Hunting - For or Against?

[Slash]

I enjoy being in the wild and hunting as a sport however we use everything salvagable.

 

[tfed]

I enjoy being in the wild and hunting as a sport however we use everything salvagable.

You just nailed it,thats the zenith of any hunter. If you talk to any true hunter,they will say the exact same thing

 

[TheBook]

One of the gentlemen I work with is an avid hunter (and fisherman, but that's beside the point). He usually has very good luck in a deer season, and ends up with enough meat by the end to fill two deep freezers and have some left over. By the time spring comes around, half of that is gone to friends, coworkers, and family, and he still has enough to last until the next hunting season. He doesn't hunt solely bucks (males, the ones with antlers), and if a small deer comes within his bow sights, he lets it go. I've gone out with him a couple times, and it's really peaceful out in the woods. There's a reason he calls it his "happy place'.

 

[tfed]

I know in NY its illegal to sell or prepare and serve deer on a personal level (like not being a butcher). Is it the same in other states?

 

[Joel]

Hunting for fun and recreation has always seemed wrong to me. For survival however, I think it's ok.

I must ask, do you ever buy meat at a grocery store? Have you ever eaten at Mcdonalds or another similar fast food restaurant?

When you buy meat in a neat little package at the store, that's the end product of a cow being raised just to die. It's kept in a pen and can't move so that it gets as fat as possible. If it's a male, it's probably been castrated with no anesthetic, and one day it gets forced out of its pen with an electric prod, loaded on to a truck, and driven miles to a slaughterhouse. There it's forced in to the slaughterhouse with hundreds of cows, in a dark place, until it gets to the front of the line where a worker will zap it (stunning the animal), hang it by its hind leg, and slit it's throat.

Now picture a whitetail deer. It's lived in the woods its whole life, running and playing, and raising young if it's a female. It's been in the wild, and free for all its life, and one day a hunter fires his shotgun or rifle, and kills the deer nearly instantly, and without much (if any) suffering.

Which one sounds more wrong to you? I can understand vegans with an issue with hunting, but when people who eat meat from the grocery store or Mcdonalds are against it, that's really hypocritical. I do want to say I think hunting expressly for fun is wrong (shouldn't be illegal, but it is wrong IMO), by that I mean people who hunt critters just because, or shoot a deer and cut its head off for the trophy and take nothing else. But that really is a small minority of hunters. Most hunters I've met use almost every part of the animal they can.

 

[Joey D]

I know in NY its illegal to sell or prepare and serve deer on a personal level (like not being a butcher). Is it the same in other states?

As far as I know in the State of Michigan you can butcher a deer yourself as long as you aren't selling it. If you are selling it, or even charging for butchering services you need to be inspected by the state and maintain a log of animals coming in with tags. I've always taken my deer to a processor though, makes it easier and they run a sample to a lab to make sure it's TB free.

 

[tfed]

As far as I know in the State of Michigan you can butcher a deer yourself as long as you aren't selling it. If you are selling it, or even charging for butchering services you need to be inspected by the state and maintain a log of animals coming in with tags. I've always taken my deer to a processor though, makes it easier and they run a sample to a lab to make sure it's TB free.

If its like that in michigan,its gotta be similar all over

 

[Crispy]

I'm not really against hunting, unless it's uncontrolled. It was the main form of gaining food in the ancient days so I don't get whats so bad about it now.

Also I think that people have the right to protect themselves with weapons if needed. However that can get shady pretty quickly.

 

[Keef]

In Ohio deer hunting for sport or personal use is allowed, though you can't sell it. Rifle hunting is illegal, though you can use slugs and bows. Keep in mind the vast majority of hunting in Ohio takes place on private land, usually within rifle-bullet range of structures, houses, towns, etc.

 

[Eric.]

People that have something against hunting always puzzle me. I see no logical reason why hunting is bad as long as the animal population is conserved properly and the hunt is conducted safely.

Cause its mean! What'd that cute little deer/rabbit/squirrel do to you?!

 

[Joey D]

Cause its mean! What'd that cute little deer/rabbit/squirrel do to you?!

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

 

[Joel]

In Ohio deer hunting for sport or personal use is allowed, though you can't sell it. Rifle hunting is illegal, though you can use slugs and bows. Keep in mind the vast majority of hunting in Ohio takes place on private land, usually within rifle-bullet range of structures, houses, towns, etc.

Same thing in my county for deer, slugs, buckshot or bows. For hunting other stuff you can only use a .22 if you want a rifle.

 

[Eric.]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Sarcasm. That's the would-be tree-hugger's reasoning.

 

[daan]

It's kept in a pen and can't move so that it gets as fat as possible. If it's a male, it's probably been castrated with no anesthetic, and one day it gets forced out of its pen with an electric prod, loaded on to a truck, and driven miles to a slaughterhouse. There it's forced in to the slaughterhouse with hundreds of cows, in a dark place, until it gets to the front of the line where a worker will zap it (stunning the animal), hang it by its hind leg, and slit it's throat.

Yeah, because all cows everywhere live and die that way.

Our cows live in a field during the summer or in large barns during the winter that they're free to roam around in.

Your method of slaughter is for halal meat, and most cows in this part of the world are not slaughtered that way.

 

[Sach]

Cause its mean! What'd that cute little deer/rabbit/squirrel do to you?!

He made me hungry?

 

[Zenith]

Also I thought its face was so pretty that I decided that it would look good above my fireplace.

 

[Sach]

Also I thought its face was so pretty that I decided that it would look good above my fireplace.

Pretty much all of my cousins and uncles have taxidermy of some kind mounted on their walls. Ducks, deer heads, turkeys, bass...

 

[Hollidog]

I must ask, do you ever buy meat at a grocery store? Have you ever eaten at Mcdonalds or another similar fast food restaurant?

When you buy meat in a neat little package at the store, that's the end product of a cow being raised just to die. It's kept in a pen and can't move so that it gets as fat as possible. If it's a male, it's probably been castrated with no anesthetic, and one day it gets forced out of its pen with an electric prod, loaded on to a truck, and driven miles to a slaughterhouse. There it's forced in to the slaughterhouse with hundreds of cows, in a dark place, until it gets to the front of the line where a worker will zap it (stunning the animal), hang it by its hind leg, and slit it's throat.

Now picture a whitetail deer. It's lived in the woods its whole life, running and playing, and raising young if it's a female. It's been in the wild, and free for all its life, and one day a hunter fires his shotgun or rifle, and kills the deer nearly instantly, and without much (if any) suffering.

Which one sounds more wrong to you? I can understand vegans with an issue with hunting, but when people who eat meat from the grocery store or Mcdonalds are against it, that's really hypocritical. I do want to say I think hunting expressly for fun is wrong (shouldn't be illegal, but it is wrong IMO), by that I mean people who hunt critters just because, or shoot a deer and cut its head off for the trophy and take nothing else. But that really is a small minority of hunters. Most hunters I've met use almost every part of the animal they can.

This is pretty much where I stand on this as well.

See below for a very graphic representation:

 

[Joel]

Yeah, because all cows everywhere live and die that way.

Our cows live in a field during the summer or in large barns during the winter that they're free to roam around in.

Your method of slaughter is for halal meat, and most cows in this part of the world are not slaughtered that way.

That's why I asked if he's eaten at the grocery store or McDonalds. It might not necessarily be quite the same, but those cows don't have very good lives. As an aside, every year my family buys a half a cow's worth of meat from a local farmer, the cow lived in a grass field which is a 5 minute drive from my house. I'm not saying I think big meat production is wrong, but hunting is definitely the more humane alternative.

 

[Keef]

Yeah, because all cows everywhere live and die that way.

Our cows live in a field during the summer or in large barns during the winter that they're free to roam around in.

Your method of slaughter is for halal meat, and most cows in this part of the world are not slaughtered that way.

That'll be why the US is the largest beef producer in the world and the UK isn't even on the list.

 

[MarinaDiamandis]

That'll be why the US is the largest beef producer in the world and the UK isn't even on the list.

All the countries at the top of said list, including the U.S, have awful livestock welfare standards, so far as to be classed as animal abuse over here. The U.K is lucky in that it has some of the best, if not the best welfare standards in the world, and because of that we enjoy some of the tastiest, healthiest, grass-fed beef that can be picked up from even the largest, greediest supermarkets.

Plans to bring the U.S style of beef farming to the U.K didn't pass our welfare standards, and the same happened with the eastern european method of pork farming. I understand that increased food production is needed more than ever now, but sacrificing animal welfare to achive that goal is, in my opinion, wrong.

Generalisations shouldn't be made about the way meat is produced, as different countries follow different guidelines and legal/cultural requirements. For me, commercial meat production is a much touchier subject than hunting.

Still, commercial meat farming is irrelevant to this thread, except when used as comparison with hunting.

 

[Keef]

The U.K is lucky in that it has some of the best, if not the best [livestock] welfare standards in the world

The UK produced 882,000 tonnes (megagrams for people who don't mix imperial and metric for no good reason) of beef in 2007, a peak year. It consumed, applying 2002's per capita beef consumption to 2001's population, 4,679,620 megagrams.

Well, I was hoping to show that the US exports of bunch of beef to fill that 4/5 gap the UK has, but as it turns out we import a third of what we consume. We produce over 8,600,000 megagrams while we consume over 12,000,000 megagrams. But I guess a 1/3 gap is a helluva lot better than a 4/5 gap, especially considering that the US exports to its top five markets the same amount that the UK produces at all.

Apparently the US and Brazil combined produce about 45% of the world's beef. If we did it using organic methods - a profitable but unstable niche in the US - the world would starve.

Now I've got another question - if only 1/5 of the beef the UK consumes is actually made in the UK via their lovely methods, then what's to be said about the methods for which the other 4/5 is produced? Ya'll aren't among our top five export markets, so who fills your gap and how do they do it?

 

[niky]

It's produced in Uganda.

Of course, the real ethical thing here, would be to stop eating beef, completely.

 

[88FoxBodyFan]

In that case, I'll be unethical 'til the day I die.

 

[Villain]

Of course, the real ethical thing here, would be to stop eating beef, completely.

I prefer bison.

 

[Sach]

I prefer bison.

I can get bison burgers here on the cheap.

 

[Villain]

Nice. We have to order the meat online. When I move to Colorado in 5 fives I'm going to have a freezer in my garage that is stocked with bison meat. I like the taste better than beef and the meat is supposed to be about as lean as chicken breast. Can't go wrong with that!

 

[Sach]

I'm likely moving to Texas in a year or so... we'll see how THAT works out in the meat department.

 

[MarinaDiamandis]

The UK produced 882,000 tonnes (megagrams for people who don't mix imperial and metric for no good reason) of beef in 2007, a peak year. It consumed, applying 2002's per capita beef consumption to 2001's population, 4,679,620 megagrams.

Well, I was hoping to show that the US exports of bunch of beef to fill that 4/5 gap the UK has, but as it turns out we import a third of what we consume. We produce over 8,600,000 megagrams while we consume over 12,000,000 megagrams. But I guess a 1/3 gap is a helluva lot better than a 4/5 gap, especially considering that the US exports to its top five markets the same amount that the UK produces at all.

Apparently the US and Brazil combined produce about 45% of the world's beef. If we did it using organic methods - a profitable but unstable niche in the US - the world would starve.

Now I've got another question - if only 1/5 of the beef the UK consumes is actually made in the UK via their lovely methods, then what's to be said about the methods for which the other 4/5 is produced? Ya'll aren't among our top five export markets, so who fills your gap and how do they do it?

PMed

 

[xXKingJoshXx]

For definitely.