Can Someone Explain Hunting to Me?

[andyfox]

Yeah, that there's some sort of immaturity or worse in a person who enjoys shooting at and/or killing an animal for sport.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

Excitement that satifies a primal urge.
Intense video. Man wins.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0CNgwZgoKFc

Man Loses
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rkk5S0xhf...ed&search=
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9qtZjqNt-...ed&search=

[andyfox]

I don't care about deer. If anything, I'm probably an anti-animal rights person. Never even had a dog or a cat, hate 'em both.

I'm just wanting to understand the mentality of a person who desires to shoot a living creature for sport.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't care about deer. If anything, I'm probably an anti-animal rights person. Never even had a dog or a cat, hate 'em both.

I'm just wanting to understand the mentality of a person who desires to shoot a living creature for sport.

[/ QUOTE ]
Realize that it will be tough to fully explain to someone who's never hunted before.

Here's an article from About.com for some reading

[revots33]

I understand the appeal of the great outdoors and all that - but certainly killing an animal is not required to enjoy the outdoors. You could just as easily hike, photograph, etc. Obviously the actual killing of the animal must be part of the appeal.

I do realize many hunters eat the meat, and may even be providing a service by controlling overpopulation. I just don't think that's the primary reason they hunt. It is an enjoyable pastime (for hunters), and the actual killing of the deer or rabbit or whatever must be a main part of the enjoyment. Which is the part I don't understand, never having hunted. When the bullet hits the rabbit or deer, and you watch the animal fall... what's the emotion? Excitement? Power? What?

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
I do realize many hunters eat the meat, and may even be providing a service by controlling overpopulation. I just don't think that's the primary reason they hunt. It is an enjoyable pastime (for hunters), and the actual killing of the deer or rabbit or whatever must be a main part of the enjoyment. Which is the part I don't understand, never having hunted. When the bullet hits the rabbit or deer, and you watch the animal fall... what's the emotion? Excitement? Power? What?

[/ QUOTE ]

No offense but this doesn't seem like an open minded attitude. You've already made up your mind that eating the meat from the animals killed is not that important to many hunters. The more I've thought about it the more I believe it actually is quite important. First of all many people like the taste of vennison and such (elk meat is particularly tasty). Second of all, having the capability to provide for oneself in this manner is satisfying to the avid hunters I've known. So I think it has a lot to do with eating what one kills.

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
I understand hunters who hunt to eat. But I don't understand hunting for sport. I grew up in New York City and have been a city guy all my life, so I have not been exposed to hunting. But why kill a living animal for sport?

Mods: feel free to move to a more appropriate forum if you think it proper.

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt it can be explained. Either you are into it or you aren't. Like all things in life, it takes all kinds. Some people are into crochet. I don't get it.

PS: I'm not a hunter either

natedogg

[Phat Mack]

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

Thoreau on hunting (worth reading).

Thoreau implies that he would have little faith in a man who didn't hunt as a boy, and little faith in a man who continued to hunt as an adult. I tend to see his point.

Mack of Sunnybrook Farm

[andyfox]

Good article, thanks.

From the article:
"Can any of us honestly say that, as kids, we didn't shoot birds with our slingshots and bb guns, or set homemade traps for other critters?"

-I think that's the point I'm getting at. Of course we all did similar things as kids. But we outgrew it with maturity and a more mature sense of morality.

"There's just no way to adequately portray the majesty of a forest and the creatures within"

-So majestic as to warrant shooting?

"The hunting instinct is one of the most basic instincts of mankind."

-I dunno. There's plenty of evidence that humans are violent, but I'm not sure whether that's instinct or learned behavior.

"We hunt to be alone, to observe wildlife without being observed ourselves, to face one of the greatest challenges in this world: to take a wild animal on his own turf, using our brain and little else."

-I've been alone in the wilderness and obdserved wildlife withoutt he urge to "take" it. And I would challenge the "little else" if it includes a gun.

"Without the kill, you aren't hunting. That doesn't mean that you have to kill every legal animal you see, but hunting is not hunting if you're not there to kill. But to return to the quote, one does not go hunting expressly for that purpose. Hunting is freedom, a tie to our ancestors, peace, contentment, happiness, joy, sweat, close calls, exploring, hiking, stealth, boring, exhilarating, tiring, satisfying, challenging, and a thousand other things."

-I understand all those things. Except for why they can't be satisfied except if they result in a kill.

[Huh?]

[ QUOTE ]
I understand the appeal of the great outdoors and all that - but certainly killing an animal is not required to enjoy the outdoors. You could just as easily hike, photograph, etc. Obviously the actual killing of the animal must be part of the appeal.

I do realize many hunters eat the meat, and may even be providing a service by controlling overpopulation. I just don't think that's the primary reason they hunt. It is an enjoyable pastime (for hunters), and the actual killing of the deer or rabbit or whatever must be a main part of the enjoyment. Which is the part I don't understand, never having hunted. When the bullet hits the rabbit or deer, and you watch the animal fall... what's the emotion? Excitement? Power? What?

[/ QUOTE ]


If most hunters, who were raised as such as children, had bad early expierences hunting..they wouldn't do it anymore...but they tend to have bonding expierences with their brothers, father, etc. So naturally they continue to hunt because they get pleasure from it in part due to those past expierences. They then repeat the cycle with their kids...nothing unusual about it.

Now show me a guy who never hunted in his life then one day at 40 decides to start killing deer/buffalo/big game etc just to kill it and get a picture with the dead animal and i figure the guy probably has some issues.