My name is Tom R. and I am a freshman at -- in -- Ohio. Recently as a final project I have been assigned to write a paper on anything that interests me. This is to be a 15+ page paper and is meant to help us learn how to write long essays. The subject I chose for my paper is Hunting and the ethics of it. My family has a long line of hunters including my father and myself. I understand the cruelty of certain types of hunting. I was wondering if I could get someone's opinion on the type of hunting that I do. I am a waterfowl hunter and hunt ducks and geese. We do not bait the field and we follow all hunting laws. We do use dogs to retrieve the ducks and are currently in the process of training a new dog. So my question to you is do you think that my kind of hunting is necessary and do you think that it is immoral.
I do have a couple questions for you. I recently read one of PETA's documents on why hunting is cruel and unnecessary. In the paragraph titled "Nature Takes Care of Its Own" I found the following statement.
"Even when unusual occurrences cause temporary animal-overpopulation problems, natural processes quickly stabilize the group. Starvation and disease are unfortunate, but they are nature's way of ensuring that healthy, strong animals survive and maintain the strength of the entire herd or group."
For starters Over-Population is a HUGE problem all over the United States and it is by no means "unusual" Secondly they state that Starving and Disease is the better choice of death for an animal. P.E.T.A stands for People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. Wouldn't you rather have an animal die a quick and most of the time painless death like that of duck hunting. Starvation and Disease can be long slow and often very painful ways of dieing. Why would they prefer pain and suffering over quick and painless? I read your story and I understand that sometimes the duck does get away but the chances of that are severely lessened if you have a dog to use its nose to sniff it out. Thank you for your time and I would very much appreciate a response.
Hi Tom:
To answer your question: No, I do not think your kind of hunting is necessary, and yes I believe it is immoral.
One of the problems I have with the starvation argument is that it fails to consider animals as individuals. Now, I am an animal, and so are you. And we are individuals (just like every other animal is). If I am starving to death a bullet in my head might be humane: but shooting you or some other random human due to my potential starvation would not be humane or even sensible.
When you shoot an animal do you first ascertain that it is starving? If not, then the starvation argument does not apply.
Look at our own species: we are grossly overpopulated. 20,000 children die every day from starvation! If any herd ever needed "thinning" it is ours! So why don't we just start shooting people at random? Certainly the suffering of human children is of more concern to us than the suffering of ducks and geese! The reason we don't do it is because it is immoral.
Individual lives matter.
The real purpose of hunting is not to prevent starvation. Wildlife departments do everything they can to increase populations of wild animals so that they can attract hunting dollars to the area. Look at "Ducks Unlimited" their very name reveals that they want to increase the number of ducks for hunters to kill (and to provide hunters with the excuse: "Look how many ducks there are -- we have no choice but to shoot them!")
Wild animal populations got along just fine before humans ever evolved and decided that they needed our "management". Population fluctuations have always been quickly brought under control by available food supply, etc. As you stated, this is nature's way, and results in strengthening the herd (as opposed to hunting which often seeks the "trophy-like" healthiest animals to kill: leaving the weakest and least likely to survive.)
We share this planet with the other animals. It is not up to us to "manage" their populations (we do enough of that by destroying their habitat with "development"). It is up to us to manage our own population and find a way to share the planet. Killing off species through hunting and development and pollution, is cutting our own throats since we rely on the ecosystem for our very lives.
As an animal myself, let me put it this way:
- I know that my population has exceeded my available food supply.
- I know that my excessive population is causing major irreparable damage to the environment.
- I know that an alarming number of my kind are dying of starvation as we speak.
- But, even knowing all of that, I do not want to be shot to death as a moral solution to the problem.
--Steve
Thank you for your reply steve but i do have one follow up question to your responce.
You look at orginizations like ducks unlimited very one sidedly. Hundreds of Thousands if not more are donated to this org. every year. This money goes to creating habitats and wetlands to help control the population and spread out the birds. They are not the only things that help go to creating a better life for the animals. Hunting lisenses, yes the very thing you dislike, a portion of that money goes twords animal preservation. My only other point is that dont you think hunting is a better solution then slaughter houses? Think about it they get to live free in the wild up until their death but in a deathhouse they are simply born and raised in a small pen waiting to be killed. Now im trying not to be a hypocrite and look at this both ways so i do understand the more unethical and immoral ways of hunting like seal hunting and poaching are horrible and i agree something should be done my point is that if regulated and controlled what is really your big issue
Hi Tom,
Yes, I agree that hunting is better than a slaughterhouse. But that's not saying much: almost anything is better than a slaughterhouse.
My "big issue" is that there is no excuse for either. Humans are not carnivores: there is no reason to kill animals for food when other sources are available.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Slaughterhouses are wrong. Hunting is wrong.
The "conservation" that hunting buys is designed to increase the number of "game" animals. It gives the lie to their supposed concern with "thinning the herd" to prevent starvation. You can't try to make an "unlimited" number of ducks on the one hand and then argue that we have to shoot the ducks because there are too many ducks!
It's the same thing with fish. Fishing is just another form of hunting: killing and/or torturing animals for the fun of it. No one has even bothered to put forth the starvation argument when it comes to fish: they just unabashedly "stock" bodies of water with "game" fish for men to torment. It is hunting without even an attempt at an excuse.
The animals do not need the hunters' help: they were around long before humans evolved, and long before the shotgun was invented.
Buying a license does not make something moral. Controlling killing does not make the killing moral. Not so very long ago in this country it was legal to buy and sell slaves -- that doesn't mean it was ever a morally okay thing to do (although people rationalized it with similar arguments about doing what was best for the "backwards Africans"!)
You have a right to kill an animal in self-defense or if your very survival depends upon it. Otherwise it has as much right to live its life as you do.
The state grants you a legal right to kill animals for fun, but that doesn't make it a moral right.
In a word, my "big issue" is: life.
--Steve
Hey steve sorry for pestering you again i have one more thing though. You say this in your last reply:
The "conservation" that hunting buys is designed to increase the number of "game" animals. It gives the lie to their supposed concern with "thinning the herd" to prevent starvation. You can't try to make an "unlimited" number of ducks on the one hand and then argue that we have to shoot the ducks because there are too many ducks!
but the truth is your wrong Large organisations like Ducks Unlimited have this stand on hunting and you can find it in their website
America's hunters have always been the first to step forward and put their money and efforts into conservation. Through the wise and prudent use of these contributions, DU has been able to conserve over 10 million acres of wetlands and related habitats in North America. DU also has active conservation programs in progress in all the states of the U.S. and Mexico and the Canadian provinces with targeted projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. While our programs and projects are designed to benefit waterfowl, they also provide essential habitat for 900 other species of wildlife.
Yes slavery was wrong but that ios a bad example becuase when you baught a slave the money you spent did not go to feeding and providing homes for the slaves... Yes they did survive before we were created but that was also before we started building cities and suburbs. If you have a problem with hunting animals then you should have the same problem with building homes in previously uninhabited areas.
Hi Tom,
Yes, I do have a problem with building homes in previously unpopulated areas. Though it's not the "same problem" that I have with hunting. The fact that we pave over animals' homes does not somehow give us a moral right to shoot them. Once again: two wrongs don't make a right.
Not everything is completely black or white. Something can be "wrong" and still some good can come out of it. For instance: John Walsh started America's Most Wanted after his son was murdered. Something good came out of something evil. So too not everything a hunting organization does is bad. They are capable of doing some good things such as preserving wetlands. Is it necessary for there to be hunting in order to accomplish this? No, of course not. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, is a not a hunter's organization, but they accomplish a lot of conservation of land.
Just because some good can come out of something evil, that doesn't make the evil a good thing. Hitler was a vegetarian, and while vegetarianism is a good thing for the environment and all animals (humans included) it doesn't make Hitler a good man. He was an evil man who happened to have at least one good lifestyle trait.
While some hunting organizations may have done some good, hunting has historically been damaging to the environment and has directly caused the extinction and endangerment of many species. If you look at the list of extinct and endangered species you will see that "hunting" is most often listed as the cause.
Of course there are differences between slavery and hunting -- as you point out. But that misses the point; the reason I brought it up was that you were implying that because something was legal it was moral. Slavery was brought up as an example of something that was legal but not moral. I contend the same is true with hunting.
If I were to make a cash contribution to the improvement of your neighborhood, and dontated to your area's food-shelf, would that make it morally okay for me to hide behind a tree some morning with my rifle and shoot you in the chest as you left for school? If not, then hunters' contributing to "the feeding and providing homes" for the animals does not give them a moral right to kill the animals.
If this is our last communication, there's one last thought I'd like to share with you regarding ethics. Ethics must be based on some standard. There must be some principle you can apply to a practice or situation which will help you to decide whether it is ethical. One such principle that most people agree works well (and which is often associated with Christianity, but in fact goes back long before Christianity) is the "golden rule". Buddha is reputed to have stated it this way: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you." If you wouldn't want an animal (human or otherwise) to kill you due to your species' overpopulation problem, then it wouldn't be ethical -- according to this principle -- for you to kill an animal due to the overpopulation of its species.
--Steve
hey steve tom again,
Thank you for talking to me so consistantly. Over and over i hear you say that overpopulation is the only reason for hunting (or atleast its the only example you use(including in your site)) but hunting can be becuase of many other things as well. Food for example. Now in ur last response you say that vegetarianism is good and i have to say i strongly disagree. If you are going to use christianity as an example then look in the story of Noah and the Ark in which the lord says that all animals are here for us to use as food. Also after taking a full year of health taught by a proffesional i have learned that vegitarianism is HORRIBLE for your body. Meat provides many nutrients that our body needs to grow and stay healthy. I understand that there are supplements but nothing is better then the real thing. I would also like to point out that humans are eaten all the time. Shark, Wild Cat, and all sorts of predators have eaten humans. Its part of the food chain. It just seems that for now we have earned and worked our way to the top.
Hi Tom,
Vegetarianism is definitely NOT horrible for your body. Did you ever hear of someone needing a coronary bypass from eating
too many vegetables? No; health problems come from a meat-centered diet. Please see my article
Pain On Your Plate for full details on this subject.
Please be aware that the meat and dairy industries are amongst the biggest money-making businesses in the world today.
They have lobbies galore to spread their propaganda about how we "need" meat and dairy products. It's complete bullshit.
Let me tell you that I've been a vegetarian for most of my life (and consistently for the past 20+ years:
vegan for the past 10+ years). And I'm the healthiest person I know. I'm not alone: most people on this planet don't eat meat;
as my article points out the planet could never support 6 billion meat-eaters!
Every study ever done on the subject shows that vegetarians tend to live longer healthier lives.
I am not going to use Christianity as an example. Noah's flood is a myth which could not possibly have happened
(if you are interested in why I say this, please see my online Bible Commentary.)
I only mentioned Christianity before because some people think they invented the Golden Rule. (They didn't.)
What some anonymous writer claimed that a god said thousands of years ago has no bearing on the ethical choices we
should be making.
Meat does provide nutrients, as you say. But it's all secondhand (having been processed through an animal first).
There are no nutrients in meat that cannot be gotten directly from non-meat sources (else how do you suppose the
cow you eat managed to survive on her vegetarian diet?)
Yes, wild animals sometimes eat humans. These animals are carnivores who must eat meat to survive. You and I are not.
Nor should we be turning to wild animals for guidance on how to live humane ethical lives.
Since it takes 12 times more land to feed a meat-eating human than it does a vegetarian,
and since there are so many starving humans in the world, what do you think the most ethical food choice would be?
--Steve
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