RE: Trophy Hunting Good?!
November 19, 2017 at 7:38 am
(This post was last modified: November 19, 2017 at 7:50 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Laying aside the irony in having someone discuss objective facts while insisting that morality cannot be objective......
Trophy hunting, and this is the worst that can be said about it on grounds of suffering, causes no additional suffering to the animal whatsoever. It's not as if there are assisted living facilities for elderly deer. Sure, they may just wink out in their sleep, or freeze to death. Barring those two longshots, they are going to starve to death, become diseased, or become crippled and then diseased...and subsequently starve to death. Because we've mostly eradicated the predators...a good number of game animals are already living in pain from injuries sustained.
OFC, when we shoot them, they're usually young and healthy. Whether a person sees hunting for food or sport as immoral likely boils down to whether or not they think they have moral obligations to prey, and if so, which obligations. I can tell you that I feel some moral obligations to prey. For example..I think I owe them a good shot and a swift death. That's why I prefer my 303 over other rifles and over primitive tackle. It's not a good rifle for harvesting meat, but it's got a really predictable trajectory in the ranges I hunt, and it's just a -tad- heavier and slower than a 308.
I'll wait for a double shoulder shot in good range..and if they don't give me one, I don't shoot. The damage a 303 does in that profile is tremendous. You'll usually snap their spines from the impact...but say you didn't give them quite enough lead....you'll leave a hole where their heart and lungs used to be. In either case they're going to fall down on the spot. I've noticed alot of .223 guys (lol, ar15 hunters) go for the head, but in my experience that leads to deer getting their faces blown off more often than a hit to the brain. I also know that most people are taught to aim for the heart and lungs..but a failure to lead on that one ends up in the most common type of hit. In the stomach, or the lower back...hind legs.
Even in the absence of a necessity or a conservation scheme, I wouldn't consider sport hunting immoral unless someone was doing it in a fantastically brutal way. Or they were just plain bad at it. As you've pointed out, Aroura, captive animals are routinely treated with far less dignity and care than game.
Trophy hunting, and this is the worst that can be said about it on grounds of suffering, causes no additional suffering to the animal whatsoever. It's not as if there are assisted living facilities for elderly deer. Sure, they may just wink out in their sleep, or freeze to death. Barring those two longshots, they are going to starve to death, become diseased, or become crippled and then diseased...and subsequently starve to death. Because we've mostly eradicated the predators...a good number of game animals are already living in pain from injuries sustained.
OFC, when we shoot them, they're usually young and healthy. Whether a person sees hunting for food or sport as immoral likely boils down to whether or not they think they have moral obligations to prey, and if so, which obligations. I can tell you that I feel some moral obligations to prey. For example..I think I owe them a good shot and a swift death. That's why I prefer my 303 over other rifles and over primitive tackle. It's not a good rifle for harvesting meat, but it's got a really predictable trajectory in the ranges I hunt, and it's just a -tad- heavier and slower than a 308.
I'll wait for a double shoulder shot in good range..and if they don't give me one, I don't shoot. The damage a 303 does in that profile is tremendous. You'll usually snap their spines from the impact...but say you didn't give them quite enough lead....you'll leave a hole where their heart and lungs used to be. In either case they're going to fall down on the spot. I've noticed alot of .223 guys (lol, ar15 hunters) go for the head, but in my experience that leads to deer getting their faces blown off more often than a hit to the brain. I also know that most people are taught to aim for the heart and lungs..but a failure to lead on that one ends up in the most common type of hit. In the stomach, or the lower back...hind legs.
Even in the absence of a necessity or a conservation scheme, I wouldn't consider sport hunting immoral unless someone was doing it in a fantastically brutal way. Or they were just plain bad at it. As you've pointed out, Aroura, captive animals are routinely treated with far less dignity and care than game.
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