What are People's thoughts on Hunting?

[KiriKaeshi]

  I was wondering what people think about Hunting, with regard to UPB, peaceful parenting, etc.  I am just starting out as a hunter.  It has been a nightmare of red tape and government BS, all so I can hunt on "the king's land".  I dont see any necessary violation of UPB, but I'm a little on the fence regarding peaceful parenting.  My son is only 18 months old now, but I expect to introduce him to hunting and fishing one day.  I can see how exposing him to things like actually killing, and the processing of a carcass could be unpleasant or even traumatic if done too early, or in a thoughtless way.  Any suggestions?

[shirgall]

There are private hunting and fishing areas in the United States if you prefer to get away from so-called public lands and excess licensure. You still need a hunting license to hunt on a private reserve most places.

[Mister Mister]

  All you have to do to avoid exposing him to something inappropriate is to be honest with him and with yourself, and be curious about his experience.  It would seem to me that exposure to hunting would come in steps.  Wait for him to ask about it (he will, I guarantee).  So it might go something like this - At a certain age, he will figure out that the meat he eats comes from an animal.  Then he might figure out that it has to be cooked.  Show him how you season and cook raw pieces of meat into what ends up on the table.  He might express curiosity about the process of butchering the animal.  Anyway, you can see where I am going.  I am completely speculating, but just imagining what an appropriate, healthy process of introducing a kid to the reality of hunting, killing, butchering, and cooking an animal would look like.  The important thing is that you are curious about his reaction.  If it really bothers him, he might feel shame, and try to suppress his feelings to win your approval.  Let him know it is okay to feel about it as he does.  What was your introduction to hunting?

[Pepin]

Hunting and domestic farming have their similarities. The idea that meat from a farm is good, while meat from the wild is bad does not make sense. Though not an argument, if raising animals in an enclosed environment for their meat is bad, it may not imply that getting meat from animals in an unenclosed environment is bad.

 

I can not quite see it as a universal matter as I would not condemn someone who hunts to survive. Learning to hunt could be argued to be an important survival skill. But when there are plenty of other available food resources, the subjective value of mass animal farming may be negative, while hunting may be seen as a back up skill incase something goes wrong.

 

I do not know, but I think looking into the differences and similarities between hunting and farming could be helpful. I don't agree with hunting for sport, but I would not use force to stop it. Hunting and farming for food seem morally permissable to me, though I think prices need to determine its value. I think meat would be a special meal more than an every day thing.

 

This subject hurts my head, so I refuse to make any real argument, and instead just look at it from a "would I use violence against this person" and "may this not be preferable behavior, but not unethical". It is not clearly unethical to me, but I do think we ought to consider that mass meat consumption may not be needed.

[Tom P]

But maybe your son would prefer not to eat meat at all if he knew where it came from? Has he been given the choice? Diet is very much a learned behavior. I suspect that most meat-eaters would change their ways if they actually had to hunt down and butcher their own animals. With that said, I really have no ethical problem with hunting or fishing for survival or even "survival training." It's a useful skill. I do not agree with the ethical vegans when they claim that animals somehow have rights on par with humans. I'm pro human. 

[Jack]

I've done a lot of thinking on this subject as a hunter myself. My conclusions was that animals do not have the capability to be moral actors or to become moral actors and are not subject to the same moral concerns as people. Ethics around animals includes respecting other people's animal property and other people's access to wild animals. In other words, hunting should be conducted in a universally sustainable manner. Right now, the state oversees the rules governing sustainable hunting, but I would bet there would be an oversight and licensing agency in a free market and that nonconforming hunters would be ostracized. 

 

The rest of the post is how I came to that conclusion:

 

I started with the idea that something separates people from animals. In terms of UPB, I believe that the difference between people and animals is that people are moral actors capable of making choices while considering UPB or other ethics systems. Animals, on the other hand cannot. As animals are not moral actors, morality does not extend to them. I found that this argument would also mean that morality would not extend to young children and needing amending. As such, morality should be expanded to not just moral actors, but intelligence that can become moral actors. This would include children, aliens, artificial sentience, and talking rocks. 

 

Wild animals, as non-moral actors, can be considered a type of public resource. No one puts explicit effort into raising the animals or providing resources to them, so they are not property. Shooting an animal on someone's property can still be considered wrong as you would have to trespass to retrieve the carcass, and that if you didn't retrieve the carcass, you would have vandalized the property. As a public resource, wild animals would be subject to similar ethics as waterfalls, lakes, grassy knolls, and mountains. Wild animals would need to be treated in a sustainable fashion such everyone could follow the same guidelines you use in interacting with the animals and that these behaviors could be maintained. 

 

In order to monitor sustainability, hunters would likely contribute to an company or non-profit that would devise guidelines for hunters and oversee their activities. An ethics system would naturally develop just as it in business interactions or interacting with other people's children. Nonconforming hunters would suffer as people who became aware of a hunter's unethical activity would have less desire to interact with them socially or commercially. 

 

One aspect of UPB as it applies to animals that I have not come to a conclusion on is the bounds of animal abuse. One the one hand, I see dismembering a living cat as wrong, but shooting a deer as not-wrong. Killing an animal in order to survive is not-wrong, but killing one for amusement is. I suppose at this point, the ethics of hunting come down to the purpose of the hunt. Are you hunting in order to avoid buying beef, because you believe the cows are treated less ethically than the deer? Or are you hunting in for sport, and throwing away the meat? I'm interested what everyone else has to say on the question. 

 

Keep on pondering!