Is it moral to hunt animals?

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Ridgerunner said:
I think it depends.

There are game hunters. In this state, at least, it’s illegal to waste one if you shoot it. With deer, particularly, you have to bring it in to a station (usually a slaughterhouse) and arrange for disposition that results in consumption. Lots of people do give it away, but a lot of people eat it themselves. I see nothing wrong with it. Is it better that they eat veal? I also know what it’s like when game animals out-populate their range. Not pretty. Thinning them out is good for their species.

There are “varmint” hunters. I personally kill every poisonous snake I see, if I can. Don’t want some 3 year old kid getting bitten and dying. I kill ever feral hog I see. They are destructive and dangerous. I kill groundhogs in fields, so cattle, horses and people don’t break legs stepping into those holes. I would kill a coyote on sight. They kill calves and sheep and goats and would kill a child if they had the chance and inclination. I kill snapping turtles because they are aggressive and could bite a kid’s fingers off in “the ole swimming hole”. In my mind “varmint hunting” for harmful animals is always justified. Is it better that people be harmed by them?

I don’t know anybody who kills for the fun of killing. But assuming there are some, I would certainly draw the line there.
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JRKH said:
So there is essentially no difference between venison, beef, perch, or carrots.
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If you read the bible carefully you will see that this is not the case. Before the flood man didn’t even eat animals, only after the flood were they allowed to do so. But they weren’t allowed to eat the blood, “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” It’s clear that the bible sets a different standard for life. That blood is much more precious than vegetation. We also have to admit that scientifically we know that things with a central nervous system are much different than things without.
 
I think it’s okay to hunt as long as you use what you’ve hunted. To say that you can “go to the supermarket and get it” is true, but (and I don’t want to seem paranoid) there might be a time when getting food easily would be a problem and in that case, hunting would be a good skill to have.

I’m from rural northern Maine, so hunting is rather common here.

But, I still believe that hunting just for the pleasure of it and wasting the animals is wrong.
 
I’ll add something to “varmint hunting”. Nothing in nature ever goes to waste. I don’t hunt edible game becasue I don’t like the taste of it. But I do “varmint hunt”. If it’s a fairly small varmint, I put its body into a deep hole in a creek. It’s astonishing how fast the fish and crawdads reduce it to a clean skeleton. They’ll do a sizeable snake overnight, it’s that fast.

If it’s a bigger animal, and especially if I’m not near a creek, I leave it where it fell. In no time at all, buzzards appear. Ugly up close, they’re incredibly beautiful in flight, riding thermals with hardly a movement of their wings. They’re also protected species. Also, bald eagles eat carrion. Seen 'em do it. They are also protected species.

Nothing goes to waste.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I’ll add something to “varmint hunting”. Nothing in nature ever goes to waste. I don’t hunt edible game becasue I don’t like the taste of it. But I do “varmint hunt”. If it’s a fairly small varmint, I put its body into a deep hole in a creek. It’s astonishing how fast the fish and crawdads reduce it to a clean skeleton. They’ll do a sizeable snake overnight, it’s that fast.

If it’s a bigger animal, and especially if I’m not near a creek, I leave it where it fell. In no time at all, buzzards appear. Ugly up close, they’re incredibly beautiful in flight, riding thermals with hardly a movement of their wings. They’re also protected species. Also, bald eagles eat carrion. Seen 'em do it. They are also protected species.

Nothing goes to waste.
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That’s true.

The reason why shooting and leaving a deer, bear, moose etc., carcass in Canada is illegal is that there is a strict “tag” system for allocating an animal to a hunter in a defined area, and it’s to discourage just shooting for a particular part of an animal, which can very quickly turn into a poaching problem.
 
nickybr38 said:
It’s usually the American hunters who come up and try to leave carcasses behind… and usually in remote areas where they’re unlikely to get caught.

My dad used to be a hunting guide. He has all kinds of horror stories. But admittedly it’s not much of a problem here. Most hunters use what they kill and in those cases I don’t see what’s wrong with what they’re doing.
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I’m quite certain you have no evidence to back this up

I’ve been an American hunter for over 40 years. Not once during that span have I or anyone I’ve hunted with, ever intentionally left a carcass behind. I’ve spent countless hours walking around in heavy brush looking for animals I’ve shot. (they rarely drop on the spot). Your average hunter would not tolerate such activity by another hunter.
 
To those who have a problem with hunting for any reason, I have a simple question for you? Why do you want deer to starve to death? Without hunting in Florida and many other states, there will be too many deer in a few years. Without wolves to keep the deer in check, they will infest an area and will have no food left in short order.

The sad fact is like it or not, we have 2 choices here,
A. Let the deer overpopulate, starve to death, and deal with the increased deer causing traffic accidents (some of these will result in human deaths as well) as they move from area to area in search of food that is not there…

B. SOMEBODY has to kill the deer in order to keep the populations in check. If not those horrible hunters who “hunt for fun” then who do you want to do this? Maybe we should raise taxes to hire government people to kill them, and then what? Let the meat rot, eat it themselves? Give it to the poor?

I have never killed a deer in my life, and I don’t want to either. However that is an AESTHETIC choice, not a moral one. I know somebody has to do it, like it or not, and I feel hunters are the best people to do this. I also have no problem eating deer, I think they taste great. Just because I don’t like hunting, that does not make hunting wrong, it just makes it a hobby that is not mine.

I also don’t want to hear about how we should not have killed off the wolves and how evil we are for it, that all might be great and true, but it does not fix the problem that we have NOW.

So which is it? Deer overpopulating or hunters?
 
If you’ll do some research, when deer begin to have lowered food supply their reproductive rate decreases. They stop having children when they don’t have enough food to support the children. When they have an excess of food the rate goes up. So the simple fact is overpopulation is a myth. We thin then because we don’t want them to be a burden on us, it’s simple as that. We don’t want them in our yards, hitting our cars, and we like the taste. It has nothing to do with the good of the deer, only our own personal good.

No one HAS to kill the deer for their own good.

So it isn’t ‘deer overpopulation’ or hunters.
 
nickybr38 said:
As I said, and as I’m sure most agree, to hunt for food and for survival isn’t wrong. but to hunt and kill and then dispose of the carcass without making use of it is wasteful and wrong. It is those hunters that I dislike (and there are more then you’d think. Sometimes they’ll a trophy from their kill and then discard of the body without making use of it). That, to me, is wrong. It’s wasteful and pointless.
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I agree with you as stated. My response was more for another posters who seemed to imply that one should see hunting as a necessary evil at best and be worried if one finds it enjoyable. I see no reason that people should not ENJOY responsible hunting.
 
mgreen77 said:
I have a couple christian friends who spend weekends shooting deer with arrows or bullets, and shooting birds out of the sky with shotguns… all as amusement, recreation, enjoyment.

Is that permissible?
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If it is only for enjoyment and not for food or any other necessity, then no it is not permissible.
 
txstm said:
I’m quite certain you have no evidence to back this up

I’ve been an American hunter for over 40 years. Not once during that span have I or anyone I’ve hunted with, ever intentionally left a carcass behind. I’ve spent countless hours walking around in heavy brush looking for animals I’ve shot. (they rarely drop on the spot). Your average hunter would not tolerate such activity by another hunter.
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You’re absolutely right. I have no evidence. I was merely sharing stories I have heard. 🙂

PS: I think American hunters were blamed for dumped carcasses simply from Canadian arrogance. In retrospect no one could have known who dumped the bodies. Could have been Canadian, American or any other nationality! Either way, if it was a foreigner they should have had guides so… the blame would ultimately fall on the Canadian guide who didn’t do his job properly anyway. So I retract my earlier comment after examining it more closely. Stories from childhood aren’t always reliable. 🙂
 
bmullins said:
If you’ll do some research, when deer begin to have lowered food supply their reproductive rate decreases. They stop having children when they don’t have enough food to support the children. When they have an excess of food the rate goes up. So the simple fact is overpopulation is a myth. We thin then because we don’t want them to be a burden on us, it’s simple as that. We don’t want them in our yards, hitting our cars, and we like the taste. It has nothing to do with the good of the deer, only our own personal good.

No one HAS to kill the deer for their own good.

So it isn’t ‘deer overpopulation’ or hunters.
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Really, maybe you should explain this to the people in Maine. I am sure all the wildlife people there will be thrilled to find out that the deer problems there are just in their minds… :banghead:

seacoastonline.com/articles/20081023-SPORTS-810230378
 
bmullins said:
If you’ll do some research, when deer begin to have lowered food supply their reproductive rate decreases. They stop having children when they don’t have enough food to support the children. When they have an excess of food the rate goes up. So the simple fact is overpopulation is a myth. We thin then because we don’t want them to be a burden on us, it’s simple as that. We don’t want them in our yards, hitting our cars, and we like the taste. It has nothing to do with the good of the deer, only our own personal good.

No one HAS to kill the deer for their own good.

So it isn’t ‘deer overpopulation’ or hunters.
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It’s not quite that simple.

In some circumstances a population that isn’t hunted (by predators or humans) goes “stale,” it loses it’s vigor. Fewer does have young. There are fewer young bucks to challenge the herd bull. That means fewer new genes to go around. It also means a population that gets steadily older and which could be decimated by sickness or hunger in a bad winter. In fact so many animals could be lost that the whole herd disappears. For deer like Whitetail that stick to one ancestral patch of land, that could mean losing deer from that area.
 
I have not eaten meat since 1997 & the last time I had fish was in Sept. 2003 when I was in Paris France. Ok, I’d rather that every1 were vegetarians, but I don’t pass judgment on people who hunt & eat the animal for food. Nature can be cruel & I’d much rather see a hunter swifly kill a rabbit with a high powered rifle than to see a python kill & eat a rabbit. With hunting, they must require marksmanship for hunters when hunting animals & it must be a quick kill. When in doubt, let the animal go. Also the game warden must choose the deer that a hunter’s going to kill, so that the healthiest deer aren’t hunted also so as to spare a mom deer with young. Hunt animals which are old & wounded for food & a humane kill. Since my parents came from India, I have seen chickens & ducks killed for food, with their heads cut off when I visited India in 1978 & 1982. While I ate meat then & did so until 1997, I just can’t kill an animal & though the duck in 1982 was killed quickly, I did feel bad for the duck & do so to this day. 😦

This gets to related topic & looking for views which is bullfighting. Now I lived in Spain from 1981-84 for almost 2.5 years when I was 11 to 14 years old. Bullfighting in 1982 was controversial in Spain & there have been calls to abolish this-Cataluna if I’m not mistaken has abolished this in 2012. Spaniards usu. watch other sports esp. soccer. Now if bullfighting is abolished in Spain, then that’s fine with me. But what I’d like to know is how many people who want to abolish bullfighting vegetarians or @least don’t eat beef :confused: I ask this because @least they do make food from the bulls which are killed in the bullfighting. Again, I’m not defending bullfighting & have no problem if it’s abolished in Spain, but just saying that they @least eat their kills. Anyhow, please give your views. Thanks.
 
mgreen77 said:
I have a couple christian friends who spend weekends shooting deer with arrows or bullets, and shooting birds out of the sky with shotguns… all as amusement, recreation, enjoyment.

Is that permissible?
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Hunting for sport, rather than by necessity for food, is forbidden according to Jewish Law.
 
Correct me if I am wrong here, but I thought the problem with bull fighting is more with the long and painful death of the bull, more then the fact that they kill and eat it? I am not 100% sure as I have never seen nor really want to see a bull fight.
 
Speedypizza said:
Correct me if I am wrong here, but I thought the problem with bull fighting is more with the long and painful death of the bull, more then the fact that they kill and eat it? I am not 100% sure as I have never seen nor really want to see a bull fight.
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Typically yeah, the main reason for protest to bull fights is that the matador stabs the bull repeatedly with sharp implements to slowly kill it. No matter how one addresses that it’s an unnecessary cruelty.
 
I see lots of post-kill justificatons being listed.

But come on… how many hunters get up in the morning thinking,* “Well I think I’ll get my gun and go thin out the deer herd to reduce the cruelty of starvation?”*

I don’t know if making good use of the killed animal justifies the unecessary killing in the first place.

Sure, I robbed the bank. But I gave the money to charity so it’s OK. Too may banks anyway. Do you really want them to agonize over long-term failure? I just relieved them of that future suffering.
 
Well, in Alberta (and we have the biggest trophy deer;)) , in order to hunt a deer you need a deer tag. The tag allows you to take a certain animal (eg., male, Mule deer) from a certain Wildlife Management Area.

So your hunting is done according to strict conservation practices.
 
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