Let's build a coherent philosophical and ethical case for hunting.

[bewsher500]

Chaps, there is some very useful discussion here but I fear that wild vs. farmed meat is not actually quite on topic. It's related and relevant, but it's attempting to answer a different question.

Ah but it is..

Post #2

I will be shooting that deer because I want to eat it, rather than settling for "Factory meat"

(with respect to Finnbear and the original context, but it raises the comparison of the two)

I don't believe comparing what we eat in such small quantities and the vast supply of the industries is in our interest in defending our position

 

[Trufflehunting]

(Just to be clear, I'm not being a contrarian for the sake of it, I'm trying to distil arguments that are usable for society at large, hence the need to challenge them)

You have been sampling some distillate, I suspect and you need a little time to collect your thoughts before going into print

 

[2130martin]

Chaps, there is some very useful discussion here but I fear that wild vs. farmed meat is not actually quite on topic. It's related and relevant, but it's attempting to answer a different question.

Yes it is relevant,I suggest to the anti/neutrals that will listen that, just look at every pheasnt shot as one less broiler chicken on a supermarket shelf, then go into the details of the journey each bird takes,I would rather be a pheasant everytime........

 

[western woodsman]

"Why is it morally justifiable for you specifically to kill that particular deer"?
I welcome this sort of question. We do need to get our thinking caps on to survive as stalkers.
My answer is simply that man is part of nature and has been from the start. In fact our very essence has been moulded in evolutionary terms by hunting. Now that homo sapiens has become so utterly dominant as a world species, and this allied with the idea that killing is not good(killing people that is), this leads all too obviously to the simplicity that killing anything is not good. But as hunters we are aware of the reality of wildlife ecosystems as they exist and function, we are in a minority of the many who have no direct knowledge the balances that have to be held for any natural system to survive. Deer need some form of predation. If the natural predators are not there on account mainly of our cultivated wildernesses where most wildlife in the UK lives with livestock, then we have to fulfil our million year old natural role, but hopefully do it with some intelligence and grace. The main problem is the general public's utter disconnect from the realities of the natural world where animals' lives are imagined to be lived out as in a children's bedtime book. Deer need to be managed to survive, it is about as basic as that. If not, they will overpopulate and starve out cyclically. And poachers will clean out the rest as no one is watching or has a direct stake in it. Deer have evolved to live with wolves originally. The deer need us, we are their wolves.

 

[Pedro]

Pine Marten, I think you have a noble cause here and I wish you well. I think you (or anyone suitably informed) will indeed experience success in being able to persuade people with open minds of the benefits of taking wild animals for food and that the practice can be managed in such a way that this benefits the species involved, the hunters (by which I mean hunters/shooters/fishers) and those that eat the meat.

Always, however will be the major problem of persuading antis. I really think there is a very vocal hardcore that will never accept any arguments however reasoned and truthful. So please don't use that as a criteria for success. But that is by no means a reason to not continue with your noble mission...

 

[Taff]

Super dairies have been established in the UK in which the cows live indoors for their 250 day lactation. I daresay this does not compare with free ranging cattle production down under.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-11074966

cows living indoors for 250 day lactation?, cows in the UK live indoors for a minimum of 150 days they call it winter, a 1000 cows is not a lot when divided between two units, average herds here would be between 4-600 with many in the 1000s

 

[Marcel]

Fantastic thread. One question that springs to mind: Could the human hunter ever being seen ethical if he or she 'collects' his or her trophy as well?

 

[Pine Marten]

Summary Number 1: "Why is it morally justifiable for you specifically to kill that particular deer"?

I’m going to make an attempt at summarising the story so far from my point of view, which means that some of your very valid points have been parked for now as they don’t answer the immediate questions I had, but they will be brought out again for subsequent sections of this exercise.

The original question was "Why is it morally justifiable for you specifically to kill that particular deer"?

Assumption: the deer dies instantly, there is no physical suffering involved, that’s a separate matter.

I’m going to divide this into two parts:
1. The impact on the individual animal, and possibly other affected individual animals, of being killed
2. Then the impact, good or bad, on the hunter that killed it.

So, what is the impact on the deer or being killed, and assuming that it’s the one of the two actors involved that comes off worst,

2. What is the nature of the potential harm that the deer suffers?

The nub of it is that by killing the deer, the hunter deprives it of the rest of its’ life. He also might deprives other animals of the dead individual’s participation in their lives. This is the impact that is at the root of stories such as Bambi or Babar the Elephant, where a dependent juvenile is deprived of its’ mother. That resonates very strongly with the public at large, and I think justifiably so in view of the suffering caused to an abandoned juvenile, who will generally die of starvation or predation quite quickly afterwards. I don’t think many hunters would be pleased with such an outcome either. Beyond that, it would seem that some of the “higher” mammals do entertain some form of interpersonal relationship and in particular I have read that elephants have been witnessed behaving in ways that we might interpret as grief around the body of a dead individual. On the other hand, most animals seem to be pretty indifferent to the whole thing. But I think there’s a case to be made for some animals suffering to some temporary degree from the death of another. The point here is that a shrimp and an elephant will live through this very differently.

Back to the individual animal that has been killed. I’m not aware that there’s much evidence that most animals feel any connection to their future selves. Therefore animals won’t experience the distress that humans do at the prospect of their own demise. They have no concept of losing anything because their life is cut short. However, one can argue that if one kills an animal in its’ prime, it has been deprived of what we could call the rest of its’ high quality life. The same cannot be said for an old animal who has been spared a slow and lingering death from starvation, predation or disease by being cleanly killed. Again, there’s a spectrum here in terms of what an animal has been deprived of according to its’ age and species. What I think is universal here is that killing an individual animal doesn’t result in very significant levels of harm or suffering that it experiences, with the exception of that caused to a juvenile dependent.

It remains to balance what harm is caused with the benefit derived by the hunter.

So the next question is:

2. “What benefit does the hunter derive from killing a specific animal?”.

Assumption: This is not a survival situation. The reality is that none of us need to kill wild animals for food or self defence now. If we did, we wouldn’t have to agonise over the morality of hunting. This is killing an animal out of choice.

OK, just stopping for a philosophical breather here.

 

[caorach]

I think that having to justify your actions to others who hold opinions which differ from your own is wrong and philosophically flawed. The way it should work in a free society is that I do something I like, or consider necessary, which doesn't impact harmfully upon other people, and they mind their own business. The current national preoccupation with being offended, and being a victim, and having the right to tell other people what to do as a result is where the problem lies and is the part of society which lacks philosophical, logical or moral justification.

So, I don't have to justify anything I do but rather people who wish, with no reason, to interfere in my life should have to provide a detailed treatment of why they wish to do this and until it is shown that this treatment is valid and necessary for the good of humanity as a whole the law should oppose their actions and should also take the position that their only right is to mind their own business.

 

[howa243]

2. “What benefit does the hunter derive from killing a specific animal?”.

Assumption: This is not a survival situation. The reality is that none of us need to kill wild animals for food or self defence now. If we did, we wouldn’t have to agonise over the morality of hunting. This is killing an animal out of choice.

OK, just stopping for a philosophical breather here.

I think the biggest issue with this is one for recreation stalkers. If one can afford to purchase stalking, one can certainly afford to buy meat. So the eating of the meat as a consequence of the stalk, is no defence. The reason for the stalk is personal enjoyment.

 

[Pine Marten]

2. “What benefit does the hunter derive from killing a specific animal?”.

Assumption: This is not a survival situation. The reality is that none of us need to kill wild animals for food or self defence now. If we did, we wouldn’t have to agonise over the morality of hunting. This is killing an animal out of choice.

Any negative impact suffered by the hunter in killing a deer is by the nature of the usual outcome negligible, so I’m assuming that the hunter primarily benefits from killing the aforementioned deer. In a similar way to above, the question that results is “What is the nature of the benefit derived by the hunter from killing the deer”? I think there are two types of benefits here, the tangible, physical ones which are straightforward – meat, crop protection – and the much more personal ones which for want of a better word I’ll lump together under the term “happiness” as in “Life, Liberty and the pursuits of happiness”. Now that second part is much more complex, varied, and can mean a whole spectrum of completely different things from one hunter to the next. I suppose what brings it together is a sense of personal achievement, and different people take satisfaction from a variety of things, and the subsequent sharing of that feeling with others. In that sense, it partly mirrors the previous question in that it’s looking at the impact of killing the deer on other individuals in the hunter’s circle. Obviously that has a much bigger dimension for a social animal like us.

The nature of the personal satisfaction is complex and varied. There are those who primarily feel relief at a clean and painless kill, there are undoubtedly those who couldn’t care less and just like killing things. It’s not pleasant but it’s true and many in the general public suspect this to be the case for all of us, so we can’t ignore it. There are all the things that we discuss such as the satisfaction of spotting, identifying and coming up close to the animal, but in the end all of that lacks finality without the kill. And for many, including quite obviously myself, the sharing with others.

The point is though that whatever the nature of the happiness derived from the hunter and his direct entourage may be, it is severely undermined without the balancing moral impact of the practical benefits. If a hunter were to just leave a carcass to rot, I think that many would begrudge him or her their sense of achievement. The legitimacy of the derived happiness stems from the tangible benefits. At a very basic level, not eating a killed animal is wasteful. Even if the animal itself couldn’t care less. So killing more than you can eat or feed to others undermines the legitimacy of the enjoyment derived.

That doesn’t mean that things like breeding pheasants to shoot them aren’t justified, but the argument in their favour must come from elsewhere. Conversely, and as many have highlighted and experienced, a great many non-hunters have no real issue with killing a wild animal for food. In the end, that’s the foundation of our argument. Without it, our position is very problematic.

 

[Pine Marten]

I think that having to justify your actions to others who hold opinions which differ from your own is wrong and philosophically flawed. The way it should work in a free society is that I do something I like, or consider necessary, which doesn't impact harmfully upon other people, and they mind their own business. The current national preoccupation with being offended, and being a victim, and having the right to tell other people what to do as a result is where the problem lies and is the part of society which lacks philosophical, logical or moral justification.

So, I don't have to justify anything I do but rather people who wish, with no reason, to interfere in my life should have to provide a detailed treatment of why they wish to do this and until it is shown that this treatment is valid and necessary for the good of humanity as a whole the law should oppose their actions and should also take the position that their only right is to mind their own business.

Yes, I agree, the civil liberties argument will come up in a subsequent section. However in order to effectively use it, I think we first need to try to prove your assumption that we do no-one any significant harm. Or indeed no creature, because like it or not, people will ask that too.

 

[Pine Marten]

So the eating of the meat as a consequence of the stalk, is no defence. The reason for the stalk is personal enjoyment.

I agree to a point, please see post #51. I think that the eating of the meat makes the enjoyment justified in the eyes of most, but without it, the enjoyment seems unbalanced and undeserved. That said, there's a point here that we'll need to come back to. Whereas many, and notably in certain "anti" organisations, will accept reluctantly a practical need to kill wild animals, what they cannot accept is that anyone should derive enjoyment from it. At one extreme, this can lead to appalling suffering for certain animals, at the other, the logic leads to a professsionalisation of hunting where people shoot animals with their noses turned up.

 

[Pine Marten]

I suppose we need to deal with the next question which is more familiar territory: the environmental benefits and/or necessity of hunting, with reference both the the species concerned, lack of natural predation, impact on biodiversity, absence of balanced, real wilderness in the developed world, etc. I think for this part, we need to widen the argument from deer. I don't think grey partridges as a species derive much benefit from being shot for example, apart from the fact that the species is preserved in many places only because people want to hunt them. There's a question of sustainability here that takes us into agriculture and land use. Insofar as possible, could we please try and keep to principles that apply in all environments, recognising that the relative weight of different parts of the equation will vary from one place and time to another?

 

[western woodsman]

I would go back to sustainability. Natural ecosystems live on predation and evasion; these are some of the main driving forces of evolution and will exist long after Homo sapiens is no more. I think you, Pine Marten are tying yourself in knots for no real reason. I see sustainability as the key moral imperative now. Life must go on and all human activity must allow for this to happen- that is what I believe at any rate. Hunting, if sustainable and part of a balanced natural world, has an important role to play. I kill deer out of choice because various population groups of deer need to remain in balance. And I think that selective predation is the natural most morally upright way of doing this. Applying birth control or other such nonsense to wild animal populations is tantamount to making them into humans which they really to not want; in fact birth control applied to deer is in my opinion the same as their eradication as pests. Individual deer do not matter; the greater population and its health and welfare is the issue. As secondary reasons, I gain from killing deer: having access to venison and healthy meat, being out to hunt in the UK, being outdoors a lot, knowing other hunters, keeping up my outdoors skills and ways while living in London etc., but these are not crucial to the activity. And I say as I enjoy doing it and want to do it in a humane and right way, I am being most respectful to the deer I hunt. I would never sign up for a lamping exercise.

 

[caorach]

Yes, I agree, the civil liberties argument will come up in a subsequent section. However in order to effectively use it, I think we first need to try to prove your assumption that we do no-one any significant harm. Or indeed no creature, because like it or not, people will ask that too.

We don't need to prove anything - if someone thinks we are doing them significant harm then they need to provide evidence of that. This comes back to minding your own business - if I want to complain about people who object to stalking then I have to prove that they are having a significant negative impact upon me and not just state that I don't like what they do and it has to be stopped because I'm offended. If I just ignore them then they have no impact upon me at all, in my world they simply cease to exist. If others ignore the fact that I shoot deer, i.e. they mind their own business, then any problem around deer management cease to exist for them. So this is basically a matter of people making a problem by involving themselves in something which is nothing to do with them and the first duty of a free society is to tell such people where to go.

Some time back there was a bit of a fuss on this forum about compulsory training in Scotland to deal, it was claimed, with issues of safety, meat hygiene and animal welfare. I produced a freedom of information request to SNH asking for the records relating to recorded deaths involving firearms while stalking, recorded deaths from food poisoning from venison and recorded reports of an animal welfare problem caused by stalking or stalkers. They replied that there had never been a single report of any one of these events in any record that they, or anyone they knew of, held.

Why do I need to prove anything?

 

[Pine Marten]

Why do I need to prove anything?

Maybe you don't need to just now. But once day you may have to because others think you should, and it will be useful to have thought it through beforehand. But ideally, it won't come to that because you will have convinced them beforehand thanks to this exercise!

 

[Dalua]

Why do I need to prove anything?

Maybe you don't need to just now. But once day you may have to because others think you should, and it will be useful to have thought it through beforehand. But ideally, it won't come to that because you will have convinced them beforehand thanks to this exercise!

I thought you were all building a coherent philsophical and ethical case for hunting (sic).
Even assuming you do that, you'll be a very long way from proving anything - let alone proving it to intellectually equally- or better-equipped folk who hold the opposing view.

I suggest that, interesting though it is, this might be on a highway to nowhere. As so often seems to be the case, Caorach seems to me to be right.

The concepts of the rightness of killing creatures, whether for food, pest contol, sport or all of these; of the right to property and enjoyment of that property; of the right lawfully to own and use firearms: it seems to me that these are the things that permit stalking and shooting as practised in this country. None of them is exempt from intellectual challenge, but likewise none is without coherent arguments to support it.
How the arguments are weighed will be determined by the people doing the weighing; and with the law and government as it stands, the weighing is in favour of the status quo.
Change the law, change the government; the weighing of the same arguments may change.

Perhaps what we actually need is something more along the lines of advertising copy: which by carefully-crafted and straightforward appeal to the persuadable majority might allow the continuance of law and government which leave what most of us would consider fundamental rights unimpaired.

 

[Gzl]

I have read all posts with interest, and I would like to take issue specifically with the argument that deer need to be controlled and that the most humane way is to shoot them. This without doubt is the poorest excuse/argument which in turn fuels the antis fire against killing with guns. Let's face it if you were asked the question " how would you like to die? Take your chances on surviving until you are not fit to survive winter/finding food, or having some sharp shooter taking your life at any time, there can't be many out there who would honestly pick the latter when in their prime. And let's face it if man does not interfere animals die of starvation and disease all over the world every minute of the day. Take the example of Wildlife cameramen/naturalists observing a herd of elephants and a calf loses touch with its parents through weakness from drought, do they jump in and shoot it with a 270? Not likely because they are observing nature and the natural consequences of survival of the fittest and leave it to die.
We shoot Deer, pheasants, grouse, foxes, rabbits and all others because we get enjoyment from it, end of! Stop making feking excuses which hold no water.

 

[neutron619]

Take your chances on surviving until you are not fit to survive winter/finding food, or having some sharp shooter taking your life at any time, there can't be many out there who would honestly pick the latter when in their prime.

Well it's a bigger loss if you're young and healthy I guess, but I for one would still take the bullet through the heart. I've spent enough time and money at dentists having bad teeth (that I've tried to live with) to know that if I had the choice of starving with bad, worn out teeth, or going quietly and quickly without expecting it, I'd take the latter.

Whilst your argument is logical, it's force seems to rely on the idea that the deer would know that they were about to die or to be expecting it at least, which is a subtle form of anthropomorphism and really not relevant. Unlike me, as a human, the deer does not know that there is an alternative than it's default situation (i.e. do what it needs to eat, stay warm, breed, survive). It therefore has no concept of a "choice" between death at one point or death at another because it doesn't appear to anticipate that death could occur in any situation - be that a hunting situation or an encounter with a car bonnet or otherwise. It has a natural understanding of things which are dangerous to it or which may cause it pain - a wolf, a human - but this isn't the same as anticipating the nothingness of death, expecting it to occur or worrying that it could.

I hope that someone can draw the meaning I've implied out of that... :S