In my Internet rambles the other day, I came across this blog site and a post condemning “canned hunting“. (Edited to add: I think I actually stumbled onto this from a link on the Hunting Pressure blog, one of the newer additions to my blog roll.) After adding a couple of my own responses to the comments (I used my own name), I thought that maybe some of you might like to go take a look, and add your own two cents’ worth… pro or con.
Now, if you haven’t jumped out already, I’m only gonna offer a little bit of my own perspective here. My response in the other blog’s comments repeats much of it.
Canned hunts as they are so often portrayed in the media and by anti-hunters are a blight on the sport of hunting. This includes the example described in the aforementioned blog, where a leopard is drugged, then released from a cage for the “hunter” to shoot. Most states have outlawed this kind of behavior, and rightly so. Drugging the animal, or shooting it in an enclosure with no chance of escape is pretty ugly stuff… although I must say that it’s no uglier than the commercial slaughterhouse.
What is unfortunate is the way the term “canned hunt” is so loosely and inaccurately applied to so many hunting practices, from game ranch operations to shoot-em-in-the-cage parties.
The stereotype is perpetuated by the anti-hunters, because they recognize what a divisive issue it is, even in the hunting community. Unfortunately, the biggest reason for this division is a lack of knowledge about what game ranches really are, versus what a true “canned hunt” is. Most hunters, when asked, respond with disdain that they’d never hunt a game ranch, even though they’ve never even seen one… much less tried hunting on one. The problem is further complicated by this “my ethics are better than your ethics” attitude that seems so rife in our community (crossbow vs vertical bow, inline vs. exposed hammer muzzleloaders, etc.).
Hunters may not all find game ranch hunting to be their cup of tea, but let’s think about this for a moment. Many of the same folks who decry high fence hunts are still perfectly happy to sit in a tree stand over a food plot or bait pile. Others will hunt their animals driven by hounds (human or canine) from their beds and hiding places. Yet others think nothing of sniping from hundreds of yards away as the animal wanders oblivious to their presence.
So come on, where DO you draw the line?
Personally, I’ll go on the record that I have no problem with someone who chooses to hunt and kill inside a high-fence operation or game ranch, as long as the animals on the place are treated humanely (not drugged, caged, or artificially stimulated “dangerous game”). I see ranched game animals as just another form of livestock, and as long as they are humanely despatched, then I don’t see any issue with it.
At the same time, I don’t put much stock in “trophy” animals taken from enclosures. Sure, they can be great specimens and worth admiring for that. I really enjoy the skins and horns from my Texas exotics. They look cool, and the skins are wonderful coverings on my office chair. The horns from my blackbuck are a great conversation piece, but I don’t try to fool anyone that taking them was any great feat.
I do take issue with the individuals who artificially inflate their own egos with tales of prowess inside a high fence… well, to me they’re buffoons. But then, the world is full of buffoons in all fields of endeavour. What’s one more?
Seems to me hunters are like athletes these days in that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard – athletes because they’re role models; hunters because we are a politically endangered species.
What that means is we always need to think about how our actions will be regarded by a public that is, at best, not knowledgeable about hunting, and at worst, hostile to it.
I saw that item you talked about, regarding drugged exotic animals, and it is of course reprehensible.
That sais, I’m not sure where I stand on high-fence hunts. Clearly, these are not hunts in the fair-chase sense of the word. And the risk is that these hunts make it look like the main point is getting your jollies killing animals, not acquiring meat or participating in habitat preservation.
But on moral grounds, I’ll take high-fence hunts over factory farming as a means of acquiring meat any day. And I don’t think it’s ground we can afford to cede right now, unless we want to succumb to PETA’s worldview.