Here’s a thought though… there are justifications for hunting that are real and quantifiable. Whether it’s to manage populations, control crop destruction, or protect livestock… these are all good reasons that hunting should be allowed.

But if we look at it honestly, how many of us actually hunt for those reasons?

Whether it’s the guy who goes out and shoots a deer only to donate the whole thing to a food bank, or the person who shoots coyotes and leaves them lay, isn’t it pretty disingenous to claim we’re doing it for the environment or to manage the populations? I mean, come on… we’re doing it because we love to hunt.

Some of us love to hunt from treestands, and others from the ridgetops. Some love to hunt from horseback, or from the seat of a quad, or on the soles of our boots. Some love the hunt in the great, wide-open, while others are happy to chase game on small parcels of land (fenced or not).

And no, that doesn’t get us any closer to an answer (if there is one) on this whole question of ethics. But I think it’s important to keep perspective… and to keep ourselves honest as we do it.

So, simply put, and ethical claim is any statement with “should” or “ought” in it. Folks cannot get away from ethics by saying that, “all ethics are personal, and so we shouldn’t be arguing about it.” or some such thing. That statement is an ethical statement, telling someone they shouldn’t talk about something. When we begin to discuss social issues, we immediately enter ethics discussions. We cannot avoid them.

So embrace them!

The reason people use the libertarian defense (that a person should stay out of others’ things) is usually to avoid the sacred cows. But you aren’t avoiding ethics, you are just enforcing a generally accepted ethical rule and using it to bludgeon people away from talk.

This talk necessitates sacred cow-tipping, whether it be the sacred cow of the “noble pursuit” (which I still believe exists), or the sacred cow of the varmint hunters who just shoot something to kill it.

For me, Eric hits it on the head: One shouldn’t kill something for no good reason (which doesn’t completely leave out varmint hunting). I’ll add that the good reasons to kill something need to outweigh the bad reasons. In that killing leaves an indelible mark on a person’s psyche, and in that it is the killing that is the ethically ambiguous act, we need to focus on it in ethics conversations about hunting.

I think that is another sacred cow in this conversation: killing is on the ethical border. No other sport has the ethical problem that hunting and fishing have – for example, nobody talks about the ethics of basketball hoop heights, but we do about game preserve fence heights.

Sure, I avoid the question of good and bad reasons, for now.

I do have to disagree with you on the statement about science not supporting the stewardship. Science is not the problem. When you talk to scientists who actually do the work, not the new breed that quotes from book upon book (and often doesn’t hunt or even fish…yet work for DFG??), without hardly any field experience, you get the innaccurate statements.

But, from those naturalists, scientists and biologists who actually do the work in the field, they’re in full agreement about the importance of game management and its importance to wildlife conservation. The sad part is that no matter what research they come up with, it’s always under the control of people in cities who have no knowledge and understanding of wildlife management or conservation, much more than having perhaps a cat in their urban apartment. That’s the insanity: that through the voting system, game management policies that were originally controlled strictly through departments of natural resources are now controlled by public and emotional opinion.

That’s why I get so furious when I read some blogs where the blogger evidently writes from such a lack of knowledge so evidently just an emotional level–and there’s no excuse for it! Newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs. Good blogs have a big void to fill…and all it takes a little phone call to a source at DFG or a university science department and get a quote…is that so hard to do?

With this new generation of hunters who are food-base because of Michael Pollan’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma, we have a potential to bring hunting back into the socially accepted and more importantly, socially understood place in society, or, we have the opportunity through lazy reporting (and yes, a blog, at least a good reporting–even if it’s more like a weekly column/opinion) to do some great good if we bloggers who are willing to take all this as a responsibility to hunting and wildlife conservation to contact the right people and do the right research, and not just type off the top of our heads about something that has suffered for so many years because of some very poor reporting by journalists in the mainstream.

…I’m happy to say that Phillip is one of those bloggers/columnists who does do that due diligence in doing the research…

Cheers,
Cork
http://corksoutdoors.com/blog/about/

Instead of reference to anthropologists, I’d really like to see more comments by biologists, game wardens and naturalists (or at least comment by those who have actually interviewed these people indepth) who actually pay the dues in the field and have been so ignored in places like California and even in Oregon, that’s now trying to fix a cat problem run wild because of political correctness that led to the removal of dogs for hunting bear and mountain lion.

When we mature above the initial romanticization of hunting and look at it for what it is (an environmentally/ecologically important activity that results in death), the question of “ethics” doesn’t come up–other than to make the animals demise as quick as possible. I’d say as painless, too, but trapping is an important tactic, and that’s not painless in anyway shape or form. What does come up is whether a game/animal population can be preyed up and in what number, by the greatest predator on the planet.

…Yes, Holly, there are too many people on the planet and it’s a good thing everyone doesn’t hunt….I find it ironic that Charlton Heston wrote a plug for my 2004 Vietnam prison memoir, and that he starred in “Soylent Green”, and frankly, looking at the human population from the pov of a biologist really freaks me out!

Cheers,
Cork
http://corksoutdoors.com/blog/about/

Perfect, I think you’ve got the gist of it. That is, to me, the crux of the matter.

And Arthur, I think that’s what I was getting at… that the deeper we dig, the more we’ll bring to the surface that’s been pretty happily lying there. Let sleeping dogs lie… isn’t that the thing?

Which brings me to Eric’s point. I absolutely agree that, as long as the discussion is about utilization then we’re on relatively solid ground. But… and here’s one of those cows… what about hunting for game that isn’t utilized? What about predator hunting, varmint hunting, and similar pursuits? I’ve heard arguments, but not strong ones. How do we reconcile those guys for the non-hunters? Or do we toss them under the bus?

It sounds like I’m making light, but I really am not.