Can Someone Explain Hunting to Me?

[Zeno]

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Anthropoetics

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W. T. F.

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Indeed. A lot of gibberish, probably best ignored. It came up in a google search and I slap dashed it into the post without much of a perusal. I just did it for blood sport.

-Zeno

[slickss]

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Anyone can squeeze a trigger, but not anyone can successfully hunt, for example, mountain goats. At every level, there is certainly something challenging to be done.

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That sentence was supposed to be somewhat provocative, I know hunting takes skill. That said, I'm arguing that if a human is killing an animal just for the sake of killing - with no other reasonable cause (food would be one) - the fight shouldn't be so asymmetric. Also, if you are killing something for fun, you'd get a lot more out of killing it with your own hands than shooting it from 500 feet away.

[Phat Mack]

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What bothers me is the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of the kill, that some describe, the "sport" of it.

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Man is an omnivore, and as such is a predator. It is one of the many things he is designed to do. The pleasure is in doing something that one is designed to do. The desire to hunt may be stronger, because of nature or nurture, in some than in others, but it isn't the specific act of killing that's the "thrill" (normally), it's the pleasure of complying with one's basic function.

I haven't hunted in years, but I can remember being a teenager when the season changed to Fall. The air would change, the sunlight would change, the smells would change and the urge to walk around with a gun would become overpowering. It wasn't unusual for me to take off with no more than two shotgun shells, and to come back hours later with them unspent and feeling satisfied with my day.

I still fish. (It's interesting that this thread is about hunting and not hunting & fishing. Is that because fish are cold blooded, and thus further removed from our sympathy?) But anyway, I still fish. As Myrtle did, I rejected hunting after I got back from Vietnam, but I've change since then--grown more stoical. When I catch a trout destined for the pan, I say, Sorry buddy, your time has come, and think no more of it. His time to die has come as all of ours will. And so it goes. (Couldn't resist, Kurt!)

I some ways, trying to intellectually understand the appeal of hunting (and fishing) might be similar to trying to intellectually understand sex: essentially futile. I'll be glad to spend hours explaining the appeal of certain women, but when all is said and done, I probably don't have a clue about what is going on in my head when I fall in love--or simply get an erection, for that matter.

[Phat Mack]

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and I had my grandfather’s pre-1900 octagonal barrel 22. Back in the day, I was quite a good shot. It was a fearsomely accurate gun that could chamber 22 long rifle loads: I once picked off a running squirrel with it at 40 paces. I preferred it when hunting squirrels over a shotgun.

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I'd just like to add that the rolling-block Remmingtons built in this configuration were some of the most gloriously LOUD .22s ever made...

[andyfox]

"It is one of the many things he is designed to do."

Some designs become obsolete, no?

While I've not hunted, I have fished. As I'm typing this, I'm looking at a picture of me holding a trout I caught, with my daughter proudly standing next to it. I remember her asking me, "does it hurt the fish?" I, of course, said no. There is blood dripping down the fish. Maybe the fact that a land animal is more like a human than a fish is. Or that I rationalized it that way.

[Zeno]

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I still fish. (It's interesting that this thread is about hunting and not hunting & fishing. Is that because fish are cold blooded, and thus further removed from our sympathy?)

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And many now catch and release instead of catch and eat. But it is interesting that fishing has been left out of the conversation. Though I do recall a long ago thread about fishing probably in the original OOT.

Anyway, fishing is a great metaphor about the struggle for life and a way to experience that in a short or long tangible struggle with another life force. I have had 20 to 30 minute fights with large salmon on a slim flyline and the experience is not just thrilling, nor is just the anticipation of eating a fresh grilled salmon fillet adding to the drama, but it is the whole play with all the acts and scenes that make it feel as if something very fundamental is occurring to myself and the fish and the slim connection between us. This probably goes back to the dawn of human history and why primitive peoples had animistic religions and why there are those famous animal drawings on those cave walls in France.

-Zeno

[Phat Mack]

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"It is one of the many things he is designed to do."

Some designs become obsolete, no?


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Perhaps so, but they don't go away if surpressed--and why surpress them?

(More wildlife (perhaps all wildlife) exists in the States today because of the efforts of hunters. (It's the conversations--sort of like talking to plants. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ))

[Rick Nebiolo]

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An excuse to go to an exotic locale; Kodiak Alaska, Africa, etc, with your beer drinking buddies. Nobody wants to be a pussy and bring only a camera along.

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[pvn]

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For some reason I find that hunting small prey, such as birds, is okay - while hunting bigger animals, such as bears, moose, deer, and lions - is not.

The reason I don't like that latter is because of the unfair advantage the hunter has. The animal has absolutely no chance but to hope that the hunter misses his shot(s).

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Isn't this *more* true for small game?

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What I would accept and respect is "fair hunting". No firearms. Let's test the courage of hunters by allowing them to hunt with primitive weapons such as a knife and bow and arrow only. Let's see someone attack a moose with a knife. Now it's actually exciting - there's actually a good chance the challenger (the hunter) loses.

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I don't think deer hunting with a bow and arrow is more courageous than with a gun.

Maybe lionesses should be declawed - let's make it a fair fight with the zebra.

[ConstantineX]

He's not making a moral judgement about the lioness fighting the zebra. Different things.