Why do we murder animals?

[Engineer]

On a simple end note, I would say the majority of these so-called hunters kill animals for entertainment.

I knows lots of hunters and not a single one hunt (or fish for that matter) that don't eat what they kill. I've had deer jerky, deer-b-que, sloppy doe's, deer sausage, deer steaks, deer burgers and more....all from the hunters at work. Don't know anyone that hunts simply for the 'sport' of it. Not saying that 'sport' isn't a part of what they are doing, it's not the only part.

 

[Markbnj]

I would say you're completely wrong.

I don't have any facts to back that up...but I'd say that makes us even.

Well.... since nobody in the U.S., at least, needs to kill for food, then it must be something else, right? Even if you eat what you take, and I bet the majority do, it's not a matter of need. Personally, as long as the animal is not killed _simply_ for sport, I'm ok with it.

As for gators, OP does know, I assume, that they occasionally kill people? Sometimes their numbers need to be thinned just from a management perspective, which is why there is a legal season on them.

 

[coxmaster]

Well.... since nobody in the U.S., at least, needs to kill for food, then it must be something else, right? Even if you eat what you take, and I bet the majority do, it's not a matter of need. Personally, as long as the animal is not killed _simply_ for sport, I'm ok with it.

As for gators, OP does know, I assume, that they occasionally kill people? Sometimes their numbers need to be thinned just from a management perspective, which is why there is a legal season on them.

They are also very delicious, so hunting for meat isn't out of the question. Plus they are used for all sorts of other things

 

[SlitheryDee]

I don't really understand the killing for sport. I've hunted deer and doves and wild boar before. I stopped because it doesn't really do anything for me. I never thought it was enjoyable even once. Make no mistake, I'll kill the shit out any animal if it threatens me or looks like it might threaten me, or if I'm hungry and can't find a supermarket, or if I am sufficiently inconvenienced by its presence. Its not that I have any tender feeling about animals. Its just that I would never kill them for fun. It isn't a pastime I care about or understand.

Naturally this makes me wonder about all you people who always worry about the welfare of animals. What's in it for you? I don't understand you any more than I do the trophy hunters.

 

[Markbnj]

They are also very delicious, so hunting for meat isn't out of the question. Plus they are used for all sorts of other things

They definitely are. I'm not sure, in general, that they are more delicious than a 14-ounce ribeye from Costco, though. I eat venison a couple of times a year, and it isn't generally available in stores, so if you want to eat it and you don't know a hunter with some to spare, what are you going to do? But I can't pretend I _need_ venison. I _want_ venison. Economists will say there's a difference.

 

[Pulsar]

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's probably rooted in truth.

I would like to go hunting sometime, but I'd like it to be a persistence hunt where I run something down over 4 hours and then kill it with a knife. It'd be more about appreciating the difficulty and the taking of a life for sustenance than pleasure or to go kill something.

I also have a pie-in-the-sky idea that everyone should have to kill one of whatever animal they want to eat. Want to eat beef? Gotta bleed out a steer and watch it die. I think people would eat less meat (but still enough) and not waste that last bit of hamburger.

A lot of folks who live in the country agree with you. My kids, 8, 10, and 12, clean their own fish. They've also helped dress out a deer, and last year we took them to the butcher to take care of getting us half a cow.

They absolutely LOVE cleaning the fish, getting its heart, putting salt on it, and watching it beat. (Try it if you fish - it's really cool). It's really educational to see how it works. They also use the eyeballs and female eggs for bait. My son caught a catfish yesterday that he wanted to stuff. It's the biggest fish he ever caught plus the only catfish anyone in our family has caught. But at $10 a linear foot for stuffing and mounting, I'd rather just eat it!

 

[Brigandier]

Why do animals murder other animals? Why do animals murder plants?

Don't say for eating, because that's not the case. Hell, most plant matter animals eat isn't even used, and the common household cat is an absolute sociopath.

Also, murder doesn't count if the murdered is homeless.

 

[Pulsar]

There is little skill or danger in modern hunting. All safe n cozy in their camo gear, behind a rifle. That's not hunting like a predator, that's just waiting for their pussy to get wet so they can snack on jerky to feed their fat face. Killing animals as a need for survival like any other predator is hunting. What they do today is just personal entertainment, bragging rights and ways to make them more obese.

False and True. True, there is little danger. False, in that there is a ton of skill involved. If your goal is to simply bag something and come back, there's no skill involved. But it's also not an accident that same guys over and over again come home with HUGE deer/game/pheasant/turkey. Scouting the land, watching the animals move, finding bed-down points, covering your own scent, then actually hitting what you want from a long distance all take skill that a lot of people simply don't have.

It's the difference between driving a car and racing Nascar. Everyone thinks it's easy till they try it.

 

[KillerCharlie]

Don't we realize that the difference between killing a deer and a human isn't that great?

Hahaha the people that think that are the people that become serial killers.

 

[DrPizza]

Well.... since nobody in the U.S., at least, needs to kill for food, then it must be something else, right? Even if you eat what you take, and I bet the majority do, it's not a matter of need. Personally, as long as the animal is not killed _simply_ for sport, I'm ok with it.

As for gators, OP does know, I assume, that they occasionally kill people? Sometimes their numbers need to be thinned just from a management perspective, which is why there is a legal season on them.

They definitely are. I'm not sure, in general, that they are more delicious than a 14-ounce ribeye from Costco, though. I eat venison a couple of times a year, and it isn't generally available in stores, so if you want to eat it and you don't know a hunter with some to spare, what are you going to do? But I can't pretend I _need_ venison. I _want_ venison. Economists will say there's a difference.

Nobody needs to kill for food, yet you eat ribeye's? Surely you don't think that those animals fling themselves off cliffs so that our grocery stores may be stocked.

Some people go to big chain supermarkets, where we hear about "100,000 pounds of ground beef recalled because..." All that beef - running through the same grinders between cleanings.

I know that the meat I'm eating lived a healthy life, in a pretty free environment, was killed quickly, the meat was prepared properly, and is healthier than beef. (And, imho, tastes better, though that is about the only subjective part.) Plus, for about $80 in license fees, I can have 3 or 4 deer in my freezer, and get a lot of great exercise & fresh air, while other people's lives consist of work, go home, watch tv, sleep, repeat.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I knows lots of hunters and not a single one hunt (or fish for that matter) that don't eat what they kill. I've had deer jerky, deer-b-que, sloppy doe's, deer sausage, deer steaks, deer burgers and more....all from the hunters at work. Don't know anyone that hunts simply for the 'sport' of it. Not saying that 'sport' isn't a part of what they are doing, it's not the only part.

I'm of the mind that they all hunt pretty much for the sport of it. I don't care though. I benefit from their enjoyment of hunting by getting to eat lots of venison. You have to admit that their giving away of meat has to fulfill some kind of animal provider impulse that is is probably connected to their desire to hunt in the first place. There are people who like to kill stuff in the same way we like to play PC games. Its their entertainment, and I consider it to be as valid a form of entertainment as any I happen to enjoy. I manage to do this by virtue of not caring whether the animals they hunt live or die. Fortunately it turns out that modern hunters are quite aware of their impact on animal populations and carefully manage their harvesting for the most part, so I wouldn't have any kind of species extinction argument even if I cared to make it.

Quite honestly I don't know what the problem is. Let em hunt if they want to.

 

[DigDog]

i guess if one was to nitpick, animals killing animals would be murder.

 

[Broheim]

as much as people would like to think otherwise we're still the exact same cavemen as our forefathers. Of course hunters (primarily men) enjoy hunting, it's sort of what we were bred to do...

 

[mammador]

Dixie people need meat too!!

You can't raise cattle in swamps. 😀

 

[Markbnj]

Nobody needs to kill for food, yet you eat ribeye's? Surely you don't think that those animals fling themselves off cliffs so that our grocery stores may be stocked.

I'm not confused over where meat comes from, even though I don't live on a farm and I don't have goats.

 

[sourn]

How about this you go put your arm in an alligator's mouth and tell me how innocent he is you freaking moron.

People kill animals, because people are animals and guess what animals kill each other.

 

[Ganiy]

People kill animals simply to eat, just because of hunting hobbies as well as for entertainment. I do not hunt and do not kill animals.

 

[mammador]

Why do animals murder other animals? Why do animals murder plants?

Don't say for eating, because that's not the case. Hell, most plant matter animals eat isn't even used, and the common household cat is an absolute sociopath.

Also, murder doesn't count if the murdered is homeless.

Last I heard, cats were obligate carnivores. They're also non-sapient (felis sapiens?) so they can't help it.

I don't think eating meat is wrong, nor hunting per se (for culls/humane reasons, not for sport). But we can make an informed choice when and what we kill. Cats can't, since they've been doing it since Smilodon's days.

 

[mammador]

How about this you go put your arm in an alligator's mouth and tell me how innocent he is you freaking moron.

People kill animals, because people are animals and guess what animals kill each other.

So that's cattle and horses eat other animals, eh?

 

[mammador]

as much as people would like to think otherwise we're still the exact same cavemen as our forefathers. Of course hunters (primarily men) enjoy hunting, it's sort of what we were bred to do...

Wow... I never realised morning I hunted some buffalo this morning with my stone hand axe, instead of going with my gf to the local store for breakfast. You'd the Neolithic revolution never happened, and just the beliefs of anthropologists...

 

[Sinsear]

OP is an idiot

 

[mammador]

There is little skill or danger in modern hunting. All safe n cozy in their camo gear, behind a rifle. That's not hunting like a predator, that's just waiting for their pussy to get wet so they can snack on jerky to feed their fat face. Killing animals as a need for survival like any other predator is hunting. What they do today is just personal entertainment, bragging rights and ways to make them more obese.

er... does anybody NEED to hunt? Literally anywhere in the world bar some lost Amazonian tribe or San Bushmen? I doubt there are many people who don't have agriculture.

I think people who hunt for sport compensate for lacking it down there, so they prove they're the man by shooting a grizzly or polar bear.:thumbsdown:

 

[balloonshark]

Ok, I don't know of anything short of a battleship cannon that could literally explode a deer. I'm calling BS on that. Large caliber rounds could certainly rip legs off, but it's not going to cause a deer to "explode".

Maybe they were talking about the heart exploding. I've also seen a large caliber round leave an awfully large hole on the backside of a dear before. It wasn't pretty. The good news was the dear probably didn't suffer long.

 

[Number1]

Ok, I don't know of anything short of a battleship cannon that could literally explode a deer. I'm calling BS on that. Large caliber rounds could certainly rip legs off, but it's not going to cause a deer to "explode".

As for reasons, like others have said, an overwhelming majority of hunters (deer in particular) *are* actually eating (or donating the meat) the animal. They aren't head hunting, cutting off a massive set of horns and tossing a carcass in the woods. They do actually process the meat and do something useful with it.

Where I live herd management is huge. Deer populations are wildly out of control. We've killed off or shoo'ed away all natural predators and now they just breed without abandon and terrible diseases start cropping up. Chronic wasting disease..AKA mad cow disease is one such disease that has wrecked havoc on deer. To the point where state conservation departments (Wisconsin is a an example) have issued kill on site orders for deer in afflicted areas. Humans (and not just the hunting ones) have completely screwed up the food chain of many animals and hunting is one of the primary ways to keep those in check.

A headshot will explode a deer's head. If you want proof, just search "dear head explosion" on Google. I won't post the link, it's disturbing.

 

[Red Storm]

people who really think like this terrify me.

A lot of pet owners do think like that, which is scary.