are hunters, and the other half probably strongly support it even if they don't do it, but, meh what the heck, here goes regardless...
Here's what has been on my mind, and bothering me for over 12 years now, ever since I was first introduced to rifles when I turned 10 (which I became quite decent at shooting PAPER TARGETS with (I got to sharpshooter bar-1 very easily, and probably would have progressed further in the ranks if I hadn't quit shooting when I was 11 when I went off to junior high, and became more interested in playing sports and video games with my junior high school friends, and quit going to the range every saturday to shoot)).
Hunting.
Well... not just any old hunting...
Hunting SMART animals. I am talking about animals that are basically as intelligent and emotional as your pet cat or dog.
For example: This is how I evaluate the "ethics" or "morals" of slaying animals:
I weigh the benefit to myself of the animal dying against what the animal that is about to die is going to lose when it dies.
Here are a couple of examples:
Let's say I see a black widow crawling around my bedroom.
Here is how I will determine if it is "okay" to kill it:
1. I weigh the benefit that I gain by smashing it with my shoe:
The benefit is
a) I don't have to spend like 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get a sheet of cardboard and a plastic cup and trap it and take it outside without killing it and set it free, which wastes 5 minutes of my life (time which is valuable to me, since I only have about a 60-80 year lifespan, and as a highly intelligent animal, relatively speaking, 5 minutes is actually "worth something" to me, in my opinion.
b) I don't have to get bitten by the damned thing.
2. What does the spider lose upon it's death?
Well, it's life, obviously. But let's examine further. Is a black widow spider's life worth a lot? Actually, from a medical/phsychological/physiolical analysis, no, it's life is basically worth nothing. The reason is simple:
The spider has no emotions, or self awareness. It is never sad, and it is never happy, and it doesn't even understand the concept of being alive, or that it will die, or anything like that. It is completely oblivious to life, and has no capability to enjoy life in any way shape or form. It basically just has DNA that has it where, when it develops into a fully grown spider, it has the capability to keep itself alive long enough to reproduce, given it's typical living habitat, but nothing else. It doesn't have any fun in life or enjoy life in any way shape or form at all. So killing it really doesn't mean anything. It's like stepped on a crumpled soda can. It is meaningless. It isn't "bad" as far as I'm concerned.
end result: The spider dies. It loses nothing, as it's life is totally worthless, and I gain 5 minutes of extra free time for my limited lifespan to do with as I please, and the satisfaction of knowing I won't get a big painful spider bite when I go to sleep.
or another example:
Let's say I go fishing...
Fish are extraordinarily stupid animals. They can be fairly large in size, but don't let this fool you. They are EXTREMELY dumb. Although not QUITE as stupid as insects, they are NEARLY as dumb, and again, they do not have the capacity to enjoy life in any way. They do not have emotions or have any grasp of the concept of loss of family members, or sentimental value, or anything like that. They are never happy, never sad, they don't enjoy life. When they die, they die, and they don't really lose anything, because, as with the spider, life is basically worthless for them, as they are not able to enjoy it at all, due to not having enough brainpower.
So....
Should I go fishing?
Well, if I want to eat some fish, then sure, since;
a) I BENEFIT in that I get to eat yummy fish for dinner without having to waste my money buyin fish from the supermarket.
b) The fish does not "lose" anything, because it's life is completely worhtless, since it can't enjoy it.
So end result on the ethics/morals scale works out to:
end result: The fish get's caught and eaten for dinner.
But now let's take a different example:
Let's say you go bear hunting.
Bears are smart. They have emotions. They get happy. They get sad. They have fun in life. They have family bonds with their offspring. They have a solid grasp of life, and emotions, and have just as much ability to enjoy life as your pet dog or cat.
So now let's say you go out hunting, and you blow some bear's brains out.
Worse yet, let's say you don't even plan on eating it. You just want to sit behind it and have your photo taken with you holding the dead bear's head propped up on your knee to frame and put on your wall or something.
I don't understand how this can be thought of as "ok."
To me, this isn't really different than if you took a dog out into the wild, and let it run around in the grass, and then busted out the old hunting rifle and blew it away. I mean... wth?
And let's look further passed that even:
Let's take an even more complex argument, dealing with hunting, and analyze it:
Let's examine hunting, where you aren't just trophy hunting, but, instead have an actual genuine excuse of "I am going to eat it for dinner."
But let's say it is still an intelligent emotional animal, that enjoys life. Like a deer or something. Not a fish, or an insect, where when it dies, it doesn't matter, since it had no emotions, and no ability to enjoy life at all, but rather, an intelligent animal that has fun in life, and enjoys being alive.
Now, you still have the seemingly flawless excuse here to hunt it:
Quite simply, this:
Here is what you would say to me, if I asked you why you hunted deer (which you were going to eat after killing it):
"Do you eat cheeseburgers? Or steak?"
I say: "Yes, I do."
You say: "Well, that meat comes from cows. They are large mammals, most likely capable of basic emotions, and have the ability to have some, even if small, amount of fun and enjoyment and satisfaction out of their lives. But yet you are willing to let them get slaughtered, so that you can eat them. And now I want to eat some deer meat for dinner, and you think this is different? Don't be hypocritical sir."
Now, upon first glance, it would appear that I have been checkmated in this argument, logically speaking, however, let us examine further...
We did overlook one particular little detail, in my opinon:
And that detail isn't the fact that the animal has to die in order for us to eat it for dinner.
No.
The missing detail is the fact that you clearly ENJOY THE ACT OF KILLING THE ANIMAL.
How do I know this? Well, very simple: if you didn't, you would instead just go buy the meat from the store, instead of killing it yourself with a gun. The reason you went out all the way into the woods, spending a bunch of money on gasoline, and ammo, and hunting gear and so forth that more than outcosts the cost of buying the meat at a store vs the "free" meat from your kill is simply that you ENJOY the actual DOING of the kill. You like to point a gun at an intelligent animal, and end it's life, which it, until it died, was enjoying to some extent.
This, I think examined in the brutally honest and logical manner in which I examined it, is pretty messed up. It means you actually ENJOY ending the life of a relatively smart, life-enjoying, emotional animal. I am not so sure this is something to be proud of. Rather, I think when stated like that, it is pretty tough to consider it anything other than quite seriously messed up.
And we can't even use the excuse that you don't enjoy the actual ending of the life of the animal, but rather, you enjoy the other things that go with the shooting of the animal (aiming at a possibly moving target, and having to aim very well and hit it etc, which one could say is the same thing as why I enjoyed target shooting, or bowling, that, simply, aiming is fun!)
However even this excuse fails miserably, due to the fact that you can just go to a moving-sillhouette range and shoot at those, which is the same thing, as far as the actual act of aiming and shooting, as in hunting real animals, or skeet shooting or whatever. There are clearly alternatives that require the same aiming and hand-eye coordination with your hunting rifle, where you don't have to end an intelligent, life-enjoying animal's life.
So in the end, as I said before, we can determine that it really is simply that as a hunter, if you are shooting big game, you genuinely enjoy the actual act of ending an intelligent, emotional animal's life. An animal that was having fun and enjoying it's life. You liked the actual ACT of ending it's life SO MUCH that you decided to go ahead and do it yourself, rather than let it be done for you, and go pick up the meat at the supermarket, and avoid what SHOULD BE something that is NOT fun (the actual act of ending the animal's life).
Now, I am not attacking anyone here, although I am sure it really does look like I am.
The reason this isn't an attack on any of you guys who are hunters is this:
I think those of you who are hunters, or at the very least, the VAAAST majority of you who are hunters, either:
1. Never really thought about it like this. Just simply never gave any thought to it. You just sorta go out and do it, because your friends do it, and nothing is on TV, and you are bored, and your gun is sitting out in the garage, and you wanna shoot it, and it didn't pop into your head that you could just go shoot at sillhouettes or even moving sill's to get the full effect in terms of the fun of aiming that goes with hunting live animals, so you just go out there and kill a deer, haul it home, cut it up, cook it, and eat it with your family. And not a second thought about it. Thus, I will accept ignorance as a fair excuse here (and I honestly don't mean this in a "mean" or "condescending" way, because I am just about 100.0% sure there are MANY many many things that I PERSONALLY do in MY OWN life that are quite "messed up" just like hunting big game is, that I simply do, not because I want to do messed up stuff, but rather, because I never took the time to REALLY thoroughly think it through and logically analyze what exactly it was I was doing, and why it was messed up.
2. You actually do not enjoy the killing part of hunting. But, either your buddies, or your dad, or brother, or whomever always want to go out hunting with you likes hunting a lot, and you like going out and spending some time together with them, so, you just suck it up, and try to enjoy the whole experience, and although the actual putting the animal to death part you do not enjoy, and actually find to be distrubing and not very cool or fun, you do it anyway, because it is overall worth it to you, given that you got to spend a good day of fun times chatting with your buddy or family member or loved one out in the great outdoors, so it in the end is something you are willing to do, and that's the end of that pretty much.
So no, I am not attacking anyone here, and I actually understand WHY it is that people still go out and hunt big game, and other intelligent animals that clearly do have emotions, and do enjoy their lives, just like your pet cats or dogs or horses.
But, I just wanted to put my analysis out on my stance on the morals and ethics, in my personal opinion, on hunting big game (or animals of similar intelligence), just to give some of you guys something to think about.
I'm not asking any of you not to hunt any more, nor am I saying you guys are "bad people" because you hunt (because of the two big reasons I stated above). I am simply saying, if you analyze it carefully the way I did, I think most people, from an unbiased perspective would have to agree that killing big game or other intelligent animals via hunting, is not something that SHOULD normally be very fun for a normal human being. The ending of an animal of that type's life should not be something that is FUN for you to do. Not when you consider that it is really often no different at all from shooting a dog, or a cat, or a horse to death, in terms of the intelligence of the animal being killed, and how much the said animal enjoyed its life before you killed it.
I have wanted to make this post for quite a while, but I always decided not to, but it's 3:30 am, and what the heck, here it goes, I'll post it now I guess.
I am fully aware that I am about to get yelled at by about 10,000 people in the next few days about this lol. Oh well, I still think if you didn't SKIM this post I made, and actually read the WHOLE THING all the way through, it would be quite tough to argue that I am not correct in my analyses here.
-opp
Edit:
Oh, forgot to mention one last crucial argument:
For those who present the rebuttal that it is actually not the kill itself that you enjoy, but rather, the whole thing about getting out into the outdoors and wildlife, and setting up, and sitting quietly and patiently, and scanning to find the animal, and then waiting for that perfect shot to line up for you and all that, something which can't really be replicated by sillhouette or even mobile sil shooting at the range, you are still overlooking one clear alternative solution:
Photography.
Yes. It sounds ridiculous, but think about it. What if instead of putting a big scope on your hunting rifle, you put it on your camera? This would be EXACTLY the same thing, except, instead of the finish being, as you put it, the kill, which you do not even enjoy, since as you said, this isn't the part of hunting that you enjoy, you instead do not have it end with the intelligent, emotional animal, that enjoy's its life, dying, but rather, the animal lives, and you have a perfect photograph of it to take home with you.
Problem solved?
And if you still just HAAAVE to have that meat, obviously they sell it at the market.
I think I just won this argument. No?
Last edited:
