tafan
Sorry for the late reply. You are the one that used an example of game ranches where animals are raised exclusively for hunting. So if the hunting did not occur, those particular animals would not exist.
But then the question is, is it moral to raise animals just so they can exist to be shot?
Also, the deer on these game farms are all baited. The hunter is placed on a stand where they animal has been conditioned to find his daily food.
I hunted deer in the wild, and in my state it’s illegal to bait deer. It’s a totally different way of hunting compared to hunting at a hunt club.
BTW, I don’t hunt. Used to, but now I don’t have the time or really that much interest or the opportunity. I don’t attribute this change in my lifestyle to any spiritual development.
I never met a person who was spiritual, who hunted.
There is a violence with hunting that such people refuse to take part in.
This was my case.
I hunted pheasants and trained English Springer Spaniels for hunting. Pheasants don’t live in New England naturally. They’re raised on farms and put out into the wild during the worst time of the season for them to survive, fall. I began to see how unnatural it was, especially when the dogs would often catch the pheasant alive and bring it to me. The birds were raised on farms around humans and dogs, so when they’re stocked in the wild, they often just sit, and the dog will pick them up.
Also, the process of training a gun dog involves using pigeons which we stocked ourselves and just shoot in order to train the dog for hunting pheasant. Stocking the pigeons involves holding the bird upside down and spinning it around in a circle. The bird becomes dizzy and you can through it into the brush, and it will remain there for a half hour. You then go back to the truck and get the dogs and your gun. The dogs flush the bird, you shoot it and the dog retrieves it, just as it would a pheasant. Except at the end of the day, you just throw the birds away for they’re no good to eat anyway.
Like I said, it involves violence against life, which I decided I didn’t care for any more and so I gave it up.
I believe in the necessity of hunting to control animal over population of deer and some other species, but this isn’t the issue at hunt clubs.
Your smugness doesn’t help your argument, IMO. However, as you develope spiritually, you may learn how to have a civil argument.
Smugness?
I think you’re over-reacting.
Like I said, I have never met a spiritually deep person who hunted.
Hunting is a worldly activity which involves violence. Spiritual people generally are turned off by it.
It that’s smugness? Then you have little understanding of the spiritual life.
Jim
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