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I’m not sure if this is the most or least humane kill I’ve ever heard of …
What’s a state park tag?
Not a hunter, but I play one on the internet. When you buy a hunting license you pay for a deer tag. When you kill a deer, you attach your tag to the antler or ear. Most states allow one harvest per season.
Ah thanks for explaining.
Does anyone find it a little psychopathic that there are people who enjoy killing animals?
I’ll say this first, because I know this is a whopper of a comment from me, but it’s stuff you might not encounter otherwise: your perspective matters in this thread, and overall. I deeply understand the place your comment comes from, for real. We need people like you, and people like you have caused me several times in my life to examine what I’m doing and change my behavior. I will not call you extreme, because, honestly, it is not, and I will make every effort to engage in good faith, with you and others. I expect the same in return though.
I know a lot of hunters and do some hunting myself. In my area, hunting is an old tradition and, though I feel it’s on the decline, everyone knows someone who hunts, and (if they eat meat) has eaten wild deer or turkey or fish that’s been harvested locally.
“Enjoyment” over killing animals is something I’ve never heard expressed by any hunter. If someone did (and I can only speak for myself and my community) they would be treated with immense suspicion and shunned. If I can be blunt and frank, it is a shallow and ignorant take on the activity. I’m not trying to put you down by saying that, but it is true. I would encourage further examination of what you think you know of this topic. I can’t force it though. You retain the sovereign right to remain ignorant, it’s fine, for real, but that will cause people like me to disengage and we’ll go our separate ways. You will have more success advancing your view if you choose to learn more, though. But again, I get it, that is the more challenging route and I wouldn’t blame you one bit for choosing not to. No harm, no foul, for real.
That actually may be the one part of hunting that we don’t enjoy.
I enjoy being in the woods.
I enjoy hiking into the woods while it’s dark, and witnessing the changes as the sun comes up and the animals awake.
I enjoy the exercise aspect, and also nerding out over gear.
I experience satisfaction over being able to feed myself and people I care about in this way. This is related to the closeness to this food, being able to close that loop myself without any help from a middleman or needing to ship bananas 3000 miles and what have you. Knowing and participating first hand in the entire process of getting that to the plate satisfies the “sustainable foodie” part of my brain. There is also connection to the land on which you live, which is hard to explain and must be experienced.
The actual killing of the animal produces complicated emotions. “Enjoyment” isn’t one of them. It’s also .001% of the process. Regardless, I go to tremendous lengths to ensure that the process goes as quickly, smoothly, and painlessly as possible, and other hunters I know also do this. This is heavily pushed. Ideally, when that moment comes, the animal does not detect you at all and it happens so quickly they do not even clock what happened. They experience no suffering or even discomfort, that is the goal, and that is what modern, humane hunting is. It’s many times more humane than anything that happens every day in nature. Mistakes unfortunately do happen sometimes, that is an unfortunate reality, so we must plan for that too, have backup plans and backups for the backups, and the tools to do so. This activity requires a certain level of maturity and thought which is not for everyone.
In my state, hunting regulations are informed by the science of wildlife biologists, and limits and rules are designed to enhance the animal populations they apply to. All healthy, reasonable people who spend time in the woods love wildlife on a very deep level, and we all do what we can to protect that natural resource, so they are there for generations to come, hunter or not. It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes this includes population control. Bag limits and dates change year to year, and we do our best to follow the rules, keep up with new information, and understand the consequences of everything we do, the tools we use, every decision. The ethical modern hunter is a partner to the conservationist and the wildlife biologist, and is an important part (but not the only part) of keeping wild ecosystems alive and in balance, in spite of humanity.
This perspective is likely different from your own - I’m well aware of that. Hopefully you can take something from it. Hunters are not all elmer fudd. Those are not hunters - that is the consensus now. Our Fish & Game folks (the only “good cops” IMO) love to slip cuffs around those types and send them to jail. Those people do still exist, and we hate it, because they show up in the news and give us a bad name. There are thousands more people like me, but you won’t hear about us. So and so two towns over who bought a hunting license online and tries to follow all the rules: not on the news. My own uncle who accidentally killed two turkeys instead of one, who immediately self-reported to F&G because he cares and has integrity? Also not on the news. Doing things the right way is relatively uninteresting.
You may have seen those images of the mountains of buffalo skulls made by white colonial settlers as they raped and killed their way through the West. That is not hunting - not as I know it, not as even my grandfather knew it. It is barbarism in its purest form, basically genocidal and psychopathic, disgusting, a black mark in history, and the American buffalo is still struggling to this day because of these horrendous acts that only humans are capable of at scale.
A more uplifting story I would encourage anyone to look into is that of the Wild Turkey in America, and how they were brought back from the brink, thanks to the cooperation and ingenuity of wildlife biologists in most of the 50 states. That one was mostly due to habitat loss rather than overhunting. (A surprising number of people don’t know this, but nearly the entire Eastern half of the US’s forests (like 90%+) have been subject to complete deforestation at least twice during our history, for industry. You can find pictures of the denuded landscapes - places that are now protected, healthy forests - and it is distressing.) Anyway, the wild turkey program was so successful, hunting is now part of that story.
https://www.audubon.org/new-york/news/how-wild-turkeys-made-49-state-comeback
What a great explanation, thank you for taking the time to write it. I’m not the OP, but…
I’m involved every year in a large charity auction/party which includes the Dept of Natural Resources, lots of hunting guns, and trips to go hunting in different areas. As a basic bitch treehugger, I personally have no desire to hunt. But I definitely understand those who do. At the end of the day, treehuggers and responsible hunters want the same thing, and hunting is a valuable tool in maintaining an ecosystem’s balance. I’m glad I don’t have to do it, but if they want to that’s cool. I’ll also gladly take their venison jerky when offered.
You seem to have never met the type “German pensioner with a hunting license”. It appears most of them are sadistic fucks who get drunk in their watchtowers and then blast away.
Not to confuse with legitimate forest keepers / rangers.
For everything Europe does 10x better than us, conservation of wilderness doesn’t seem terribly high on the list. I know it’s a mixed bag, attitudes are bound to vary, and there must be efforts, but it seems for the few countries I’ve visited the opportunity has come and gone. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Conservation is one of just a few unifying issues for everyone in the States, regardless of political persuasion. It’s a good litmus test for identifying the true psychos vs those who are just ignorant or misled, and also one of the few good things we actually have license to brag about as a country. We’ve done reasonably well for a very long time.
Now, though, the game has changed, and the forest service along with everything else is being gutted. I believe most won’t stand for it. It will be interesting as summer is starting, when the suburbanites can’t get their usual camp sites.
I find it a lot psychopathic. I’d kill to feed my children but I would never enjoy it.
I think anyone that enjoys eating meat should have to kill the animal the meat comes from atleast once in their life.
It’s seems psychopathic to never think about the animal their meat used to be or the life they lived before they were your food.
I’ve killed my own chickens for meat. I cared for them since they hatched and made sure they had a great life. Killing them was not fun, but I made sure to do it with as little suffering as possible.
I just saw the last meal episode with Alton Brown, he had a bit where he echoed pretty much exactly this. He went to work as a lamb slaughterer for 3 days, and hasn’t eaten any lamb since until that last meal episode, and he also says lamb is the best meat in the world.
I enjoy eating meat,
I could also enjoy the natural balance of having to kill my own food rather then relying on the industrial grinder.
I could definitely enjoy the thrill and sport of the hunt.
I could never enjoy killing an animal,
trying to make it as quick and painless is an essential part of hunting.
Luring a deer with frozen corn and then sledgehammer to the head is a psychotic and has nothing to do with hunting for food unless your actually starving and there is no other way.
Roofing hammer is probably as close to the bolt guns they in slaughter houses use to kill cows as painlessly as possible.
They are pointy and would go right into the brain, not butch like a sledge hammer at all.
However wheee I live it’s illegal to hunt deer with bait. So oddly, giving them a last meal before death is illegal.
Also we have a massive deer overpopulation and it’s killing off Moose because of the spread of ticks. We really need more coyotes and wolves, and less warm winters, but the fucking Republicans won’t let us fix those things.
So your gut tells you the killing part is a problem
A melancholic reality, the act of life is inherently destructive, not really a problem in a technical sense.
“I’ve tried literally nothing and there’s nothing left to try”
It’s not a reality, it’s a choice.
Trying to reach what goal?
“Life inherently is a destructive action”
What i mean to say with that is not that life (or eating meat) is immoral, but that the result of simply living is destruction to nature and other life is a normal part of the cyclus… Its way more then just animals, its also the plants, the air you consume, the ant that happens to end under the leg of your chair…
The only way any being could ever to get a “neutral footprint” is to never get born to begin with.
I am perfectly happy with my meat consumption, but i do wish it was normal in my society to be more personally involved in what the natural costs is of what we have on our plates.
Sure. If you assign a zero value to consciousness, what you say makes sense.
I, personally, value consciousness very highly. Call it bias, but I think consciousness is worth more than the sum of its parts.
Luring a deer with frozen corn and then sledgehammer to the head is psychotic
So what happened to trying to make it as quick and painless is an essential part of hunting.?
Apparently the kind of hammer used would be a quick…
It feels to me like there are cleaner, more efficient way to kill for food but i guess its plausible that this really was the best way?
I’m about to go down this journey myself. I’ve decided that if I can’t do it then I have to stop eating meet. I won’t let someone else do my dirty work.
I’m going to stick to animals that will kill / hunt other animals under normal conditions even if not directly apart of their diet.
So like turkey, fish, chicken, squirrels, rabbit
All on the table.
Idk how I feel about deer yet. I know they will eat small rodents and insects on purpose sometimes but from what I’ve read it’s a lot less then the other animals I’ve mentioned and not normally under standard conditions.
Opportunistic predators still “hunt” for their own survival. Even if they were intelligent enough to consider the morality of that, their need would likely justify it. The idea of targeting them specifically doesn’t make sense if it’s intended to be some sort of punishment.
Its not a punishment, it’s the idea that they at some levels understand and have made the same sacrifice.
Maybe consider the balance of the ecosystem you live in. Sometimes overpopulation of deer could be really detrimental to other species. So while they’re not directly killing other animals, they are indirectly doing so.
Squirrels and rabbits hunt other animals??
Rabbits no, they’re typically herbivores unless starving. Some ground squirrels have been shown to hunt and eat voles, and I know that squirrels are essentially fluffy rats.
Here’s an image of a squirrel eating a dead bird carcass.
They’ll eat their own young and the young of competing animals, so it counts. Both will also eat insects as well which I feel counts
I agree with you because I know if I had to do it, I’d never eat meat again. I think about their life all the time, I just feel guilty when I’m eating them, so probably a little psychopathic.
Nah, psychopaths didn’t feel guilty. You just lack conviction.
Yeah. Humans are naturally hunter-gatherers, so anyone who says killing animals is psychopathic is probably more likely to be a psychopath (in the true sense of the word) than someone who appreciates how it’s unpleasant but also no worse than what happens in factory farms or in the wild.
They said enjoying killing animals is psychopathic. That doesn’t even seem controversial.
I’m not fully convinced. People enjoy running ultramarathons and stuff like that, which is horrible on the body yet kind of relates to our history as persistence hunters. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to believe that people find hunting and killing animals enjoyable from the same primal instincts. I certainly don’t, but I also don’t think it’s psychopathic.
Almost anything is better than what happens in factory farms.
Yeah, I’m not sure whether to place wild animals wounding prey and using them to teach their young to hunt as worse it better, but if you are going to eat meat then I don’t think there’s many more ethical ways to do it than have them live a good life up until seconds before they die, then make killing them as fast as possible.
In a lot of places hunting is good for the environment too, not only because the fees from licences generally goes to wildlife management, but also humans have killed a bunch of their predators and so there’d be even more damage to the ecosystem if you don’t introduce another predator to manage numbers (although it would be preferable to not let it get to that stage at all, it’s too late in a lot of Europe and I believe other places too)
Hopefully by “a good life” you’re referring to wild animals, not power farmed ones?
Because I agree with hunting as deer management is necessary, but factory farming is bullshit and the regulations are just garbage. Animals live in cages where they don’t have the room to turn around, much less moving about and socialising. And you know cows don’t produce milk unless they’ve calfed recently, so they just keep inseminating them as fast as possible after a pregnancy.
When my grandma was small and tended cows on a rural farm, the cows lived to like 20. Factory farmed cows just keel over on the factory about after five years.
So idk, if you’d consider being like a child chimney sweep in London 150 years ago to be a good life, then perhaps you can make an argument for factory farming?
I was referring to animals in the wild and on small farms, yes
Good. Just making sure.
No, humans are designed to kill animals, eat their meat, and use other parts for clothing and more.
Humans aren’t designed
Humans are also designed to kill other humans, rape their family, and take their resources. But that’s not considered polite anymore.
Hey that’s fine but I don’t have a problem with killing animals to survive. It’s the enjoyment of doing so that gets me. Hunting for sport, for example. Or even hunting for food. It’s not necessary in the modern era. Nobody has to hunt. They do it for fun, and that’s psychopathic to me.
I think the hunting part is kind of fun. Going camping, learning the habits of the animals nearby, finding a place to take advantage of those habits, etc.
It’s the actual killing part I wouldn’t be able to do. But since I do eat meat I can’t fault hunters. In fact, I suspect a lot of hunters who do eat the animal actually have a lot of respect and sadness for the actual kill, and try hard to make it as humane as possible.
‘I pretend to feel sad about doing this thing that I spent lots of time, money, and effort to do’ is perhaps even more unhinged than the people who are honest about enjoying killing for fun.
*I could see it for people who are exclusively hunting CWD deer.
You’re killing either way. Buying it from a grocery store just insulates you from having to psychologically deal with that. At least with a hunter the animal has a chance. Can’t say the same about livestock.
This is horrible. And the fact people find this entertaining is half concerning, half disgusting.
I’ve got bad news for you about what humans have been doing for their entire existence.
Yep. And lots of people on Facebook are proud of their kills and change their profile photo to display them. Despite the fact the deer isn’t armed
Those same people trying to look like badasses are the same ones who lose their mind when park gates are closed for seasonal closures and are too lame to pack carry here in Australia
Id say let them hunt. But. Put land mines that detect humans in the same area, and strap guns to the deer with people detection on them
Give the deer an equal fight.
It’s also illegal to hunt by luring deer with feed.
Not in the great state of Oregon for some reason!
The crime in this case is hitting it with a hammer. Most states explicitly say what methods of take are legal and a hammer ain’t one of em.
In my state it is legal to use a spear. I’ve never even heard of someone attempting it, but it is a legal option. The reasoning I heard was that it was one of the methods historically employed by Native Americans in this area, and someone requested it be legal.
It is illegal to bait with food or salt though.
Regulations state to state are crazy. In my state you can bait but method of take is very restrictive. My kingdom for a spear season.
Hunting over bait is quite common in the south. It’s bullshit, but quite widespread.
Worth knowing, even if legality is not necessary a mark of much else than legal status. It feels pretty immoral in any case.
When exactly is roofing hammer hunting season for deer?
Just after Construction Season. What do you think roofers do to survive the lean months between jobs?
Ultimate bait and switch.
Anon practicing for people
