I’m not talking about the consumption of animals here, to be clear. What I’m talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they’re obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Miss me with the “tradition” stuff, it’s just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument. Don’t tell me it’s to eat, like I said, I’m not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point. And don’t tell me you’re respectful to the animals you kill; I don’t believe the planning, stalking, and killing is a good way to show respect.
I’m not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point
You can not talk about it all you want but you’re being intellectually dishonest by refusing to do so.
Eating meat that you know comes from a factory farm, a literal SAW like tortured life of cruelty, just to be on a conveyor assembly line to be slaughtered and you to eat, feels less psychopathic in the moment but in reality is just disassociating yourself from the literal torture you are causing.
What I’m talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they’re obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beers all day.
The majority of the time spent hunting and fishing is spent hanging out in nature with your friends. There’s lot ls of reasons to enjoy it, even if you don’t enjoy the actual killing.
And if you’re going to eat meat anyways, then forcing yourself to nut up and kill the animal yourself arguably leaves less suffering in the world than plugging your ears and contributing to factory farming. Both require disassociating from the evil you’re committing, and our brains are good at that because disassociation from violence was an unfortunately necessary part of our survival.
While I agree with the ethical considerations here, there’s a reason there are laws about slaughtering animals. Unless you’re killing sick animals, I don’t think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
If you think a factory farm where thousands of animals are slammed into cages next to each other watching their peers get slaughtered, is more ethical than shooting a solitary moose and getting several hundred pounds of meat then you are not arguing honestly or actually thinking through the scenario.
Quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a clean kill, it’s still more ethical per pound of meat by orders of magnitude even if it’s not, and your guess that most hunters don’t get clean kills is pretty based on nothing to begin with.
I don’t think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
That’s because you’re completely unfamiliar with the subject you’re arguing about. Ethical hunters don’t take the shot unless they’re 100% sure they can kill the animal swiftly, and do it without endangering anything else. They drill this into your head throughout the 30-40 hour long hunter safety course which is required to obtain your hunting license.
Ehhh, mine was like six hours, I’m pretty sure. But even then they do drill this point.
Aside from that, literally no respectful hunter wants to maim an animal. Aside from the practical aspect of having to track a blood trail and hope you find the animal deceased, no hunter wants to inflict pointless suffering.
Nothing about it would be enjoyable. As a hunter it’s at the top of my list for things that could go wrong but can be pretty much be easily avoided.
Omg, it was to avoid exactly this. Bad commenter. Where’s my spray bottle?
Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
Why would that require cognitive dissonance? A) cognitive dissonance isn’t the right term, there’s no two conflicting things that that requires you to believe and B) None of that is hard or unpleasant. It takes like 10min to get a fishing license, fishing rods and tackle are relatively cheap compared to most other camping gear and people love obsessing over and buying new camping gear and then spending time in nature with their friends.
The only part that requires mental disassociation is killing an animal, then cleaning it, then butchering it, then eating it. Why do you draw the disassociation line at the killing and cleaning, but not the butchering and eating?
Vis a vis means something like “in relation to” and I was using the cognitive dissonance to mean the people who eat meat but don’t like thinking about how it got there, not hunters. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I know it’s hyperbole, but it takes more than ten minutes to get a license because you are have to go to the place that issues them or wait days if it’s a mail thing. Relatively cheap is very different from not buying at all. So there’s any amount of effort and output of money done in anticipation of the stalking/killing/eviscerating. It’s not the relative cost compared to camping that’s in question.
