What are your opinions about hunting?

For food or crop protection yes. As pure sport, no. I’m an avid target- shooter but only shoot critters nibbling at my garden.

I find that vegetables are a lot easier to catch, so I stick with those.

I like to shoot over a really good bird dog for sport. I usually try for wild turkey, which means I never kill anything because they are smarter than I am, but I have fun anyway.

Mostly unecessary. I will never understand how someone can get pleasure from killing. Never.

I think I’m indifferent, but I still don’t see a point in killing animals for poorly justified reasons. Didn’t some guy named Hitler do something similar to this lol??

For 15 years I gave a father/son team permission to hunt on my twenty acres. They ate the meat and said that they stayed within the hunting regulations. This December, we discovered that they were baiting their blinds with salt traps, which is illegal. There was a fracas with them, the game warden, the local cop and my neighbor who hunts. I kept out of it.

The upshot is that I will never let these guys on my land again. Too bad, since we are overrun with deer.

I don’t hunt,and I don’t have a problem with people that do.

I’m not sure I understand the question. Oh the title sure, but what does the explanation have to do with it? Are you asking how I feel about people like Dick Cheney who go on canned quail hunts or about traditional hunting for subsistence with primitive weapons?

I’m fine with the latter, entirely opposed to the former, and somewhere in between with everything in between.

Never touched a firearm in my life, but I really couldn’t care less about hunting. People kill animals for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is food. And I won’t even say “for survival”, because we’re perfectly able to survive without eating meat. I absolutely choose to eat meat, because I enjoy it. Thus, how can I condemn people who kill animals themselves?

That being said, calling it a “sport” is absurd in the extreme. A sport is when two parties of relatively equal intelligence and skill enter into a willing competition. Hunting won’t be a sport until you can genetically engineer a buck with human intelligence and opposable thumbs.

@MrItty is that a personal attack? It’s called a sport because we speak the English language. You don’t get to make up your own meanings, unless you are a schizophrenic. Are you?

@liminal your documentary reminded me of a 60s movie DH enjoys watching when it is shown on TV, The Naked Prey

It’s set in Africa and Cornell Wilde is the prey. Very little dialogue, lots of running.

About hunting, it doesn’t appeal to me on a personal level, but I don’t have any issues with those who eat what they kill. Hunting solely for thrills/fun bothers me even though I have brothers who are into it big time. It’s one of the those topics among many we have learned to avoid at family gatherings.

Complete apathy if truth be told. Nazi hunters, now your talking. Shoot them sick old fuckers twice.

@MagsRags I’ve been thinking of that movie, related to the very topic of persistence hunting, but didn’t know what it was called. You saved me a Fluther question, thanks!

I live in an area supporting over 100 deer per sq. mile. WAY beyond the carrying capacity of the undeveloped area surrounding us. Because I live on the edge of the city, I am not permitted to shoot deer even on my own property. Next year, the city has passed an edict that permits limited hunting within city limits. Our Neighborhood Association has approved several yards (one is mine) that have no fences as sites for deer stands and we will share the stands to defend our gardens under a nuisance permit to the association. I intend to eat venison next winter.

@MagsRags I think I must find this movie!

@dpworkin No, it’s not a personal attack because I didn’t read any responses before I posted. It’s my personal opinion that calling hunting a “sport” is idiotic. If you take offense at that, I really can’t do anything about it.

Yes, I understand the dictionary definition of the word “sport” includes all sorts of activities, including hunting. That doesn’t change my opinion that using the same word to describe hunting as you use to describe an actual athletic competition like baseball or soccer is absurd.

Chalk it up as yet another thing idiotic about the English language, if you prefer. I don’t intend any personal attacks against you or any particular individual in this issue.

Hunting for food to survive, okay. Hunting for sport, not okay. And by the way, I can’rt imagine many people in the U.S. need to hunt for food to survive.

@Austinlad What about hunting for food that you don’t need? Hunting for food because you like the taste, or because you want to throw a great big Venison party with all your friends and family?

If that’s as equally “not okay” as hunting for “sport”, how does that reconcile with buying meat at the grocery store?

Since we’ve eliminated most of the apex predators in the United States, hunting is a necessity to control the population of large ungulates. The alternatives are killing them all or capturing the females and implanting birth control. Given the environmental impacts of cattle farming it seems that hunting and eating deer with reasonable limits is an environmentally sound way of acquiring meat and is less costly and complex than administering birth control.

My thinking on this has evolved over the past few years. Killing almost anything is anathema to me and I can’t imagine ever wanting to do it. However, I have read novels in which hunting played a big part and also writers, like Michael Pollan, who feel that if you’re going to eat meat, you should be prepared to kill and clean it. I am also very aware of the problems with over-abundances of wild animals in over-populated areas and the need for culling. So, while it still personally repugnant to me, I can understand its usefulness to an extent and maybe, if I live a few more years, I might even understand the pleasures.

@MrItty, I take your point. But like @janbb, my feelings about killing for food have changed over the years to the point that I sometimes think about becoming a vegan.

I use to hunt, back before I hunted men. Now, I don’t hunt anything, although I have no problem with those who do. I do, however, own two pistols and have a concealed carry permit. Regardless of political idiocy… I mean correctness… the world is still a dangerous place.

Although I would never want to do it, I know people who have done it and I don’t mind it as long as people aren’t hunting endangered animals. So in other words, hunting elephants for ivory? Screw that.

I’m not a vegetarian, so it should follow that I am okay with killing animals for food. Which I am. Doesn’t mean I personally want to do it. And I’m against the whole notion of “anyone who’s not a vegetarian should kill their own food”. I suppose if it became truly dire, I would. But at this point, no.

@Snarp your comment made me think of Lewis Black talking about Cheny. (Warning video contains lots of swearing.) I’m glad you were able to connect some dots through the haze of such fierce ambiguity.

In this day and age and in most cultures it is unecessary but it would be hypocritical of me (as a meat eater) to say I was completely against it. I don’t agree with hunting for pure pleasure though!

Only for food!
And the way those guys do it is real and you know that that is their only way to survive.
So only if u must…
Modern people wouldn’t and shouldn’t kill animals

@RAWRxRandy If you could have seen what those Fuzzy, happy little Walt Disney caricatures of animals have done to my yard the last several years, I think you might find the primal urge. All my life I’ve only been a paper puncher, but now they have assaulted my defenseless tomato’s it’s on.. :-)

I only agree with hunting when it is needed for survival. People going out and killing creatures just for the sport of it is wrong.

I’m fine with it if you eat it. Yeah, we don’t need to do it to survive, but I bet people save a ton of money shooting it themselves, and taking care of the meat themselves instead of going to the supermarket. If you don’t eat it then don’t kill it.

@tinyfaery . . . Where did this question mention anything about pleasure.

—you are stereotyping and I find it very unbecoming_

@Blondesjon uh. Several people have mentioned hunting for “sport”. I think that pretty clearly implies enjoying the activity. People don’t generally have hobbies in which they don’t take pleasure.

@MrItty . . . The OP’s inquiry.

—hey look I got the whisper thing right_

fuck

@Blondesjon: You got it half-right. _—

@Blondesjon The OP’s inquiry was “What are your opinions on hunting?” Some people have offered their opinion that they do it for sport, ie for pleasure. Others have offered their opinion that they find hunting for recreation distasteful.

What is your issue with these opinions?

I am not a fan of sport hunting, which focuses on killing the best specimens of a species.

I would not hunt unless I needed to to stay alive.

I don’t feel I have the right to ban subsistence hunting or fishing under any circumstances.

Hunters do not require my approval to hunt nor do they want it.

I support rigorous enforcement of hunting and fishing laws and I am in favour of more severe penalties for violators.

@MrItty . . . There is no issue. I was taking a poke at @tinyfaery because I haven’t in a while and we tend to do that to each other,

I don’t care who hunts, what they hunt, or how they hunt. If I had my way I would be allowed to teach a chimpanzee how to use a .30/.30 so that it could do my hunting for me.

My father and I have been hunting for awhile and I think it is a bit more humane, at least where the deer are involved. Reducing the popultion means more food for the animals and less will starve during the winter. I also don’t understand hunters who don’t eat the meat. It’s delicious!

Hunting is one of my all time favorite activities.

My usual harvest of 2 deer (plus a couple of turkeys) generally supplies my family with the vast majority of our red meat supply for a year. Additionally, because we practice good wildlife management we play a beneficial role in the maintenance of healthy populations of the game species on our property.

From a broader perspective it is a win win situation. We hunters enjoy excellent recreation and get to feed our families meat that came from a free range animal free of hormones or antibiotics that lived a perfectly natural life until a relatively quick demise. The game species are assured water and a supplemental food supply to balance out the ups and downs of drought and/or harsh weather conditions and, through selective harvest, are left with healthier population numbers and excellent genetics.

At Japan citizens cannot own guns. At USA know many hunters however. Some people like hunting, I not try it yet, if can get gun permit may try it. My lover born USA, he hunt since boy, I am citizen of Japan, not legal I carry guns.

People who talk about what people did “two million years ago” are pretending to know something when they don’t.