Ethical Issue, Hunting specialty big game for sport. right or wrong?

Another one.....

For the last time, these hunts do NOT waste the meat, the meat is either harvested by the hunter and used, or donated to the local tribes.

Seriously, this is the friggin internet, the world of information is a keyboard away, do a little research about these things.

1

Ethics are always a sliding scale. There's really no way to argue it beyond that. 1 person may believe that every oz of every animal must be used and that's their ethics, the next may see just taking the horns on a trophy hunt just as ethical.

1 person may say anything beyond fair chase is wrong and the next sees no issue with a high fence hunt. IMO if you eat beef or wear leather, you should have no issues with any form of hunting. Even a high fence 'exotic' like many texas hunts have animals that live more 'life' than a cow does being bred and then waiting to be turned into steak.

You obviously have never met, or, been related to anyone who has done this kind of hunting.

My uncle - flies all over the world to dead things. He's done full mounts on African rhinos to Alaskan bison - for a museum. Everything Cane Toad said - is true. You also need to understand the people who manage those animals in those foreign countries - have no $$ to spend on animal research. Hell, they cant even feed their own pople. The hard currency brought in by these specialty hunts - is what pays to keep all the other animals healthy - and pay for the security that keeps them still on the planet. And in most of these hunts - a government guide is mandatory and you are required to take/harvest the animal they want you to. Basically - hunt is a poor term - you are actually culling the animals to keep the rest healthy. It's just that instead of having a local person or biologist do it - they let some crazy rich guy with $50,000 or more to burn pay that to pull the trigger for them.

Now. How come you dont know any better - as a hunter? How many of your buddies love paying big bucks to kill things - didnt you think there might be a little more to it than meets the eye?? Now - why are you even asking this? You do understand that questions like this - are exactly why people in the rest of the world hate Americans. Instead of taking a few moments of our precious time to research things - Americans just flip off at the mouth to condem something they dont know a thing about....... a quick hop onto the soap box.

So, I'm going to take a bit of a different tact here - when asking the ethics question, ultimately the greatest benefit comes from the proper harvesting or culling of the heard based on the game management principles. Essentially, filling the tag is what makes the difference, to a large degree what you do with the animal doesn't matter to anyone but you in the grand scheme of things.

The preservation of the herd, maintaining population balance, disease control, all of those things are what factor into length of season, number of tags, availability of doe tags, etc. Now, within the law, there are issues around "wastage" - but even there, those laws aren't about morals, they are about the prevention of disease spreading, preventing the accumulation of carrion feeders, etc.

So, from a moral standpoint is it terrible to want to experience the quest of hunting a deer, even if you don't like venison? There are a number of services designed to donate undesired game meat to the hungry so certainly the conscience can be aswaged in that fashion.

Further, not all hunting is of game animals - for example predator hunting. I am really not planning on eating coyote or fox or wolf, but it's entirely possible I would hunt them.

So, ultimately - from my perspective - the ethics of hunting really resolve around whether you are contributing to the long term benefit of the animal population or not. To me hunting does represent some aspect of becoming part of the "chain of tooth and claw" as Rudyard Kipling might put it. Certainly I would not want the animal I harvested to simply rot in the sun, but I'm not sure that eating it is always the option. So, before I went hunting I would simply look at what my options were for what to do with the animal and choose what keep my conscience clear.

Thinkingblade

hunting is inbred in the human race without it we would not have survived these thousands of years but hunting in the year 2012 is not a neccesaty in fact i consider the hunting with a gun to be an execution of whatever is being hunted it has know chance at all.if you really want to hunt and pit your skilll and courage against an animal like a jaguar or lion then do it like a real man and only use a bow and arrow and spear,i think that if that was the law today that you could only hunt with bow and spear you could count the hunters that remained on two hands,i think you kid yourself that you only hunt for things that you can put on the table deep down i still think you are a cold blooded killer which ever way you look at it and some people have the audacity to call it a sport YEAH OK.

In my opinion i just hunt for the meals and the experince and bond i share with different hunters but for those of you you hink recreation searching is wrong you have got to put things in context why do you to find it unsuitable, probably the most usual is the lack of life for the asthetic appeal of the animal however when one thinks about matters it's common to see boquets of 20 to 30 vegetation every represents a "lifestyles" that's ended just for the asthtetic appeal so whats the diffrence. The one diffrences is that a line used to be drawn in 2 diffrent areas you dont particularly hear of people considering boquets are un ethical so it really simply viewpoint. So all i ask is dont immedatley hate recreation hunters considering the fact that there point of view is diffrent than yours there is at all times two sides to any inspiration

I would say that such an activity falls to your own moral discretion. This being because people have hunted animals for food in order to survive for the entirety of human existence. The only difference in this case is because it is for thrill, rather than survival.

Personally, I would not advocate it or participate in killing an animal for sport, but nor would I feel strongly enough to openly protest about it. Like I said, it is up to that person's own moral discretion.

My own morality would surely not allow me to hunt for sport, but for survival it is understandable. The ethics are simply that it is wrong to kill an animal out of a desire for thrill. The means by which to arrive at an outcome are very important, therefore the intention for which you kill an animal is important as well. Survival vs. thrill.

morally and ethicaly, no its really not right to kill them but people have been doing it forever, literally. and it helps the farms in michigan a lot, theres really no reason for shooting them; you can buy your own deer meat or buy a skin. but the animals dont have the mind capacity to think "why are humans so mean?" they're just trying to live, to them its another part of life, it's like tsunammi's or fire's for us. it just happens, we dont blame anyone for it. but that doesn't stop me, it also depends on who your asking, because morality is diffrent for everyone and so is ethics, if your going by the bible or something like that then even jacking off is morally wrong. you really shouldnt be concerned about the ethics and morals, if you like it great, if you dont then dont do it.

I can only speak for myself here. I shoot animals for two reasons management and food. I'm not interested in nailing a trophy head or pelt to the wall.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that do. That's their business and not mine or yours.