Game Hunting: Pro and Con: Part 4

I wasn't going to make a "part 4," but there still are a few more issues to tackle. The two main ones are 1) fur; and 2) the issue of "pain." I will get into those "two key factors" right away. As usual, whether via big industry or comfortable head-in-the-clouds city-dwellers, mankind has bundled this series of issues from top to bottom.

At no point in these related issues is there a nerve point quite like that of the issue of the use of "fur" by human beings. Certainly, humans have used fur for clothing and warmth throughout most of our history. I don't think that many would argue that this was necessary for survival. PETA, of course, has its ads depicting famous actresses and models nude, proclaiming that they would rather wear nothing than wear fur. Is PETA sexist? Anyway, the use of fur when other forms of clothing are readily available is a fair enough question. Personally I see nothing wrong with aligator shoes or racoon caps. Those two particular animals are not even the remotest bit endangered. For me, the real question is the degree of which "killing animals for their body parts" occurs.

One time on television, I saw aligators or crocodiles being raised for their skin in Papua New Guinea I recall. These reptiles are not endangered in the slightest. Actually, their numbers need to be kept down. This is one area where "animal management" is legitimate. Even if they were over-hunted, or lets say that very improbably they were made extinct in an area; unlike many other animals, they could be reintroduced and bounce back right away. Somehow "reptile suffering" doesn't concern me very much. I admit it. So I just don't take issue with reptile-skin products.

Racoons, of course, are mammals, and it's fair to say that "human arrogance" in regards to them should be of greater concern than reptiles. Also, the degree of which "mammal fur products" are cultivated is a real issue. It's a fair question. Personally, I think it's needs to at least be kept in check. If not, pretty soon the "typical fur" wouldn't be good enough anymore, and "more special fur" would be required by many. Fur from say... big cats, for example. It's just as much a question of "human arrogance" as anything else. That human arrogance could also come in the form of a person telling another person that they can't go out and shoot a duck for its meat. Perhaps if we look at it from this point of view, it might make it easier to form a logical consensus in the future.

Spiritual Imbalance

In China, the dust from grinded rhinoceros horns is widly used as an aphrodisiac. Rhinoceros' are very endangered, and it's hard to believe that something so absurd could be at fault for the poaching of these rare animals. The White and Black Rhinoceros are much more rare, yet this black market product no doubt has caused them to be poached too. The "human arrogance" level reached here is stunning!

All dietary rules listed for Hindus apply to Jains, in addition to which Jains must take into account any suffering caused to plants and suksma jiva (Sanskrit: subtle lifeforms; refers to what would later be termed "microorganisms") by their dietary choices. They are forbidden from eating most root vegetables (e.g. potatoes) and deem many other vegetables acceptable only when harvested during certain times of the year (fact-index.com).

This is the flip-side of "human arrogance." If a human being can't sit down and eat something that was cultivated via the suffering of plant life, then perhaps God or Mother Nature would have preferred not to have granted these individuals life in the first place! What are you going to eat! Dirt? As stated in "part 3," plants do indeed suffer. Upon part of a plant having been cut or ripped off, they emit a sound frequency. In other words, "they scream!" So, does PETA endorse the scientifically-proven reality of "plant suffering?" Even the strict vegetarian Jains must decide exactly which plants need to be "spared" and which plants need to be "butchered." I recall one time someone stating the following: "Some of the most dangerous people are the ones walking around all the time feeling that they're just so GOOD." The important fact to remember is that plants do indeed experience "pain"; therefore vegetarians do engage in a type of butchery of fellow life forms.

Nature's Way: Struggle

Naturally, we were geared for "struggle." A soft, comfortable, head-in-the-clouds, person--horrified at the thought of "animal suffering"--would simply have been weeded out during most of human history. Actually, their fellow tribal members would probably have done them in. Now that the human population is at the level that it is, along with the related factors of food, industry, and technology, we pragmatically need to revise some of the ways in which we do things. I don't think that anyone questions that. A new "balance of nature" has to come into being as far as how we affect nature.

The rats, which equal or outnumber human beings in the world's large cities, are intelligent animals with complex systems. In other words, they are very capable of experiencing "pain." Yet, even the most well-intentioned, city dwelling, head-in-the-clouds, animal rights loving people; if they somehow could press a button to make these massive colonies of rats living in the sewers and urban underground just disappear, they probably would. However, some wouldn't.

There is an organization called "Rat Rescue." I believe that this is a very insincere endeavor, which is in total conflict with nature and spirituality. "False morality." If we can extinguish the lives of so many of our dogs and cats out've necessity, why would we "rescue" rats? With all of the problems facing us, apparently some people are too busy worrying about "rat suffering." Unlike other animals, rats are somehow able to endure living in filth and disease. There are many well-to-do people, who live the easy life in suburban comfort, who are so far from nature's struggle that it takes the breath away! For whatever it's worth, as far as I can see; rodent species, beyond rats and mice, fit very nicely into the natural world with humans.

So far we haven't done very well in dealing with the issue of human population control. The United Nations was founded by international banking interests (The Vatican, British Royal Family, House of Rothschild, etc.), so giving them too much power merely because they have most of the money, made most often via "usury," doesn't make much sense. They artificially create problems, then come forward with "the solution," which always means more power for them. We sometimes get clues as to their real attitudes. For example, some years ago, an official with the UN's wildlife fund was recorded referring to people living in a particular area as "human refuse." However, this gets us into some greater issues and concerns that we aren't ready to tackle. There are too many people in the world, but the moral imbalance of the "global elite" (Maurice Strong, Lord Carrington, Javier Solana, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Zbigenew Brzezinski, David Rockefeller, the Pope, etc.) aren't the ones I want to solve this. It's quite a dilemma.

Getting back to hunting and land/animal management, we don't always need to be defeated by "bad politics." I don't think that many would argue that there weren't problems in the past with "out of control hunting." I'm referring to the era prior to this human endeavor being organized and regulated, at least in the West. People with slanted viewpoints often have no real sense of right and wrong, or even genuine morality. Unfortunately, "caretaking" can easily develop into "dictating." The vast majorty of humans are meat-eaters, even if they do avoid thinking about how the meat got on their plate; therefore, we can develop a logical consensus. This issue, although a fairly hard one, absolutely does not have to be put into the typical "Hegelian Dialectic" in order to be problem-solved. It's very solvable.

One last issue, which needs addressing, is the issue regarding "factory farming." There are many parts of this issue. For example: animal suffering, animal waste, water polution, etc. I think we all know that there needs to be improvement in these areas, so I will skip that part. However, when animals are slaughtered, their extreme fear causes their bodies to release certain types of enzymes which are not healthy for humans. Needless to say, that's a health problem that needs to be addressed soon.

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Game Hunting: Pro and Con: Part 3

Like many issues, the answer here probably lies somewhere in the middle. Also, smug slanted viewpoints from both sides leave out critical facts which need to be considered. The evidence is contestable.

From the pro-hunting side, one fact which is ignored by the opposing side is the fact that a lot of land has been set aside specifically for hunting. It appears that this land would not even be available if this wasn’t the case. Another factor is that in much of Europe, Asia, and other places, land and animal resources have been depleted over many centuries; while in North America, there is still a lot of open land teeming with animals. Western Europeans being appalled by American hunters somehow doesn’t sit right with me. Hunting is an American tradition because most of the United States was made up of rural independent people who practiced self-determinism up until fairly recently.

Another issue that would favor the pro-hunting side is that groups like PETA carry some extreme ideas. I know, I don’t like the term “extreme ideas,” because sometimes they can be a good thing. However, I think that when PETA says that fishing should be eliminated because the hooks hurt the fishes’ mouths, then most of us would probably agree that this is absurd. Personally, I have no emotional attachment to fish discomfort. They simply are not the same type of complex creatures as mammals are. One could make an equally strong argument that plants feel pain as well. This can be backed up by science. When leaves are cut, plants emit a strong frequency, as if they’re “screaming.”

Also, invasive species in North America, like wild boars and nutrias do a tremendous amount of damage to the land. Those animals could be hunted off of the continent without any ecological repercussions. Even the common rat species are an immeasurable health hazard in large cities where there are as many rats as humans.

On the anti-hunting side, hunting concerns often use weak “animal management” arguments. While there is some truth to this, they take it to unfounded proportions.  Another issue is the unreasonable amount of hunting of mountain lions, wolves, bobcats, and lynxes. Maybe some thinning out is needed in a few areas in the western states, but the childish panic at the sight of mountain lions has been a centuries-old problem; to the point where there are virtually none of these big cats on the east coast outside of Florida. Hundreds of millions of people have lived in California during the past century, yet only about a dozen people have been killed by mountain lions.

Wolves have been hunted to extinction in almost all of the U.S., partly due to this same childish panic. Although wolves can be a danger to people, and are a major threat to domestic livestock, just exactly who said that everything in this country absolutely MUST be perfectly safe? Someone has a much greater chance at being injured or killed by two-legged animals in these major cities, than they do at being injured or killed by wolves. Look at the cable television program “Gangland.” Those are dangerous wild animals too. In addition, the small cats are an important part of the food chain, and they seem to have been overhunted. By taking out too many small cats, the rodent population balloons out of proportion.

Another issue is the increase of “cowardly hunting.” By that I mean the increase in mean-spirited activities like shooting a racoon who just happens to enter a backyard, or capturing an animal and allowing a hunter to enter a closed quarters to shoot it and pretend that it was a fair hunt. The ritual clubbing to death of small animals, like foxes, has been an issue at various times, although I’m not sure if this is still in practice. Of course, the clubbing of baby seals, or the practice of shooting wolves from aircraft are other forms of cowardly hunting.

Needless to say, there are many policies and attitudes which probably need to be updated and tweaked a bit to establish a better “land ethic.” Due to the strong interest, by people of every political persuasion, regarding organic food; there has been a new open-mindedness regarding hunting. Hopefully this will lead to a little bit of a different approach to this subject.

One last issue, which I think deserves mention, is the more recent push to literally give certain animals “status” in courts of law. I believe that horses, dogs, and cats probably should officially be given some degree of respect not commonly given to other animals. However, I’m not especially fond of the idea of “animal cops” running around giving tickets; while on the other hand, someone shouldn’t be able to torture and/or kill a dog or cat, and just walk away unpunished. That particular concept probably needs further thought.

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Game Hunting: Pro and Con: Part 2

Now another simple article, taking the "pro-hunting" stance:

The Urban Deerslayer

Sean Patrick Farrell - New York Times - November 24, 2009

Charlottesville, Virginia

THE call to forge deeper connections with the food we eat has pulled thousands to the nation’s farmers’ markets, sprouted a million backyard seedlings and jump-started an interest in scratch baking, canning and other county-fair pursuits.

Now add hunting to the list. Novice urban hunters are forming classes and clubs to learn skills that a few generations ago were often passed down from parent to child.

Jackson Landers, an insurance broker by day, teaches a course here called Deer Hunting for Locavores. Mr. Landers, 31, started the classes earlier this year for largely urban adults who, like him, did not grow up stalking prey but have gravitated to harvesting and cooking their own game.

He tailored his course to food-obsessed city people with lessons on deer biology, habitat and anatomy, and rounded out his students’ education with field trips to a firing range to practice shooting and a session on butchery and cooking. One of the last lessons covered field dressing a freshly killed deer. As the students gathered around, Mr. Landers produced a hunting knife and explained its gut-hook feature, which promised to open the deer “like a zipper.”

“I’d never fired a gun before,” said Michael Davis, 44, a graphic designer and a student in the class. “I grew up in Southern California. We surfed, we didn’t hunt.”

But Mr. Davis, a self-described foodie, said he needed to understand what it means to hunt for food.

“I think going through my life without at least experiencing that most primal thing of hunting would be cheating,” he said.

It was a taste for wild boar that spurred Nick Zigelbaum, 26, and Nick Chaset, 27, to form a hunting and dining club in San Francisco that they call the Bull Moose Hunting Society. The society, founded in 2007, was designed to appeal to young urban residents looking to expand their horizons.

The club now has roughly 55 dues-paying members, many of them in their 20s and 30s, who hunt for boar, pheasant and waterfowl together. They share local hunting knowledge and the spoils of a good day in the field at semi-regular events they call boar-b-ques and wild food dinners.

Mr. Chaset, who is now attending graduate business school in Washington, D.C., recently established a chapter of the club there. The founders hope that someday they’ll have a chapter in every major American urban area.

Nationwide, the number of hunters has been in decline for decades. The country’s shift from rural to urban life is the main reason, said Mark Damian Duda, executive director of Responsive Management, a survey and research firm that specializes in natural resources and outdoor recreation issues.

According to his firm’s research, only 22 percent of hunters now say they hunt primarily for food. Most say they do so for recreation or to spend time with their families.

“Thirty years ago it was about half the hunters who were hunting for food,” Mr. Duda said.

The connection never completely faded, though. Some American chefs who grew up with rifles in their hands have long been passionate about wild game, even if the law forbids them from serving it in their restaurants. The subject has also been taken up recently by the writers Michael Pollan, who shoots a wild boar in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and Steven Rinella, who chronicled his quest to kill a wild American bison in “American Buffalo.” But until recently, tree stands and Mossy Oak camouflage were rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, heirloom tomatoes.

Anthony Licata, editor of Field & Stream magazine, said he wasn’t surprised that a new generation of eaters was discovering what traditional hunters have known all along: “There’s nothing more organic and free range than meat you hunt for yourself and your family,” he said.

Mr. Licata, who is 35 and lives in New Jersey, said he thought interest in hunting among young urban locavores was bound to grow. “When you do hunt and if you’re lucky enough to fill your freezer with venison and feed your family, it’s a powerful thing,” he said. “They aren’t going to want to stop.”

Mr. Landers, who tries to take Virginia’s full limit of six deer a year, agreed. For the cost of the necessary licenses, $36.50, he said he can stock his freezer with nearly free protein.

He also argued that for the environmentally conscious, hunting is fairly carbon neutral.

“If you can shoot a deer in your own backyard, butcher it there, that’s zero food miles,” he said.

A recent convert to hunting, he became interested in wild game a few years ago when he inherited his great-grandfather’s hunting rifle. He read up on deer management, queried his in-laws, many of whom are lifelong hunters, and was soon putting venison on the table.

Like many people, he’d also become concerned about large scale agricultural methods, the use of antibiotics in livestock and the ethics of raising animals in tight quarters. Hunting seemed like a good alternative.

“I felt bad about meat, but not so bad that I was willing to give it up,” he said.

Before founding the Bull Moose Hunting Society, Mr. Zigelbaum and Mr. Chaset wanted a closer connection with their food, but finding information about hunting in the Bay Area was daunting.

Mr. Chaset recalled searching for a suitable wild boar hunting weapon at a gun shop in the Mission District of San Francisco. The staff tried to convince him that a pistol would be fine. He left with the shop’s only rifle, a .308, which he used to fell his first boar in the hills of Mendocino County, an experience he described as “an epiphany.”

“I got this strong sensation of the cycle of life,” he said. It didn’t hurt that he thought the taste of the boar was amazing.

Mr. Zigelbaum said the meat, which tends to be darker and denser than domesticated pork, was “lean, but tasted like bacon.”

He’s heading to the south of France soon where he hopes to study traditional charcuterie methods. Wild boar prosciutto, he said, would be “awesome.”

Their club, named with a nod to the hunter and conservationist Theodore Roosevelt, is as much about rural foodways as it is about environmentalism. Mr. Zigelbaum, who is a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group, noted that the wild boar is an invasive species whose rampant rooting has caused considerable damage to California rangeland.

In Virginia, and across much of the East, the white-tailed deer population has shot up dramatically, causing fatal auto accidents, damaging crops and gardens and out-competing other animals for food and habitat. State game agency officials have supported Mr. Landers’s efforts to introduce new hunters and they plan to supply him with deer to demonstrate field dressing and butchery even after the season.

Few of the 20 students who have signed up for his class, which he advertised on his blog and a site for local news, had firearms experience or had ever gutted a deer. But all were lured by the idea of harvesting wild food from nearby woods and providing it for their friends and family. A few thought they were missing a part of the human experience, and others saw road kill as wasted meat littering the sides of the highway at a time when many are struggling to pay grocery bills.

On a recent Saturday, Mr. Landers convened a half-dozen of his students for an impromptu class on proper field dressing.

Mr. Landers is a fan of quick basic field butchery, which he says reduces the gaminess usually associated with venison. He also favors a large cooler to transport meat back to possibly squeamish urban areas, especially for those who don’t have a truck.

Soon the students, working in tandem to clean the animal, began to see the progress of their work.

“It really began to look like meat pretty quickly,” said Brian Donato, 43, who helped to gut, skin and break down the deer into quarters, loins and scraps for sausage.

For Ted Peters, 77, hunting seemed like a natural solution to an overabundant deer population, which had begun to impede another local food pursuit.

“They eat my garden, so I thought maybe I should eat them,” he said.

The deer was the centerpiece of a dinner held the next evening at the home of one of Mr. Landers’s students. In a graduation of sorts, they balanced glasses of local wine and plates of homemade spaetzle with slices of spice-rubbed, pinwheeled and beer-braised venison backstrap, a prized cut that runs along a deer’s spine.

Eddie Harrison, 16, the youngest student in the class, who attended with his father, declared the meat “some of the best I’ve ever had,” and compared it to a dish from Mas, a popular Charlottesville restaurant.

In a corner, Scott Swanson and another student made plans for post-graduation hunts. Two weeks later, Mr. Swanson, who keeps a version of the popular bar video game “Deer Hunter” on his iPhone, managed to get “a nice little doe,” which filled the trunk of his car with about 50 to 60 pounds of bone-in meat.

“From the time I pulled the trigger and the time I had it my trunk was just under two hours,” said Mr. Swanson, 31, a technical project manager at a Web development company.

He said he was planning to slice the backstrap into medallions to marinate and roast them over his grill.

For Nina Burke, 50, a systems administrator, who made the two-hour drive from Fredericksburg, Va., to Charlottesville to attend Mr. Landers’s classes, it was about the flavor.

“I really like venison,” she said, explaining she’d often exchanged baked goods for the fine-grained low-fat meat.

“This class was the chance of a lifetime,” she said. “I always thought that the only way I would get a deer was with my car.”

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For a much more comprehensive look at this issue, from this perspective, see 'Hunters: For Love of the Land' (www.nationalgeographic.com)

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Game Hunting: Pro and Con: Part 1

To the dismay of many, there are two sides to every argument. The following is an anti-hunting article from a guest commentator at The Mountain Lion Foundation website:

Trophy Hunting is the Ultimate Double-Cross

By Constantine Chuchla - 2011

Trophy hunters claim to be true sportsman, heroically conquering beasts while promoting wildlife conservation.  Not quite.  This ego-driven and bloody pastime destroys natural ecosystems and goes against everything it means to be an outdoor enthusiast.  Humans should observe and appreciate nature while preserving its integrity.  By interfering—killing and removing animals for trophies—the system begins to fall apart.  Obliterating nature while claiming a respect for it is the ultimate double-cross.

The yelping of the hounds pierced the cold, crisp mountain air, shattering the silence of the wilderness. The dogs would run for miles over the rugged terrain until their exhausted and stressed quarry finally sought refuge in a tree. Their baying alerted the sport hunter and his guide to the location. The high-powered rifle made it an easy shot and brought the cat tumbling through the branches until its lifeless body hit the snowy ground with a thump. The cougar, well over 150 pounds, would make a fine trophy.

Trophy hunting is a sport, a form of recreation. It’s a pleasurable (although at times, demanding) pastime for its advocates. For those with a trigger itch, it fulfills that enigmatic urge to connect with nature. The goal of the trophy hunter is not sustenance, but rather victory over an opponent. The quarry, facing the reality of the struggle for survival on a daily basis, is now pursued by an adversary for whom the hunt is a game.

Over the years, I have read many accounts of the prowess of “big-game” hunters. The tales of pursuit resonate with the same theme: the challenge of outwitting wildlife in its own habitat, on its own terms. The hunter is honor-bound to do so in a respectful manner.

Not quite.

All outdoor enthusiasts have a relationship with the natural world. There are choices in the relationship that can be broadly categorized as respectful and non-respectful. Traveling to wild places to observe wild animals in their natural habitats is a meaningful experience for those with an interest. Killing and removing animals from natural systems for sport while espousing a respect for them is the ultimate double-cross. Such killing perverts the relationship. Each animal removed as a trophy is a stolen piece of nature. Trophy hunters are not visitors, they’re takers.

The pursuit of game as trophies is a pursuit of vanity. It is a self-indulgence that amounts to a bravura by those with a predilection to kill wildlife.

Often, observers of a stuffed trophy extol the magnificent beauty of the animal. The true magnificence of that mountain lion was its presence in its environment, a functioning organism, fulfilling its niche, not as a sterile trophy-room fixture. The size and health of the predator was testimony to its success in its role, intimately connected to its landscape. Now, in a mimicked life pose, it will adorn a suburban trophy-room of a person with no connection to the land from which he “took” his trophy. What a waste!

There are situations where trophy hunting can serve as a wildlife management tool. An example would be the need to hunt black bears in New York State because of their expanding population coinciding with an increasingly limited habitat due primarily to human activity, land development and human population growth. Booking trips to remote areas where wildlife is not in conflict with humans and is an intrinsic part of that ecosystem’s natural functioning is not a management tool. There, ecological relationships do not require human interference.

In essence, there is a balance of nature. Taking animals out as trophies in areas like that is taking something that does not need to be taken. There, trophy hunters are interlopers — nature takers.

Aldo Leopold, who helped to develop the idea of ecology in the first half of the 20th century, coined the term land ethic. It’s the idea that we should all have a respect for the land and its occupants as a community of interdependent components. It’s much like the classic Native American outlook concerning the land. Leopold’s ecological awakening took a long time coming and he himself advocated and participated in killing predators. His famous story of extinguishing the fierce green fire in the eyes of a female wolf that he shot while she frolicked with her pups in a New Mexico stream has become a classic in wildlife literature. For that wolf and her pups, his land ethic came too late.

As the U. S. human population continues its exponential growth beyond 300 million and the world population approaches 7 billion, ecosystems continue to become more biologically indigent. For those systems that are left functioning naturally, it seems a violation of trust to plunder their parts. A guest should not steal from the host.

Constantine Chuchla, a high school biology teacher who lives in Hamburg. He participated in a study of mountain lions in 2005 as part of an Earthwatch Institute Field Research Project in Mexico.


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For more extreme positions on this issue, see 'Why Sport Hunting is Cruel and Unnecessary' (www.peta.org), and 'Facts: Hunting' (www.idausa.org).

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