Trophy Hunting Good?!

[Neo-Scholastic]

Im not getting the connection between Trump and trophy hunting.

[Minimalist]

You wouldn't.

But then, there are many things you don't get.

[bennyboy]

These assholes aren't hunting to live.  They are hunting to kill.

Makes them feel important.

This is a bullshit argument.

You think the 500lb whale eating his 5th Big Mac of the day has a better claim to the death and suffering of an animal than a guy who wants to go out in the wild and test his skills and endurance?  I'd argue the latter is much closer to the natural human condition than the former.

Do you think your T-bone steak is any less dead than the head on some guy's wall?  At least the head will still be there in 10 hours. Unless you are very nutritionally deprived, you could have skipped the T-bone steak entirely, so it's not really a moral high ground, is it?

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No their is a difference between killing to eat. 

Only if your nutrition would suffer by not eating it.  As omnivores, it's probably beneficial for us to eat some meat.  But most of us have more meat undigested in our guts than we need to consume in an entire month.  That's at least as disrespectful to an animal as going out and hunting it in the wild.

[Aroura]

The argument usually given in favour of trophy hunting is that it helps to conserve the hunted species because it is in danger due to habitat loss or some such, and that it is more merciful for the animal to die via a bullet than to die of hunger, thirst or disease. What the pro-trophy hunting idiots never seem to point out is that humans are responsible for the habitat loss in the first place.  The would be the equivalent of me setting a fire in your house and then cutting your throat to keep you from burning to death.

You know who else keeps trophies of their victims?  Serial killers.

Boru

Although I am also disgusted by trophy hunters, and find the whole thing beyond hypocritical (because you are correct, we cause the problems in the first place), the fact remains that the money paid by trophy hunters often goes to preserve the remaining habitats of the living species.  Without it, many of those reserves would be unable to function, and the poaching and trophy hunting without the reserve in place would be worse.

It's like a lesser of 2 evils, but no win scenario.

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And I'm not usually one to agree with Benny, but I've been working on going vegetarian for a while. In Germany, it hasn't been easy!
There are so many moral reasons to do it. Not least the conservation of energy. But I'm also aware that some veggies are just as bad energy consumers as meat, if hothouse grown or flown a distance.

Ok, I'm kinda getting off topic, but I do notice that when I was a big meat eater, and I used to be, I found all sorts of ways to defend it. Eventually, I accepted they were all hypocritical lame excuses I whipped out 'cause I liked eating it, and no other good reason.
If you are offended by trophy hunting, then factory farming should fucking horrify you! Those animals seriously suffer way worse than a trophy hunted animal does.

[Minimalist]

You think the 500lb whale eating his 5th Big Mac of the day has a better claim to the death and suffering of an animal than a guy who wants to go out in the wild and test his skills and endurance?

Then let the phony bastard go out with a flint-tipped spear instead of a high powered rifle with a telescopic sight.  Personally, I'd love to see all of them with an antler up their asses.

And, for the record, when I hunt down a t-bone steak in the grocery store I do not stop to take a trophy of it as if I was some great white hunter.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Trophy hunters are just hunting for bigger dick.

[Minimalist]

The WLB's kids can find the biggest dick there is just by going home.

[bennyboy]

You think the 500lb whale eating his 5th Big Mac of the day has a better claim to the death and suffering of an animal than a guy who wants to go out in the wild and test his skills and endurance?

Then let the phony bastard go out with a flint-tipped spear instead of a high powered rifle with a telescopic sight.  Personally, I'd love to see all of them with an antler up their asses.

And, for the record, when I hunt down a t-bone steak in the grocery store I do not stop to take a trophy of it as if I was some great white hunter.

I think there's a false dilemma here: kill animals for your Big Mac, or kill them for trophies.

There's a viable option-- minimize animal suffering and death as much as possible.  You don't get brownie points for WHY you are complicit in suffering and death, and I don't think you are right to criticize the motivations of others.

We need VERY little meat.  By very, I mean none if you live in a Western country and are willing to work on your diet-- and just a few hundred grams here or there if you are lazy.

How many animals die to trophy hunters?  Maybe a few thousand a year (just guessing)?  How many animals die to McDonald's that nobody gives a shit about?  Probably more each year than have ever existed in the wild, in all the time the Earth has existed.

Yeah, trophy hunting is pretty sick.  Humanity's effect in general is pretty disgusting in a lot of ways, and we rarely stop to really consider what that means.

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And I'm not usually one to agree with Benny, but I've been working on going vegetarian for a while.  In Germany, it hasn't been easy!
There are so many moral reasons to do it.  Not least the conservation of energy.  But I'm also aware that some veggies are just as bad energy consumers as meat, if hothouse grown or flown a distance.  

1. Nice to have you in my corner for a change.
2. There's another issue that is more troubling-- industrial-scale harvesting almost certainly involves the deaths or suffering from pesticides of all kinds of critters: birds, moles, mice, snakes, frogs, and who knows what else. Sometimes I think eating 1 grazing cow a year instead of some of those vegetables might actually net a reduction in loss of life.

I don't want really to undermine people's outrage about cruelty toward animals in any form. But I'd like the OP and others to consider taking a step FURTHER-- lift up your head, consider your impact on the environment and on the net suffering in the world, and consider reducing meat intake very greatly, avoiding buying foods shipped from distant places, etc. I know there are a lot of ways each of us can improve, and there's only so much time and focus to give, but I think this issue might be worth some of that time and focus.

[notimportant1234]

If animals kill each other for food, how is it that men is imoral for killing an animal for food ?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If animals kill each other for food, how is it that men is imoral for  killing an animal for food ?

It isn't.  I've killed (or assisted in killing) thousands of animals for food.  I don't have any moral objections to food hunting, but I do find it rather a silly way for a person to spend his/her time if there are other options.  Where I live, deer and ducks are the two most popular game animals, and there are guns aplenty to be had.  But all butchers and most grocers stock venison and duck, at a far lower cost per pound than these animals can be hunted.

But the topic is trophy hunting.

Boru