Hunting for fun

[SimonAd]

I see there are a few past threads on hunting for sport, and I’d prefer not to stir up the same level of vigorous debate as those did. However it’s clear from those that the majority see hunting purely for sport (as opposed to food, or professional culling) as against essential Catholic principles.

The history of the church seems to support this, with Innocent III making it 100% clear that it was wrong for clerics to hunt, right up to Laudato Si where there are several relevant bits that could be quoted.

Of course it’s not a black and white subject. A skilled hunter with a license to kill a deer in a place where there are too many for the ecology to support, will no doubt lead to far less suffering that you get in the average factory farm. However the reality of hunting is just as often an enterprise by unskilled people wounding social animals that may well be extinct within 100 years, and traumatising other members of the family/heard. The thrill of the skills of tracking and the respect for the animal is replaced with a thrill related to individual power in the act of killing.

My question is why when you search the internet for “Catholic view on hunting”, are the first two results (from this site) essentially saying that hunting for sport is fine for Catholic’s, in a way that doesn’t reflect either the concerns expressed here by Catholics about this view, or the history of church teaching on the subject?

 

[Bithynian]

the first two results (from this site)

I suppose it’s because sport hunting is an area which there are lot of theologoumena (non-dogmatic theological claims) and there can be legitimate variation in belief. It’s also worth noting that Catholic Answers is a lay apostolate in (I think) the Diocese of San Diego, and while the non-forum content faithfully articulates Catholic teaching on a variety of subjects, it is not actually an ‘official’ instrument for promulgation the teachings of the Catholic Church. In any case, sometimes there can be errors in the website content (e.g. the article on Arian baptisms).

 

[SimonAd]

That’s a fair point. I guess in the way Google rates sites, Catholic (dot)com is more weighted than, say, Vatican(dot)va and to be honest your average person probably often gets a more helpful answer from here. I was just surprised at the way it was covered, which seemed to miss both the historic and current spirit of the church, even though it’s admittedly not explicit on the matter.

Of course it’s never going to be a battle the church will chose to fight, with relativism and physicalism, poverty and destruction marching forwards all around, but equally there are some forms of hunting that the church should never be seen to be condoning.

 

[Bithynian]

I was just surprised at the way it was covered, which seemed to miss both the historic and current spirit of the church, even though it’s admittedly not explicit on the matter.

Yes, I do agree that the article could do with a bit more nuance. In respect to many of these things I’m often reminded of St Paul’s injunction on the responsible exercise of Christian freedom in 1 Cor 8:8.

In respect to hunting, I used to hunt for sport (on occasion for pest control) but I’ve largely abandoned the practice as there is a certain discomfiture that I now experience. Oddly, I wonder when this unease should also apply to my love of fly fishing which, in many respects, is the same as sport hunting of any land animal.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Animals at risk for extinction are protected by law in the vast majority of the world. Those who break the law to thrill kill these endangered animals are not hunters, they are criminals in those countries. If a country does not have laws in place, the citizens are encourages to work to put laws in place.

In the US, sport hunting is regulated by law. Do mistakes happen and animals get wounded? Yes, however any experienced hunter knows how to track a wounded animal and humanely euthanize them.

Sport hunters eat or donate the meat from their kills.

Have you experienced people just shooting animals and leaving them lying about to suffer or die and rot? Report these people to the authorities

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I am an “animal person” and believe that, unless it’s a situation of food necessity or some other major public health/ animal health concern, shooting animals should be done with a camera only.

However, it’s a fact that a huge amount of wildlife and natural lands conservation efforts have been driven by ethical hunters, including ethical sport hunters. They realize, quite correctly, that without conservation efforts, there will be no more deer or bear or whatever to hunt. They get the state to listen to them because the state makes money off hunting licenses and hunting tourism. So I think it is possible to be an ethical hunter for sport and actually do good things for animal populations. The problem is, we don’t hear about them. We always hear instead about the bad “hunter” who beats a disabled animal to death or kills a mom of baby animals.

 

[SimonAd]

I’m more familiar with hunting and in Africa. At one extreme of course you have poaching, where animals are left dying with their tusks/horns hacked out. At the other there are professional hunters. In between are things like farmed lions where essentially someone pays to shoot a lion in a restricted area just for the pleasure of killing it.