Is Hunting Ethical?

Remember this: Sometimes you come across previous literature that just speaks volumes.

Excerpt taken from "A Hunter's Heart" Collected by David Petersen.
I am going to take this book back to the library tomorrow. I wanted to post it here for rereading later.

"If any one word characterizes most people's feelings when they reflect on the morality of killing an animal for sport, it is "ambivalence." With antihunters insisting that hunting is a demonstration of extreme irreverence for nonhuman life, thoughtful hunters must concede, albeit uncomfortably, the apparent contradiction of killing for sport while maintaining a reverence for life. Yet I know of few hunters who do not claim to have a deep reverence for nature and life, including especially the lives of the animals they seek to kill. It seems that this contradiction, inherent in hunting and increasingly the focus of debate, lies at the core of the moral conundrum of hunting. 

How can anyone both revere life and seek to extinguish it in pursuit of recreation? The opponents of hunting believe they have backed its proponents into a logical corner on this point, yet the proponents have far from given up the battle for logical supremacy. Is either side a clear winner?

None who know me or my lifestyle would label me "antihunting." Most of the meat in my diet is game. And many is the time I've defended hunting from the attacks of those who see all hunters as bloodthirsty, knuckle-dragging rednecks.
Yet I have on occasion found myself allied with antihunters. But it's an uneasy and selective alliance, my antihunting sentiments limited to diatribes against such blatantly unethical behavior as Big Buck contests, canned Coon Hunt for Christ rallies, and bumper stickers proclaiming "Happiness Is A Warm Gutpile."

There is also a subtler reason for my concerns about hunting, stemming, I believe, from my disappointment with the responses of many hunters and wildlife managers to questions concerning the morality of hunting. In the interest of enlivening and, I hope, elevating the growing debate, it is these moral questions, and their answers, I wish to address here.

To begin, I should point out some errors, common to ethical reasoning and to the current debate, that we should do our best to avoid. The first is confusing the prudence with morality. Prudence is acting with one's overall best interests in mind, while morality sometimes requires that one sacrifice self-interest in the service of a greater good.

While thorough knowledge is all that's required to make prudent decisions, the making of a moral decision involves something more: conscience. Obligations have no moral meaning without conscience. Ethical hunters do not mindlessly follow rules and lobby for regulations that serve their interests; rather, they follow their consciences, sometimes setting their own interests aside. In short, ethics are guided by conscience.

Another important distinction is between legality and morality. While many immoral activities are prohibited by law, not all behavior that is within the law can be considered ethical. The politician caught in a conflict of interest who claims moral innocence because he has broken no laws rarely convinces us. Nor should hunters assume that whatever the game laws allow or tradition supports is morally acceptable. The ethical hunter is obligated to evaluate laws and traditions in light of his or her own moral sense. Conscience is not created by decree or consensus, nor is morality determined by legality or tradition.

Finally, it's all too tempting to dismiss the concerns of our opponents by questioning their motives and credentials instead of giving serious considerations to the questions they raise. Hunters do hunting no favors by hurling taunts and slander at their opponents. The question raised about hunting deserve a fair hearing on their own merits. Consideration of antihunting messages must not be biased by personal opinions or the messengers, nor should hunters' effort remain focused on discrediting their accusers. Rather, ethical processes of moral deliberation and personal and collective soul searching that these questions call for.

The first difficulty we encounter in addressing the morality of hunting is identifying and understanding the relevant questions an answers. To me, the most striking feature of the current debate is the two sides' vastly different understanding of the meaning of the question, Is hunting a morally acceptable activity?

Those who support hunting usually respond by citing data. They enumerate the acres of habitat protected by hunting-generated funds; how many game species have experienced populations increases due to modern game management; how much the economy is stimulated by hunting related expenditures; how effectively modern game laws satisfy the consumptive and recreational interests of the hunting community today while assuring continued surpluses of game for future hunters; and how hunters, more than most citizens, care deeply about ecosystems integrity and balance and the global environment.

While these statements may be perfectly true, they're almost totally irrelevant to the question. Antihunters are not asking whether hunting is an effective management tool, whether it's economically advisable, or whether hunters love and appreciate nature. Rather they are asking, Is it ethical to kill animals for sport? Are any forms of hunting morally right?

The hunter says yes; the antihunter says no, yet they are answering entirely different questions. The hunter answers, with data, what he or she perceives as a question about utility and prudence; the antihunter, though, has intended to ask a question about morality, about human responsibilities and values. It's as if one asked what day it is and the other responded by giving the time. While the answer may be correct, it's meaningless in the context of the question asked. The point is that moral debates, including this one, are not about facts but about values. Moral controversy cannot be resolved by examination of data or by appeal to scientific studies.

An obsession with "sound, objective science" in addressing their opponents has led many hunters not only to avoid the crucial issues but to actually fuel the fires of the antihunting movement. Animal welfare proponents and the general public are primarily concerned about the pain, suffering, and loss of life inflicted on hunted animals, and the motives and attitudes of those who hunt. They're offended by references to wild animals as "resources". They're angered by the sterile language and, by implication, the emotionally sterile attitude of those who speak of "culling," "controlling," "harvesting," and "managing" animals for "maximum sustained yield." And they're outraged by those who cite habitat protection and human satisfaction data while totally disregarding the interests of the sentient beings who occupy that habit and who, primarily through their deaths, serve to satisfy human interests.

Antihunters insist that nontrivial reasons be given for intentional human-inflicted injuries and deaths--or that these injuries and deaths be stopped are an imminently reasonable request.

Even when hunters acknowledge the significance of the pain and suffering inflicted through hunting, they too often offer in defense that they fell obligation to give back more than they take, and that hunters and wildlife professionals successfully have met this obligation. Granted, it may be that the overall benefits to humans and other species that accrue from hunting outweigh the costs to the hunted. Nevertheless, this utilitarian calculation fails to provide moral justification for hunting. Is it just, hunting's detractors ask, that wild animals should die to feed us? To clothe us? To decorate our bodies and den walls? To provide us with entertainment and sport?

These are the questions hunters are being asked. These are the questions they must carefully consider and thoughtfully address. It will not suffice to charge their opponents with biological naivete, as theirs are not questions of science. Nor will charges of emotionalism quiet their accusers, since emotion plays an integral and valid part in value judgement and moral development. Both sides have members who guided by their hearts, their minds, or both. Neither side has a monopoly on hypocrisy, zealotry, narrow-mindedness, or irrationalism. Opposition to hunting is based in larges part on legitimate philosophical differences.

It has been said that hunting is the most uncivilized and primitive activity in which a modern person can legally engage. Therein lies ammunition for the biggest guns in the antihunters' arsenal; paradoxically, therein also lies its appeal to hunters and the source of its approval by many sympathetic nonhunters.

Hunting is one of few activities that allows an individual to participate directly in the life and death cycles on which all natural systems depend. The skilled hunter's ecological knowledge is holistic and realistic; his or her awareness involves all the senses. Whereas ecologists study systems from without, examining and analyzing from a perspective necessarily distanced from their subjects, dedicated hunters live and learn from within, knowing parts of nature as only a parent or child can know his or her own family. One thing necessary for a truly ethical relationship with wildlife is an appreciation of ecosystems, of natural processes. Such an appreciation may best be gained through familiarity, through investment of time and effort, through curiosity, and through an attitude of humility and respect. These are the lessons that hunting teaches its best students.

Not only have ethical hunters resisted the creeping alienation between humans and the natural out-of-doors, they have fought to resist the growing alienation between humans and the "nature" each person carries within. Hunters celebrate their evolutionary heritage and stubbornly refuse to be stripped of their atavistic urges--they refuse to be sterilized by modern culture and thus finally separated from nature. The ethical hunter transcends the mundane, the ordinary, the predictable, the structured, the artificial. " (Causey 80-85)

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Sources Cited:
Petersen, David. A Hunter's Heart. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co, LLC, 1996. pp.80-85. Print.

Causey, Ann S. "Is Hunting Ethical?". A Hunter's Heart. ed. David Petersen. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co, LLC, 1996. pp.80-85. Print.

Does Hunting Need To Be Reformed?

Remember this: Captialism and Hunting are Symbiotic; not the same concept.

Death will never be removed from the making of our food. As the biological system cycles it takes energy to move it, with gains and losses, before renewal. The cycle continues non-stop. To stop is to initiate death but even death is not final for it gives life.

I was reading an essay called Restoring The Older Knowledge by Ted Kerasote from the book, A Hunter’s Heart: Honest: Essays on Blood Sport collected by David Petersen. The question posed as stated, “Is hunting worth reforming?”

So many questions, so little elaboration. I jest.

I looked up the word “worth” as it was the defining word glaring at me angrily from the question. I find that most people, when giving crucial energy for a thoughtful meditation on anything, are ready to give the ax or pardon to use this word as a measurement stick. The Romans just used thumbs up or down. I don’t know if there was a sideways or even a high five but that’s for conjecture.

My constant companion, the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, stated the meaning as ‘the value of something measured by its qualities.’

As I closed my dictionary, I pondered ever so slightly on what one would pluck out of the mind in words on what those qualities were? What were the peculiar and essential characters? The Nature, ironically, of that spoken word? Better yet, what were its negative attributes that pissed people off?

I thought maybe it wasn’t Hunting itself but the metal the person was made of. People are tempered in different ways given time, quality, and one’s humanity even if well hidden.

I was reading an article called Bear Down: A Field & Stream Adventure on Prince of Wales Island by Steven Rinella. I add this because it was the most recent example of exemplary behavior on the part of a friend and hunter to another person as an act of reform; even if it was on past experience or what people would call a bad hunt. After realizing this, Rinella sets out to reform the previous experience in his friend’s mind that could have possibility marred his outlook on certain categories of hunting and dissuade him from branching out toward becoming a well rounded hunting individual.

Facilitating and renewing his friend’s confidence on the Nature of Hunting to me was a noble act even though some people take to being too humble. Credit to hunting, the individual or something else? Whatever that may be, friendship and hunting benefited in a positive light. Couldn’t this be a positive force across the landscape of hunting itself? Can not hunters find their own sense of decorum and act accordingly? If the individual could cast positive qualities to bring out the very best in others, and the endeavor of hunting, could one potentially reform a negative to a positive position for his fellow hunter both publicly and privately? Would this not be such a quality as hunting needs? Where I come from its called, “Doing right by.” I believe it’s a doable possibility. After consideration, I thought of more definitive terms used to describe hunting.

Even the word sport is negative in its description. Here it might be applied to multi-opposing sides engaging in some combat, game, or test to decide who is the better individual. Some would take it as victor versus loser.

When considering the other words that drive the context of hunting we find recreational situated in the adjectives. Recreation-wise, hunting is an endeavor that give an individual a refreshment of strength or spirit after the work done. Recreation is by far a negative term. In the media and social circles, it is flung around with much disdain to prove someone else’s point even given that the word itself is taken out of context for argumentative gains. This doesn’t necessarily mean that one goes out to discriminate or insult the ideals of hunting for selfish reasons.

In reading, I had to argue the point individual hunters do not ignore, question, or deny the character of its members. If it’s a high profile hunter is shaking his tool at the Establishment, of course he should be questioned on his behavior.

Hunters as a group are not omnipotent with the ability to monitor all of its members for transgressions. This is the same with daily life. Humans aren’t monitored 24/7 for wrong doing. It's left to them to decide on a case per case basis how they carry themselves as citizens of a society, in private or public situations. If they get caught that is a different matter but to apply this behavior as a characteristic solely to hunting is a fallacy. It can be applied to different areas of daily life. To state it is a denial sounds cumulative. If you’re looking at the overall landscape this could be considered true. On the individual level it is not. Another point that was brought up was the appropriate behavior towards wildlife.

One should question appropriate behavior towards animals when exercising the right and privilege to hunt. I remember working at a veterinary hospital where we took wildlife in. Most people weren’t aware of appropriate behavior. Well meaning citizens would remove them from their habitat with no forethought of how the animals were going to be fed, how it felt about being ripped up from its surroundings, or even if it thought someone was doing them a good turn. How is this any contradictory to the same behavior? Either way, I have seen perfectly good wild animals die because of this behavior. This is usually a slow gruesome death. They starve, for lack of food, abandoned without learning how to be wild, or domesticated in a refuge.

When laid out in comparison the acts may look different but the outcome will be the same. Something will suffer for it or die.

Again there is life. Should one not look toward the bright star that shines rather than the darkened places? Darkened places eventually see the rays of illumination even if it is briefly.

My personal experiences have over the years brought me to an understanding on that which moves through the body and mind. I like to refer to it as Essence or Soul. There is something significant in the body of an animal when it is alive. It may not have higher mental faculties as defined by man but still something profane lies within the makings of that which we chase. This is realized by awareness, sight, contact, and familiarity.

When you have your hands on something that is alive you know it's there and can enjoy the fact that you know it's aware of your presence; see the recognition it perceives through your contact by touching it without harm. It is a wonderful feeling. Whether the wild knows this is a mute issue. At that point it is all about you and your feelings where human contact with wildlife is evident. There is no loss only gain even if psychological on the part of the human.

In that moment, you don’t have the burden of responsibility. The animal even though it may be untrusting could be imprinted with the idea that there is no threat from the human. How this affects the animal later depends on how long the contact goes on and the quality of the contact. Many a wild animal has been spoilt by this, but equally have benefited.

Overall, it’s the connection you made to the animal while alive that lingers. On a different landscape, when hunting the outcome is different.

As you hunt, you may be several feet away and quite disconnected from the energy moving through the body of a living creature where there is death forth coming. Once you initiate the death note of the animal when you walk over, unless it doesn’t die suddenly, as this brings about suffering, there is no more energy left of it to be considered alive; warm and departed. There is a feeling of loss and grief. Even though this is momentary, it exists and is a milestone in reverence for the life because it meant something to you. The burden of responsibility of its death doesn’t become as empty as the body after the Essences leaves it. It's not just a bag of bones. Where does this stand in the way of hunters behaving badly?

Debasing hunter ethics doesn’t take a village. It only takes several well positioned individuals that make bad decisions in situations that could eventuate in a public outcry against the ritual itself. I reiterate the words bad decisions.

If hunters set the image then does it not need an overhaul?

I would say yes. To address others' reasonable outcries, but also to elevate it above the aggressions of non-hunters. More so, as an individual personal sense of pride in what we do. Self reflecting on the act of hunting itself is what motivates hunters to participate in the ritual of hunting. Hunters do not strive to debase the pursuit of food but transverse our inflection of what it means for hunters to be a part of Humanity.

Amongst non-hunters, hunting has become much like the gun shot during hunting season when bears consider it a dinner bell. People that are against the way in which the animal dies as extremists flock to this full of aggression. There is no intention on engaging in a conversation on something they quite frankly care little about. Not that all non-hunters are equal in that respect so this is another commonality that they have with hunters.

I quote Kerasote as saying, “It is often said that hunters hunt to return to a world of origins, simplicity, and honest interaction with nature. But when you look at hunters, especially bow hunters, in the pages of sporting magazines, in the equipment catalogs, and in the woods, they look like a cross between Darth Vader and a commando. If you go to one of the annual trade shows that display new outdoor equipment, a hundred people a day will try to sell you a new hearing aid, a new camouflage pattern, a new scent, cartilages, or bow that will improve your chances of getting game, and too few hunters question the replacement of skill and intuition by gadgets.” (Petersen 288)

After reading this, I thought to myself, the above statement is being confused with capitalism because capitalism is using hunting as another area in which to stick its fingers and make money.

To live man needs money. That is the ugly albatross around our necks and we put it there. Trade shows are capitalist tools to make money for business. Most of the time when you are attending one of these shows, education comes from governmental agencies or non-profits that want to promote Hunting, not merchandise. Merchandise is only a tool or trapping used in hunting, depending on the hunter’s discretion, at using what ever merchandise or new technology he wishes to purchase.

It's not hunting.

A good salesman is only as valuable as his ability to coerce you into believing that what he has is something you can’t live without. Capitalism confuses the Art of Hunting and works as a symbiotic presence that lives off of its host for as long as it can without totally destroying it. Once again, another area that must be clearly defined.

Hunting consists of levels that the individual has to transcend up through to get to the purity of the Art of Hunting, everything else is a trapping.

I personally believe there are activities in hunting that do not make sense. They are no more than games, like one would see at a high school carnival, to get others into participation. By doing this, it is a dishonest means of getting others involved, if it shapes their first impressions of what hunting is.

Shaping a person’s initial impressions should be the top priority in the Art of Hunting itself. Children must take baby steps but you wouldn’t want them to go out and shoot something before their mind can grasp the concept as an adult would. There are ways of handling things and situations; there are ways not to. This should be clearly defined as well. This is mostly left up to the parent, but depending on the adults upbringing, the same bad or good habit, could be passed along quite innocently because that’s how my family has always done it.

I observed hunting never needed reform but the behavior of hunters is worth reforming for the sake of the art and the individual. This essay was probably done around the year 1996, much has changed as some things have stayed the same.

I believe the Art of Hunting can return to the utilitarian, subsistence, and spiritual place that gave it value to start with in cultures, traditions, and society, if not on a group level but more so on an individual level. For hunting to have value, we must reform it back into the specifics of the esteem it was founded on.

Writer credits: Angelia Y. Larrimore

~Couresy of the AOFH~