Surely there are less violent ways for families to "bond" than blasting the life out of a defenseless animal.

Video games are imaginary; killing is brutal reality.

PS. Watch them come out of the woodwork now.

Stuff full of hormones, raised in disgusting feed lots where they never even got to move freely. The meat you get from the store comes from animals who were tortured and had the absolute worst quality of life.

I agree with that point.

in many areas, and they will destroy crops, other property and injure people and animals if not controlled. Might as well eat them.

Actually, urbanization is the real problem, but when deer lose their habitat, they have nowhere to but into peoples yards, where they consume the landscape plants. Or, into the road, where they die horribly when they're hit by cars. Sometimes they take the humans in the car along with them. When the populations get too dense, they starve, and are more susceptible to diseases and parasites. There are no mountain lions, wolves or other top predators to keep them in check, so that falls on hunters.

Yes, feral hogs are a huge problem. And, not just to people. I have seen thousands of acres of good wildlife habitat and swampland that they tore to shreds here in my state alone.

smoke it long enough after it has been marinated in anything

grill it or grind it up with the right spices, and just about anything is probably going to be good eating .

Their hormones make them too funky.

you go to the butchers or a health food store that sells exactly the sort of organic meat you want. Even Costco sells some of it.

The animal came from a feedlot, it may have been fed a diet of organic corn but it still had the crappy quality of life as the animals who ate the GMO, pesticide laden corn.

they often sell meat that was hunted. Granted, this is venison or buffalo that the local first nations folk do as a side benture, but.

Do you eat meat? If so, who kills the animals for you?

Even if no hunter ever ate a single animal killed, that would still be a net positive to the population management strategy.

Or how about the billions of dollars generated for state and national parks via hunting licenses and taxes on guns, ammo, bows, and arrows?

We do it to supplement. My family COULD do without hunting...and do without many other things to replace the meat I put in the freezer.

Why should I pay $14 a pound for steak and $5 a pound for burger when I can provide it for myself?

An animal dies either way so we can either crank up the factory farms or allow those who can to provide meat for themselves.

On average we put about 800 lbs of meat in the freezer for the cost of my practice cartridges and my license .....about one tenth the cost of factory farmed meat....and we get the benefit of having organic lean meat that tastes great

An animal that lives out its life naturally and dies a sudden, swift death is far better off than an animal mired for its short life on a factory farm and slaughtered clumsily and in terror. The anti-hunting crowd is too attached to the bloodless convenience of tidily packaged meat, mistaking lack of getting one's hands dirty for humane agriculture.

based on CAFOs that an ethical hunter who is a good shot is actually less brutal than someone who buys meat in the supermarket. The animals killed by hunters are living a natural, wild life up until the moment of their deaths. That's not the case for meat bought at the store. Unless we are all prepared to go vegan, hunting for our food might be the most pure philosophical stance.

hunts. His group donates all kill to needy for the winter.

Look at how popular the hunting video games are amongst the population then compare that to Call of Duty or any other crazy violent game. Also look how popular hunting videos are compared to Hollywood blockbusters that glorify gun violence.

Hunting teaches people there is a real consequence for pulling that trigger, something loses it's life, it never comes back, it does not respawn or show up in the movie sequel it's gone forever. I don't think video games or movies teach that.

deer hunting as a means to put meat on the table. If you DON'T keep the deer population down, you get starvation of the deer. Wild hog hunting is another one. Wild hogs are dangerous to animals, people and property - when feral hogs get out of control, forget growing anything because they will trample it all down.

Sorry, but when you live in a more rural area, you realize the necessity of hunting, and value those that keep the pests down (and yes, feral hogs are a massive pest to farmers, drivers and humans). A feral hog can feed many people for months and keep them in meat. A deer can keep a family in meat for months, and keeps them from starving and being wasted or destroying crops.

Hunting is necessary. I will never say a word about responsible hunters, because they are very necessary.

For decades, I didn't allow hunting on my farm. It's relatively small - 60 acres. When we first bought, the land to the east of us was owned by a plantation that covered thousands of acres. The plantations in this area are managed as hunting preserves and for timber growth, so wildlife had a continuous range. The deer, turkey and other animals roamed freely. During hunting season, the populations on our farm increased, since they were not stalked and shot.

But the plantation sold off the 1500 acres immediately to our east, the land to the south of us was divided and sold as small farms, and the wildlife that lived on our farm became an isolated population. Conditions are good, so they have produced too many offspring and the numbers aren't reduced by natural predators. Over the years inbreeding and too many individuals made our little herd of deer have some serious health problems.

A few years back I gave permission for the family that is running the farm to hunt deer. They manage the herd and don't hunt at random. They watch the deer over the year, get to know the individuals and their standing in the herd, and select one or two specific deer that they think need to be removed from the group, because of physical defects or age. Some of those things are the factors that would allow a wolf, panther or coyote take a deer down if we still had any living around here.

In the last several years they've taken one or two deer per year. Already I'm seeing an improvement in the health of the herd. The ones that are left are larger and are no longer seeing the physical problems that were probably caused by inbreeding or poor nutrition.

They use every bit of meat from the deer they take - though they give me a cut or two. The parts they don't use the butcher they take the deer to has a use for and gives them a discount on his work in exchange. So nothing goes to waste and more important the deer are healthier.

It's all about the person hunting or playing.

When my student approached me in a panic with his backpack and asked me to take it to the office for him because he'd been turkey hunting over the weekend and forgot to remove his knife, I did so; the office understood and held it for him until school was over. He's a good, respectful, non-violent person, and knows the rules about weapons at school, why they exist, and wanted to comply. A stupid video game, which I would not put in any kids' hands because I think the glorification of violence is just WRONG, is not going to turn him into something he is not.

When another student went ballistic on the playground, threatening to shoot his older brother, I took that seriously. We'd already been trying to get parents to get this kid into counseling; they refused. That incident might push the situation in our favor. I hope so. That kid thinks a gun is the solution to everything, and suggested that, instead of setting traps for mice this spring, I simply shoot them. He thinks it would be just fine to blow holes in my floor to "get" the mice. He's never met a living animal he doesn't want to shoot; he exists in a fantasy world where he is killing everything he can find. A violent video game COULD feed this kid's pre-existing social/emotional disturbance.

That kid sounds like he desperately needs discipline at home, more than anything, and definitely lots of psychological counseling to undo whatever has been done to make him think like that. The violent video games could be used as a positive outlet for anger, but only if the kid is disciplined at home and received enough counseling to understand the difference between letting off some steam and being a homicidal asshole. Without some serious counseling and therapy, that kid sounds like he is headed down a violent path, with or without violent video games.

I'm glad you and the office didn't pull a "zero tolerance" attitude on the other kid who at least tried to do the right thing when he realized he had made an innocent mistake.

we are rural, and many of our students hunt with their families, so there's less of a knee-jerk reaction to him forgetting to take stuff out of his backpack. We DID react strongly to the other incident, and I'm really worried about that kid. I have been all along, but you nailed the bottom line. He's not getting what he needs from his parents for social/emotional health. You'd think, with the epidemic of school shootings, that a kid threatening to shoot someone would make it possible for DHS to step in and ensure that he gets help. We'll see. It's summer now, so he'll be disconnected from the system for a few months.

A couple of years ago a student who worked as a stockboy at a local supermarket. Part of his job is to breakdown cardboard boxes for recycling. He had a box cutter in the cupholder of his car. Some school official saw it and zero tolerance gave the kid 5 days suspension.

this year, in the next town over, for finding a pocket knife on the field and turning it in. That was right before it was decided to back off of "zero tolerance," which admins with common sense had already been doing anyway.

Well measured response, my friend!

Some people hunt. Others have someone else kill their animals and cut them up into tidy packages you can pop on the grill.

There's a disconnect here, somewhere.

And I appreciate the work he does.

for an answer from that DUer.

I am not morally opposed to eating animals. However, I choose not to occupy my free time by hanging out at the slaughter house to watch the animals get killed. Not my idea of a good time.

People who enjoy hunting do so because, among other things, they enjoy the actual process of killing animals. That's not my thing.

actual process of it? I don't know. I used to hunt. I don't any more, but I didn't enjoy killing the animal. I did enjoy eating it. I also learned a lot from butchering the animals I hunted.

But, now, I let someone else kill my animals for me. I don't make any assumptions about their feelings while doing it. I am, however, aware each time I eat meat that someone killed that animal so I could eat it. I'm aware of that because I have done it.

It gave me a better appreciation of where my meat comes from. I found that valuable.

actually enjoy the process of killing animals. They are respectful of the animal and feel a certain amount of grief for killing an animal in order to survive. Do some enjoy it? I'm sure some of them do, but not all. My dad used to hunt, not for glory or out of a macho desire to conquer, but to put meat on the table. It grieved him to do so.

to survive and look after his family. I have no criticism of your Dad or anyone else who genuinely needs to hunt.

That being said, in modern, western, 21st Century society, I believe it is fair to say that very few people need to hunt to survive. There is simply no reason for it other than the enjoyment of hunting and killing.

In my opinion, we are all wired to enjoy hunting. It's part of our DNA. Human beings had to hunt to survive for thousands of years- we are descended from the people who were good hunters and able to survive. Part of being a good hunter probably involves the actual enjoyment of hunting.

However, this evolutionary enjoyment of hunting which served us well for thousands of need does not fit easily within modern industrialized society. We need to evolve past some of our primal urges to function in the world we live in today.

If you're not willing to kill an animal, field dress, butcher, and cook the resulting meat, then you are exhibiting hypocritical behavior.

But the question of "who kills my food" is a complete non sequitur to the OP.

I'm not a vegetarian. I eat meat daily.

I'm not even particularly against hunting except for the fact that it increases the number of firearms in circulation. For that reason alone, I oppose hunting. Surely people can find other ways to occupy their time that don't involve killing animals.

If someone feels that they must hunt to reconnect with their cultural traditions or whatever it is that they find appealing about it, then just use a cross bow or take up fishing.

Shotguns would probably be the only firearm that can easily be used in a crime, home defense or hunting.

I just know that I don't want to get shot with a gun of any sort.

Despite there being 2 long guns for every handgun in the united states.

If you end up being shot by a bolt action hunting rifle, I will personally give you a 20 dollar gift card to starbucks.

So either way, win for you.

What is it, exactly, that you want to pin on hunting?

A pass on what? What equation? What issue?

teaching a person to responsibly hunt in a rural area is exactly the same thing as a young person getting a handgun and using it? Because those are WAY different from each other. One teaches ecology and provides a necessary service and food, while the other is bang bang, you are dead.

No. What I do think is that it is ridiculous to think that that children playing videogames are more likely to desensitize them to real life violence than killing animals in real life would.

I highly recommend you organize a hunting trip and mentor some kids that are overly violent. Or find someone that is willing to do it.

That is the problem. Kids without guidance. Kids with guidance wouldn't think of shooting up a school for a second, while those without guidance are subject to any flight of fancy.

I don't have any desire to go hunting however. As I said, I grew up in Oregon. It's a hunting state. I was taken hunting when I was young. I didn't like it and won't be personally doing it again.

"kill" without being confronted with the messy outcome of killing. I don't think killing animals in real life desensitizes most people, but instead makes them more sensitive to what actually killing something or someone involves. Watching the life drain out of an animal, dealing with the blood and other mess, makes it very real and very serious, IMO. When killing is a game, there is no real life consequence to killing, so it is in fact a game without having to confront the end result.

That's just the point. And you are simply being intellectually dishonest if you think any of these shooters didn't actually understand that they were really going to be killing people. They wanted to kill people. It's not about the fact that they didn't think their were consequences. Most expected to kill themselves too.

You can't kill anybody in a videogame. You are no more killing in a videogame than you are when you have one of your toy army men knock over another one when playing with toys as a kid.

It's not remotely realistic and doesn't remotely have any impact onto whether or not somebody thinks killing somebody in real life is a good idea.

video games that are more violent than actual hunting. Kids get desensitized to violence, including gun violence, by playing these games. Of course they are not actually killing anyone, that's the point. They are using virtual guns to shoot indiscriminately and nobody ever dies.

Why? Because the fact is if not for hunting our environment would be ripped apart by creatures like deer who overproduce. All this would lead to is the animals suffering very painful deaths through starvation.

Human habitation have removed a good deal of natural predators from the environment. If we don't fill that void, bad things are going to happen to the environment.

In my very OP, I point out that I'm not opposed to hunting.

The question is why should hunting be seen as less of a danger to the children that learn to do it than playing videogames is?

I'm not questioning if hunting should take place. I'm not questioning if hunting is necessary or not. I'm not questioning if hunting is "right or wrong".

Only questioning why it would be seen as less of a danger to children that do it than playing videogames. And I've yet to see a reasonable argument.

Either certain animals are okay to kill or they aren't. At least hunting has an intellectual honesty to it and serves a valuable function.

Either learning to kill is harmful the the psyche of the young or it isn't.

If you want to say learning to kill animals is not harmful to the psyche, make the argument. I'm asking a question here, and would love to see a reasoned argument.

I'm not sure what intellectual honesty has to do with the question at hand. I understand your point that, for most people, the means that their food is acquired is not considered and if you want to call that intellectual dishonesty, that's fine. There are, of course, thousands of things far beyond food that is true for and nobody is capable of considering the indirect actions they are supporting in every single thing they do. It just isn't very relevant to this discussion

they aren't native to NA, but have established themselves here for a few centuries. That doesn't mean they aren't a pest. If you don't keep them down, they will destroy the habitat of the native creatures. How is hunting them, which actually does include an element of danger because they are humongous and requires training, the same as a kid picking up a gun and pretending he's a video game character?

They aren't remotely similar.

know that the killed animal or person doesn't jump back up on reset to play another game - it's dead, it's life force drains out of the eyes and the body in the form of blood. Games make killing a game - which it is not. Hunting makes the realities of killing very real.

I'm not a vegan. I buy meat from the supermarket. But, I don't carry it home draped over a fender and hang the remains on my wall.

That is my gripe too. Responsibly hunting for food is one thing. I don't do it, but I don't begrudge anyone who does, for food, and without torturing the animal in the process. Where I live, many do torture the animals in the process. It's sickening. Even my own step brother used to torture animals until I talked to him about it. No one had ever pointed out to him that was cruel and just plain flat out wrong until I did. Now, he knows better and doesn't do it any more.

What I question also is all the pictures in the paper or all the trucks around here with dead animals on the hood and blood running down the side of the truck. Is that really necessary? Can't they just put it in the truck bed instead or field dress it and put it in coolers with some ice to stop the decomposition process? I mean, really? It can as high as 70 degrees outside during hunting season where I live and they are carrying meat around on the hood of their truck for an hour or more on their way to relatives' and friends' houses to show off their kill? That doesn't sound like any recipe I would ever want to try. And why pose in pictures like that and put it in the local newspaper? There is no reason good enough to make me see that as anything more than deranged. I see no need to pose with my food and play with it like that (they lift the dead animal's head up in the pictures and other things behind the scenes before and after the pictures are taken) and have someone snap a picture before I cook it. These are questions they will never be able to answer honestly without accepting just how absurd those "traditions" are. It's bullshit.

did your step brother do in the process of hunting where he tortured the animal?..... please be specific

My step brother took a hunting knife and stabbed a bird onto a tree.

I had one cousin who shot a bird, but did not kill it. He pulled its wings off while it was still alive. He did not kill it. He kept pulling parts of it off while it was still alive.

On a hunting trip, the only one I ever went on, when I was a kid, with extended family a few miles away, they shot about 30 doves and did not make sure they were dead before throwing them in bags. The bags kept moving and the birds kept screaming while they continued to hunt more. Some were shot only in the leg or shot in other areas that didn't kill them. Instead of putting them out of their misery, they threw them in the bag and carried the bloody bag around for hours.

Of course, you will probably claim all of the above was just involuntary reactions of "dead" animals and the animals felt nothing, but I know the look in an alive animal's eyes compared to dead, enough to know in all of the cases above, the animals were not dead. They were still alive.

Don't try to pretend this type of stuff does not happen. It is not just in my extended family that I have witnessed hideous stuff happening to animals in my area.

Your cousin also sounds like one. You just blew my mind with this.

Same with the step brother and the extended family. That's how people are. I never had to go back to that cousin's house or the extended family's house. Luckily, I never had to deal with my step brother any more after a while more. That's how people are where I live. It's the norm in my hometown, not some non hunting thing. The stuff I mentioned was all done on hunting trips and it's not just my family.

There are non hunting examples too. One of the few guys I went out with was driving along with me in the passenger seat. He saw a cat on the side of the road. He swerved to hit the cat, on purpose. He killed the cat and seemed proud of himself while he laughed uncontrollably after he hit the cat. I never spoke to him again and never will. That case is one where I can shut that person out of my life. There is a lot of that kind of stuff here though. Everyone is exposed to it growing up where I live.

I have never witnessed the sorts of behavior your family has done.

I wish there were more who would bother to do it right, instead of getting pleasure out of torturing animals. If done right, there should be no problem, but the torture crap is awful. I've seen way too much cruelty for one lifetime. Thank you for not torturing the animals.

or hang the remains on the wall. That's a very broad generalization.

I'm a vegetarian btw.

Animals who die from hunting live natural lives in the wild that are ended 99% of the time mercifully in the span of a couple seconds. Animals slaughtered for food live in cages so small they can't even turn around most of the time, are pumped up with hormones so they are grow unnaturally fast, are stripped away from their mother as soon as it is economically viable and all in all suffer miserable and painful lives.

Someone else killing your meat for you doesn't absolve you for any kind of responsibility for what happened.

Oh and hunters actually serve a valuable ecological function, population control. Factory farming meat is one of the most environmentally destructive things we do as a society.

I'm not under the impression we'll be able to stop either anytime soon (factory farming meat will go away once invitro-meat becomes more economically viable, I give that 20-30 years), but if you eat meat from the store I'd suggest you get your own house in order before you start throwing stones at hunters.

The population of deer, ducks, etc. will settle in to whatever the environment will sustain.

This so-called "need" to manage the animal population is nothing more than hunters' seeking a guilt-free way of killing animals because...they just like killing animals.




PS: If you want to avoid hormones in the food you can purchase organically produced meat. It's more expensive but the option is there if you want it.

As opposed to a quick and mostly painful death.

And in the mean time they will have a massive negative effect on a lot of other more vulnerable animal species while they consume more than a fair share of resources.

Even then, the equilibrium reached will be far than ideal. Expect a lot more car accidents and deaths involving deer if we banned hunting.

There is nothing wrong with well-regulated hunting.

How about 100 years ago when far far more of the population hunted. How many school shootings were there then? How many school shooters have been hunters? I think it is far more logical to look at things that have happened recently like the massive medication of kids for no reason other than control.

But, you did just kind of prove my point that it's simply ignored because it's been a part of the culture for so long.

My point is that many gun owners, that hunt, are quick to throw videogames out there as a cause and it's ridiculous that hunting is seen as better on a child's psyche.


For the record, I am fine with both Hunting and Videogames being allowed.

games by the shooter in Newtown did not improve his psyche and I am certain it is one of the things that contributed to his thought process.

The murder rate in the U.S. was 6.1 per 100,000 inhabitants 100 years ago (1913) and in 2013 it was 4.7

Less shootings doesn't mean it was safer.

I can understand the desensitization from killing as a kid.

It can lead a person in so many directions, depending on
so many factors.

Hunting and fishing. The meat is so much better than most of the stuff at the grocery store. We regularly get deer, hogs, ducks, dove and wild turkeys.

I also fish a bunch, sea trout, redfish, black drum, triple tail, cobia, grouper, and Spanish mackerel are favorites and readily caught around here.

I would say around 50% of the meat I eat is wild. Store bought I try to stick to organic, hormone free stuff and wild caught seafood.

I don't really even consider the gun a big part of hunting, it's a tool, not an object of affection. I also archery hunt during those seasons.

Ever heard of farming and ranching? Every kid growing up with livestock learned about killing animals at an early age. It didn't "desensitize" them in the least. Today, when more people DON'T live on farms than at any time in our history, and are farther removed from killing animals for food and happily by their unrecognizable dead animal parts on a shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray, people going nuts and murdering others is at an all time high. Your premise is completely backward. Farm kids learned empathy and responsibility toward others, human or not, along with the responsibility of killing humanely and not wasting. So do proper hunters.

But I think that murder is acceptable only in extreme circumstances. Most murder of animals is not like that. And most humans are psychopaths when it comes to how much empathy they have towards sentient creatures that are not human.

I might agree that poaching is 'murder of animals', but even that is a stretch.

I beheaded and dressed out many a chicken when I was young and helped my Dad when it came time to butcher a steer.

...and today on my commute home I felt the desire to smash my way into several vehicles in an attempt to get to the off ramp.

I also threw a bunch of bandanna peels out the sunroof.

People like you are a menace to highway safety!!!

and hunting with guns since the beginning of guns.

Video games have been around for about 30 years--and over that period of time mass shootings have increased and increased and increased.

So--which do you think is more likely to be related to mass shootings--hunting or video games??????

Many families that have videogames in the home do not have guns in the home.
Few families that hunt don't have guns in the home.

Human beings have been hunting for several millennia. We didn't start slaughtering each other at the local shopping mall for no apparent reason until fairly recently.

I'm not saying the video games are to blame, but your premise is just a sock full of stupid.

Then you agree with my premise, so you are sock full of stupid too, I suppose.

even if "just for fun" seems like a bad idea to me.

If someone kills an animal with their bare hands, up close & personal, so they can eat that animal, then it's ok with me. But killing any animal with a high powered rifle at a safe distance shows you're just a good marksman, but a coward nonetheless. If I had to kill an animal so I could eat, I'd be a vegan in a nano-second. If there's one regret I have it's that I am a hypocrite because, while I will not kill an animal, I do enjoy a good steak or chicken breast now and then and, for that, I will always be disappointed in myself.