Hunting and the heaven of animals
This recent thread about Palin and hunting engendered a lively exchange in the comments section, including a discussion of the following comment by a liberal on another blog, “Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life.”
What could this person mean? We all know that hunting is a part of nature among animals: all carnivores hunt, and many herbivores are hunted. But the liberal commenter is correct that only humans can think about it, or choose to do it even though meat is available by other means, and therein lies the rub.
As long as they are part of modern society, even meat-eating liberals can choose not to hunt—which is the same choice I make, although I’m not a liberal. I’m an omnivore rather than a vegetarian, and since I eat meat I obviously partake indirectly (and literally) in the killing of animals, as does every omnivore, and everyone who wears leather.
Liberals can also choose to condemn human hunters as bloodthirsty killers—a point of view in which I do not join. But their logic is strange, because human hunters ordinarily are no more bloodthirsty than animals who kill (the ones the liberal conveniently forget). They just have made the decision to hunt in order to supplement their meat-eating that way—unless they are natives who only hunt or mostly hunt, in which case they get a pass. Liking the activity of hunting doesn’t mean one is bloodthirsty, although it means that one doesn’t shy away from the truth that should be acknowledged by all meat-eaters but can only be denied by those who never hunt—which is that everyone who eats meat is eating an animal that was killed for that purpose (unless you’re into eating roadkill; but that’s a topic I’ll leave alone right now).
Hunting is highly regulated in this country, and often culls the herd in a beneficial way. Deer, for example would be a menace but for hunting. But they’re so cute! Don’t kill them!! And don’t get me started on geese.
I’ll end with a poem by James Dickey, a writer who was far more well-known for another rural idyll, Deliverance and the movie it spawned. The poem gives me chills every time I read it :
The Heaven of Animals
By James L. Dickey
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their preyMay take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walkUnder such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without painAt the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.
I fully admit my attitude about this is hackneyed and stereotypical, but it is also true I sincerely don’t understand something.
I get that we all exploit dead animals in our daily lives, including those of us who don’t eat meat. I get the food chain thing, and I accept, indeed endorse, the notion that big fish eat little fish and we are pretty big fish, so our eating dead animals is really quite natural and to be expected. And I get that herds need to be culled and that hunting is a net benefit across the board. And I certainly am aware where the stuff wrapped in plastic at the butcher’s shop comes from and how it got there.
What I don’t understand it why some people consider it to be actually fun. Me personally, I look at killing animals to exploit them as necessary but certainly an unpleasant reality of life. I know it is a cliche but why is it more fun to stalk an animal and kill it than to stalk it and photograph it?
That’s my sincere question. I get that it has to be done. I just don’t understand why it fun, why it’s popular as a recreational hobby.
Hope I don’t offend — this is a sincere question.
Richard Johnston: I also don’t find it fun, and would not choose to do it.
My understanding of those who do (and granted, this is second-hand—I hope you get a reply from hunters themselves), is that:
(a) it’s often a family tradition, something passed down from parent to child as a family activity
(b) it is satisfying and self-reliant to obtain one’s meat through one’s own efforts
(c) it gets you up early and out with nature (granted, this can happen for other activities like bird-watching—but still, it’s part of the enjoyment of the experience for hunters)
(d) it often involves reverence for the animals and a sense of connection to nature and to generations past, in an activity that is part of the cycle of life for both humans and animals
(e) it can also be part of a more total experience involving camping out, sitting around a campfire, etc.
Very nice poem. Thanks! In regard to morality of hunting, I personally do not hunt, but I do kill varmints attacking our livestock or pets. So, since I use the ol’ shootin’ iron to save the lives of our animal brethren, do I get an ethical pass? Hey, maybe I can sell offsets!
In regard to the “save Bambi” attitude, I’d like to share a story. A large metropolitan park here in central Ohio had a huge deer overpopulation problem. Deer were starving, desperately eating the bark of trees, being born with birth defects, etc. Plans were made to cull the herd by bringing in park rangers with guns, but that aroused the fury of many of the public. Protests were staged, etc. So eventually the deer were trapped and sent out to a fenced-in rural area to be eventually repatriated to the wilderness. Trouble was, most rural areas already have too many deer of their own and nobody was willing to take a few hundred new ones. Rather a Gitmo-closing kind of problem, now that I think about it. The deer eventually ended up starving on that wretched farm due to both cruel caretakers and lack of money and the whole silly thing cost many tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not sure that a city government spending a lot of the public’s money on, essentially, playing an illusory “We took Buffy out to a farm where he can be free” is a good idea.
Neo, I meant to add that I agree with you about the awfulness of geese. I think anybody who invents some sort of goose birth control would end up massively rich and probably get a Nobel prize.
Can’t find beauty in this poem (if it could be called such), sorry. Nor can I identify with either predatory rash or with “acceptance” of sudden violent death. Both are very alien, even if presented as human, not animal, qualities.
Nor there is a logic. If, as he says, animals have no soul, where the “acceptance, compliance, let alone fulfillment come in?
But I can’t stand poetry in English in general. It’s just there is nothing poetic in it, and in its form – none of a joy of a real poetry: economical expression of a sentiment in a beautiful riming shape. Yes, riming – and preferably with hidden rimes, in the middle, too.
Richard Johnston – You’ve captured my feelings exactly. I eat meat and understand where it comes from, but do not understand people who enjoy it.
I live in a rural area where most men – and more than a few women – hunt. My son’s 8-year old friend shot a deer last week. My son’s dad asked him if he wanted to go hunting. He said, “NO! What’s fun about killing animals?”
I used to hunt large game, and would do so again if I had the time, but I’ll leave it to others to comment about why people do it except to say that communing with nature, matching wits with wily animals and pushing one’sself to the limits of physical exhaustion in that pursuit were largely the attractions for me.
Now let me deliver myself of an opinion: the person who wrote “Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life” is free to his opinion. But let’s see how long he would hold that opinion if Obama or Hillary said they were lovers of the hunt. It’s not the activity he hates, it’s the people who he guesses are its practitioners. F
Hunting that gets too far from its roots can get corrupted. I recently read an interview with an old Inuit hunter. In the old days, he said, a dozen hunters would hunt walrus by going out on the ice and just waiting for a walrus to come along. You had to go out in a group and shoot as a group, because a walrus that was only wounded would head for the water and the meat would be lost. You had to kill instantly with coordinated shots. So one man was designated the leader and everyone shot the instant he did. Anyway, there would be all these guys spread out, scanning the horizon for hours on end. As he put it, when a walrus approached you could just feel it in the air before you even saw it. Everyone locked in and followed the shot leader. Nowadays, he says, young men go out, bunch up in groups, drink beer, and shoot when they think of it. Meat is lost, but they’re basically out for a good time.
Just passing along what I read. I hope I’m not slandering Native Americans.
Tatyana: I never indicated the poem was either beautiful or logical. I consider it haunting and eerie, thought-provoking—and, yes, poetic. That’s what the chill comes from, for me.
I wonder whether full appreciation of poetry in any particular language is hampered when that language is not a person’s first language? I also find that poetry is more or less untranslatable, unfortunately, despite heroic efforts to translate it. I studied Pushkin in English, and found it awful, but I am aware that in Russian it’s considered pretty much up there with Shakespeare, and I will have to take the Russians’ word for it.
You, of course, speak English very very well. And yet perhaps there’s something—who knows what?—about not being a native speaker that makes it harder to love English poetry. Of course, many native speakers of each language don’t care for poetry in their native tongue, or any kind of poetry. But it doesn’t sound as though that’s the case for you. Your preference for rhyming poetry, including internal rhyme (I happen to like rhyming poetry too, although I think internal rhyme sometimes takes a good thing too far) may indicate that the music of English is hard for you to hear in poetry unless that music is very overt. I’m just guessing here; I really don’t know.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of hunting itself being called “fun”– it’s enjoyable, and the stuff around it is fun, and it’s fulfilling in the same manner that cooking a great meal is fulfilling, enjoyable, “fun.” The animals die, as all animals will, but it’s for a purpose.
It’s a fulfillment thing; I run into the same problem when I try to explain to my husband why I find it enjoyable to make up lyrics for a song.
(Full disclosure, I don’t call very many things “fun”– that word has implications of a much more active sort of enjoyment than I usually get to have, like playing soccer with a really great street team.)
Tatyana –
I prefer poems that make their point and make the words themselves sing or laugh (example: the way Kipling or Dr. Seuss plays with words) at the same time; I have a glimmer of understanding of the appeal of haiku, but it seems very artificial, like a word form of bonsai.
The poem Neo posted here seems to be using its form to get the mood set– alien, disjointed, an attempt to understand (in the meaning of putting ones’ self in the place) without anthropomorphizing (not entirely successful) in a poetic form. I don’t think it’s accurate, but it makes nice sci fi…..
I hunted as a youngster, but gave it up. I cannot say exactly why I loved the idea of hunting; and the practice. My father never hunted. I had an Uncle and older cousins who did, and they were my boyhood heroes. I know why I quit–I was too squeamish. So, it was a personal “weakness”. Therefore, I have no problems with folks who hunt–and eat their kill.
The notion of hunting for trophies leaves me cold. Still, I do not condemn.
As noted. Some animal are natural prey; others are natural predators. Some are a combination. I have no regrets for an animal who lives in its natural habitat, in a natural way, and falls prey. Even to the two-legged predator. I do mourn for animals who are prey to un-natural circumstances. A deer road kill, always causes a twinge of sadness. And yes, the road kill here in Virginia is enormous–partly because the deer population is huge.
I have come to hate geese. They are beautiful on the wing, in formation; and their call is haunting. But, up close they are filthy, and pollute their environment worse than humans.
I went vegetarian for awhile. Partly because of perceived health benefits. But, mainly because traveling to the formerly beautiful rivers I fished took me past factory style chicken farms. Seeing what the effect that those as well as, factory pig farms, and cattle farms had on rivers was disquieting. Even more disturbing was passing trucks loaded to sickening capacity with chickens, or hogs. I enjoyed the vegetarian life style, but it was too hard for may wife. She constantly fretted over how to feed me. I gave it up. I try not to think too much about those factory farms.
Richard Johnston, have a look at this:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/sarah_palins_basic_instinct.html
It may answer some of your questions.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Have you ever watched a cat toy with a mouse or bird? Talk about a “hunting is fun” attitude! Methinks a lion or hyena wouldn’t think twice about chowing down on liberal walking the savannah. And would probably enjoy it, too.
These are the same people who want rubber mats for playgrounds and complain about Happy Meals because they “encourage” children to eat to obesity. Feh.
I really must say something about this terrible fuss that is being made about Sarah Palin and her caribou, which is not a moose. Rex Murphy who writes a weekly column in Canada’s National Post makes an amusing and sensible response to the sort of silliness that has been written. Google “Rex Murphy: What’s wrong with facing down furry critters?”. Hunting and fishing goes hand in hand with conservation and the study of life in the wild. Urban chic is offended by the reminder of nature’s “tooth and claw” existence. The whole Green movement sees nature from an urban perspective and views nature through Walt Disney eyes.
Growing up with guns and hunting gives some Americans a leg up on being a soldier. Being willing and able to kill is a matter of national survival at times.
I appreciate everyone’s answers. I come at this trying to fight some prejudices so that I can hear things and understand them. One thing that’s always occurred to me is that it doesn’t seem very sporting to shoot an animal from a distance with a high-tech rifle or some such thing (this is the voice of ignorance talking here as I’ve never experienced this), and that it would seem sporting if someone took on, say, a bear with a couple of knives. But as I say I am the first to acknowledge my ignorance of what the experience is like.
I do sort of understand the distinction between “fun” and, say, fulfillment or satisfaction. The way I play golf it is very rarely anything approaching “fun” but there is the rare satisfaction of the fluke good shot.
Daniel, thank you for the link. Interesting reading.
I’m not sure I understand non-hunters who think killing is “fun”. Walking out in the woods is fun, breathing this incredibly clean new hampshire air is fun. Killing an animal for food, however, is a sobering and solemn experience requiring respect for the one who gave its life to add to yours. If you don’t know the experience, don’t project your mistaken attitudes onto others.
If you are looking for some wonderful poetry, read Richard Wilbur. A WWII vet, poet laureate of the US before Robert Frost. Talk about respect for the dignity of non-human creatures. I don’t care what your native tongue is, beauty is universal.
We have the luxury of being several steps removed from what was necessary to provide the beef that was in the hamburger that we had for lunch. May it always be so. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if there were a massive natural disaster or economic meltdown and food as we know it became unavailable for a prolonged period.
One of the revelations and haunting memories of having served in combat is how quickly your guy-next-door, average 19 year old boy can become a rather ruthless killer.
I live in a part of the country where many hunt … deer mostly, but also doves and wild pig. I don’t hunt myself, being squeamish about blood, and killing things, and schlepping around in the wilderness in all weathers, camping out and all of that … but I do understand why people who love hunting do it.
Kind of how I understand about people who love Nascar. Not my cuppa – but I understand.
Richard,
I am a hunter. But I am also human. The word “humane” answers the question as to why I don’t hunt with spears or throwing knives. A grizzly bear who catches a live deer will simply begin feeding, trusting that the deer will soon die. A human, acting in a “humane” way, will take whatever pains he can to kill quick and clean. This is primarly how we differ from our fellow predators.
iberal commenter is correct that only humans can think about it, or choose to do it even though meat is available by other means, and therein lies the rub.
myth… cats will torture mice and kill them and not eat them… as will others… no rub there…
just bs arguments pretending we have no bodies and live in heaven in pure minds only…
all to deny natural, pretending to defend natural
Artfldgr: what I said is not a myth. Cats torture mice, but I submit that the cats don’t think about it. And most animals do not torture or play with their food (or potential food, or even other animals that do not become food but could be) in that way. But in any event, my point was about the thought process, not about the activity itself.
However, I wonder—I don’t own cats myself, nor am I a cat expert, and so don’t know the answer—do cats in the wild torture mice or other prey and then not eat them? Is it not possible that only domestic pet cats torture mice and not eat them, because they are fed cat food and therefore are not hungry and don’t need the mice for food? So that the torturing-without-eating behavior is one that would not exist but for humans interrupting the more natural cycle by feeding their pet cats cat food?
I can’t speak for others who hunt or fish (fish also in the category of game) – only for myself.
I hunt simply because I choose to.
Certainly all the reasons Neo mentions are part of the reason I hunt and fish, but it’s more. Is it bloodlust? No. The adrenaline rush is the same whether I shoot the game with a camera or a rifle. The follow up question I think naturally comes then is: “if you get the same rush shooting game with a camera as you do with a rifle then why is it necessary to shoot with a rifle at all?” Frankly – it isn’t necessary. We have livestock ranchers and slaughter houses sufficient in the world to provide meat (pork, lamb, beef, beefalo, buffalo, enu, ostrich, etc.) for any omnivorous taste willing to pay the price. Today’s technologies give us the luxury to be as far removed from the source of the meat on our plate as we are comfortable with.
Why do I hunt and fish then? I’m comfortable with the reminder when I kill and dress an animal that the meat that winds up on my plate comes at a cost beyond paying a cashier at a check out counter. It is not abstracted by an industry to market process. As odd as it sounds hunting and fishing also gives me a stronger appreciation for life…again, the fragility of life is not abstracted or hidden.
To Richard Johnston’s question about the fun of killing an animal. Speaking for myself, walking up to a creature of nature I have just killed is not fun…sobering yes, but not fun. The overall experience of the camping, the stalking, the cold mornings and the campfire meals and coffee is fun. The meat on my plate as a result of hunting is gratifying. The experience as a whole – memorable.
Non-hunters can’t get it. perhaps in part because they attempt rational analysis without thinking it through. RJ’s comment that it doesn’t seem sporting to shoot an animal at long distance with a high-tech rifle is an example.
Guns don’t find the target and shoot themselves. There is a great deal of physics (ballistics) involved in a good, i.e. accurate, long-distance shot, as well as bodily control. Pulling the trigger must be done just so, or else. And we are not, emphatically not, talking about ‘shooting’ an animal; we are talking of killing it where it stands, not gut-shooting it for death a mile or two off. “High tech” improves accuracy but it emphatically will not help one “hit the target”, because that’s not the point. At all.
In fact, a one-shot kill of an elk at 500 yards in awful terrain is a major accomplishment, a serious phyical challenge at 8000ft, in winter. Why 500 yds? Becsude the wary critters will flee if one gets closer, that’s why.
When I quail-hunt, I typically cover 10-12 miles. It is about working the right terrain admixed with large bird-free zones, the coordinated man-dog partnership, the always-startling though expected flush, the quick coordination required for accurate shooting of an individual bird. So-called “flock shooting” hardly ever works. With travel, costs me about $100 per bird. Love it!
One winter Sunday years ago, hunting woodcock with my best friend, the drizzling rain was freezing on our shotgun barrels, dripping down our necks, and we were not finding any birds. But we agreed that it sure beat watching the NFL.
There’s a pretty broad tendency for people to think those with other gifts and proclivities are somehow defective. We have hunters. We have warriors. They are part of the human family and deserve respect.
Hate is hate, cruelty is cruelty, and these things manifest themselves through all types – even vegetarians – and in many, many ways.
I like the poem. I get it. Thanks.
1. I haven’t pulled a trigger since my military training in the 1960s and I do not hunt. Nevertheless I strongly support the Second Amendment and I strongly oppose efforts to outlaw hunting.
2. There is at least a strain of JudeoChristian thought, e.g. Isaiah re the lion & the lamb, that views hunting and meat-eating as undesirable but necessary in this imperfect world. Nature is permeated by struggle and we must survive; I view hunting as a manifestation of the necessary vitality–and callousness. (Of course hunting can be a pretext for savagery, just as an ethical refusal to hunt can be a rationalization of weakness or squeamishness.)
3. Dominion is a JudeoChristian argument for vegetarianism that IMO can be respected by conservatives. It did not make a vegetarian out of me, but I probably would feel obliged to eat vat-grown meat if it became affordably available.
4. On the other hand, Poul Anderson’s The Problem of Pain features God as Hunter.
5. I don’t buy the Dickey poem because it leaves out how predators die: presumably of starvation abetted by infirmity and disease. Put some sovereign floating of joy into that if you can, Mr. Dickey.
6. Tatyana, I agree with Neo’s response to you. I’d have no issue with your remarks if they were phrased as an expression of personal taste. Maybe that was your intent, but the second sentence in your last paragraph is the culprit afaic.
I prefer poems that make their point and make the words themselves sing or laugh (example: the way Kipling or Dr. Seuss plays with words)
Kipling’s ability to play with sounds makes him one of my favorite poets of all time. At the same time, when he wanted to move you, *wow.* His poem “The Children” is the most powerful poem I’ve ever read. Maybe it’s just a chink in my personal armor, but I cannot read it aloud without tearing up. Heck, I can’t read it *silently* without tearing up.
What I don’t understand it why some people consider it to be actually fun.
those that enjoyed the hunt were better at it, and did it more, and their families had the calories to survive and thrive…
those that didn’t died out…
today those that don’t, are pretty much domesticated…
and if you have not understood it, you will be informed by mostly myths, and movies, and teachers, etc…
I will clue you in… hunters tend to be earthy people. they LOVE nature in a way in which they open their wallets to protect it, while others break windows in a city. they don’t have blood-lust (at least most of them i have met). they would rather a deer end up in their fridge being eaten, than rotting on the side of the road till it stinks, and the local sheriffs department has the trash pickup take it to the dump.
and they as well as others in the real world, unlike lots of liberals i have met over my life, understand that EVERYTHING DIES….
that the libs who protest never protest from any kind of view that is complete. theirs is always a world of snapshots, never moving feeling connected life.
if you track a deer, or any other animal they like, or not like, they don’t last long. if they are victim animals (ie, the hunted as humans were at one time), they breed like crazy, have short lives, tend to be very stupid, and their niche is developed WITH their predators in the mix.
they are that beautiful because of the predators hunting them!!!!!
my favorite is their idea of how an animal shot and not taken home is bad too. how? every scavenger just got a big boost in life, from fungus, to beetles, to worms, to flies, to raccoon, possum, crows, etc.
their ideas and such are not supportable unless they are made from snapshots in isolation of the reality of things.
which is the point…
[the whole of socialism is about constructing an artificial reality which then allows control of the means of production – people]
our grandfathers knew we lived in a world in which we can never run out of materials… you cant ‘use up’ raw materials… you can only rearrange matter. when done with it, where is it? at some point, garbage dumps of the past will be the richest mining points of the future.
when the US is subducted under a tectonic plate what happens to the trash?
life has been around for billions of years, and we worry about a 100 year old garbage bag?
magnify here, shrink there, fake history here, and rewrite facts there, and pretty soon, reality outside your purview is fantasy land and you don’t know it as you never leave fantasy land in a way in which you leave fantasy land (only pretend to with a very poor safe facsimile to tell the other house cats what real life is like).
the sad truth is that if you read liberals web sites and their comments THEY are the bloody minded ones who would enable others to do what hunters would NEVER do to their prey.
they will easily use terms and references to acts and things that in real life go way beyond DIY food gathering!!!
they will set a person on fire in effigy, and a hunter would NEVER set a deer on fire as a way to get his prey. they yelled off with their heads as they terrorized the royals, and a hunter will try to not even let the animal know he/she is there and wants a clean kill where the animal drops not knowing what hit them (which is much nicer than being taken down and eaten alive, or get weak and let parasites take you down, or starvation, which are the norm otherwise).
any argyment that we are modern man and do not need to do that, is an argument that equates modern with domesticated.
Hunting is emotionally like fishing…
Bringing home the bacon really resonates on a boar hunt. BTW, never hunt wild boar alone. It will be hunting you, for sure.
Likewise, hunting polar bears consists of letting the bear hunt you and getting him first. Do not try it without expert assistance AND a four man team.
Attitudes change drastically when the venison becomes family meals through the winter.
The ecosystem has limits. The buck you spare will meet his end some other way — MUCH more painfully than a well placed rifle shot.
Without predation, herbivores get completely out of hand and start to ruin the flora on their way to starvation.
As for the morality of going vegetarian: Hitler ruined the connection for me. That he farted brutally just puts the capper on the whole fad.
I am a hunter and I have been for almost 60 years. When I was a young ten year old I was so proud to shoot a rabbit and share it with my grandmother, who was born in the 1880’s and loved to eat wild rabbit. I spent hour after hour as a teenager with a rifle or shotgun after school and on the weekends shooting small game and fishing.
Over the years I have been able to hunt various types of larger game and I still enjoy the whole process. I raised a Brittany dog from a puppy, trained him and spent may hours on the road and hunting with my furry friend who would find quail or pheasant, freeze like a statue over a hundred yards away on point. When we put the bird up and made the shot he would find, retrieve the bird and place it in my hand.
I have spent several days hunting deer, often coming awayempty handed and at times being able to make a clean swift kill and have venison for another year. I enjoy my time afield, I share it with my wife, son and grandchildren and hunting is part of our seasonal year.
One the opening day of dove season every year a group of 15 to 20 of us meet in Brownwood Texas for our dove hunt. We are an eclectic group that includes sons and daughters, welders from Waco, a professor of psychiatry, PhD educators, a multi-published writer and a Harvard lawyer. We have been shooting together for a number of years and make our reservations a year ahead.
By the way, the few doves we actually bag are probably some of the most expensive meat in the world since out guys come in from several different states for this event. A Texas dove hunt with great-grandfathers showing youngsters how to clean birds, while a grandmother is shooting more doves with her 28 gauge is an important part of our lives.
Now as to why we enjoy a sport that ends with a dead animal I will share my feelings. A fact is that
not many creatures in nature die in bed from old age, all of the critters live a precarious existence and they make their living every day staying alive.
Nature is not very kind and as stated above every critter feeds another whether the other is a bear or an ant. We hunters step into this food thing chain and yes, we are well-fed people who hunt for sport. Most of us also share a respect for the death of an animal that will provide food that we are willing to harvest, take care of and process in a correct manner.
As a matter of fact, here in Texas every effort must me made to find every creature that has been shot and treat it in a manner so that the meat is not wasted, otherwise it is a lawful offense. Think about that for a minute, does anyone care if the food we take home goes to waste and do we break the law when we let it go bad?
I feel that there is a honesty in the process of making meat and letting the young people in your family share in the experience, knowing that meat does not just grow in little packages in the grocery store but some creature has to die and then be treated with respect, cleaned and stored in a manner so that it can be cooked and make a meal.
Yep, it is kind of a back to basic thing and dove breasts stuffed with jalapeé±o’s, wrapped in bacon and grilled over hot coals are a favorite meal at our house.
I also have very strong feelings about the life of the birds and animals that die when we hunt and we all owe it to the critters to shoot straight and make one shot kills. It is not sporting to wound game either bird or mammal and have it run off wounded to die or live cripple.
I know all of this stuff is hard to understand if you have not been around the whole process but it really is a way of life for a lot of us in this wonderful country where not just the rich folk get to own guns and hunt. Anyway this is just the way one old guy here in Texas feels about hunting.
neo:
domesticated cats are not the only ones…
chimpanzees and other primates will torture their meat and will mass attack others literally tearing them apart limb from limb
elephants will trample either angry or drunk
sharks bite and not eat, often just letting what they bit go (not to mention swallowing things like boat anchors too)
when many chimps attack their owner in mass… how did they coordinate and know to do so unless they think about it in the way they think?
while the recent argument about feeling pain, and having a psychological understanding of it is key (and what most missed in the fish feel pain articles), animals do “play with their food”, and there now are lots of examples.
the difference wasn’t that they were animals and didn’t like it but did it anyway…. its that they weren’t smart enough to have the opportunity often.
lions spend most of their time conserving energy between hunts. if they lived in a more plentiful place, they could play with their food the way otters do.
the whole argument here comes from a sense that knowing makes it different. does it? there are real morals and there are also false morals, which are which? (hint, there is a reason why religions have to go in their model).
even Valentine Micheal Smith (stranger in a strange land) grokked purpose to life and that grass was to be walked on, and by fate, fortune, design, luck, or no reason, we just aren’t the ones that get walked on.
animals don’t waste food and man does, because man out produces his minimum by humongous margins. THAT’S what makes us different and what gives us the luxury of thought to imagine that doing what all living things have done for a few billion years (and will do for billions of years after us), is somehow immoral.
[and dont worry, even man wasted food is not wasted, there are a whole bunch of other creatures that lived either in the field, or on the waste where its dumped, that still make nothing a waste in truth but only in isolation]
Every human on planet earth can move to texas and would have property…
pollution is not a problem… all we have ever produced doesn’t even take up a cube 50 miles a side… (and soon will be mined for materials)
energy isn’t even a problem, if allowed to proceed and left alone, the oil would have given way to cheap, and cheap would facilitate space travel. hold back oil, you hold back ubiquitous space, and then you hold back almost limitless energy.
nothing we do can remove all life on the planet. NOTHING. not even the biggest nuclear weapons all going off at once. life will still be here and surprisingly will be all around in less than 100 years… just life that will become very different life. maybe radiodurens will dominate.
none of these major things in our lives makes much sense outside a fish bowl. in the immediate now we can make places filthy enough to be a problem to us and animals we like. capitalism tends to reward what makes us happy and so it tends to be cleaner as it has more luxury and that clean is a luxury.
The whole argument about hunting is whether one set of people can make up reasons sufficient enough to force another set of people to stop doing something they don’t like and work very hard at not liking and finding reasons to not like it.
if they win that, then what? you see what this is is a process of finding ‘issues’ by making false moral arguments and then getting a group to side with such and its ALWAYS about getting the state to find the power to subject one group to some restriction.
do that as a process across many lines of issues, and what do you have and what do you end up with?
hunters at least take care of the land and animals. they open their wallets in many ways and spend hard earned cash insuring that the animals they are whining about are around.
i will say that the hunters at the recent bear hunt were wiser than the protesters. they know that if they don’t hunt some bear, the bear will keep growing in numbers, until the bear are snatching children, pets, and elderly from back yards. at that point the same people yelling save the bears, will want them ALL removed and will claim you cant have any near, and that there is no safe medium, etc.
the bears that stay away from people are also those that will stay away from hunters, and over time, you get bears that stay away from people, and better hunting with most coming home with nothing.
it just occurred to me that there is ANOTHER facet of this argument from the progressives, and that is only those who are approved to do something should be allowed to do something. in this way, abattoir is good, hunter is bad because the abattoir is trained (not educated) and approved and supervised (by a larger entity).
people are animals, not plants and we happen to be omnivores, an ability which gave us a huge advantage in energy vs freedom, over most animals.
to make what man has done for millenia immoral is to do what to man from today to before man was man?
at no time in human history and before history and farming, that humans haven’t hunted. today not being any different than any other time in over 100,000 years. other than we have mechanized the process and some can now seem to argue that what has been normal for 100,000 years and more is now abnormal and amoral.
how is this most normal of acts for living man not moral? homo sapiens sapiens hunts. so did
homo-neanderthalensis, homo habilius, homo-erectus…
that last one being from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago…
have we progressed beyond that? to domestication? to no longer having a connection with nature, the real world, its natural principals? to taste them, and make up new ones we then believe from the boob toobe?
from what i have noticed… those who have been free wouldnt trade it for anything… and those who havent, or are afraid of it, tend to want to take it away from the others. the rest tends to be time and clever arguments for the most part.
one thing history teaches me from looking at it plainly is that from aztec sacrifices, to adolf hitler & stalin, you get away from reality we were made for and contrive reality, it tends to feed on itself and the control goes till a new reality is defined with new morals… (sounds like em too, no?)
a practice that has been normal from before man was man, for over a million years is now evil by decree and because now we think.
obviously it dont wash with me that way, you may get different mileage. 🙂
What i don’t get is why it is alright to take and consume plant life but not animal life.
ever notice that city folk kill each other in huge numbers and they worry about country folk who hunt that live in towns that hadn’t had a murder on record yet?
Neo,
I recall we already had this conversation in the past…forgive me if I repeat my response: I don’t think it is a question of language deficiency (although I admit my inadequacy and imperfection); as a proof I offer my appreciation of English prose, from Wodehouse to Steinbeck. I enjoy precision, dry wit and sarcastic turn of thought.
But poetry…Poles get it, Germans get it (too much, if we look at the Romantics…) Russians certainly do, and French most of all. But English poetry is too …tongue-breaking, awkward, sloppy in metaphor and choice of word, and too illegible in expressing a thought – apart from purely formal deficiencies.
It is my own personal take, of course. Lots of Russian-speakers enjoy Shakespeare in original and seem to worship him. It’s just not my thing.
Foxfier: may be I should try Kipling. I love him in Russian translation.
I always have to laugh to myself about people that don’t understand nature.
Many years ago, I was invited to help a rancher who had a problem with gophers. The little critters were eating the grass meant for his cattle. In addition, he was concerned about his horses and cattle breaking a leg in the holes the gophers dug. He had tried poison, but it seemed to have little benefit. I suggested hollow-point .22!
It was all in “self-defense” of course, but that day we killed about 50 of the little beasts.
When my sister-in-law learned of the carnage, she almost cried–killing all those “fuzzy little cute guys”.
Later in the afternoon, we drove around the area, with sister-in-law. We witnessed the remaining “fuzzy little cute guys” feasting on the dead ones. Yup, they are carnivorous.
We weren’t killing innocents, we were supplying dinner!
though I’m such an omnivore, like you said, that I eat dead animals. but, I don’t think I can kill animals by my own hands. I would just take pity on them.
Another thing:
Anti-hunters often complain that shooting the critter, whether deer, African buffalo, bear or elephant, is not “sporting enough”. Somehow it should be more “fair”, by which is meant the hunted should have an equal opportunity to off the hunter.
Hunted nearly my entire life and I certain;y find it fun (no need for quotes). I can’t fathom how one doesn’t, as such when I talk with people who do so our explanations tend to go past each other. Why do you find baseball fun? I detest the sport both to watch and to play, can’t figure out no matter how many times people who like it say why they do. I’m certain everyone confused over hunting can find something they love, that I hate, and I will not understand (by definition – if you understood then you wouldn’t be mystified).
For myself it is part of being in nature, it is the fulmination of doing that to harvest an animal. You can’t simply observe as you do just taking photos, you have to become part of the natural world and learn how the animal you are seeking to kill thinks and acts – trust me when I say prey animals have learned through MANY years (indeed, millions of years) how to tell when something “isn’t right”.
All I can say is watch a hunting show at when the hunter is shooting you can see their whole body language change in a way that screams “predator” even to humans that are terrible about reading such things. There is almost nothing else out there that you see such a transformation, prey animals also can know this is some way (and they rarely truly do not know something is there), not being a prey animal I couldn’t exactly tell you what they sense but I know how I have to change and move to not trigger their flight mode.
“One thing that’s always occurred to me is that it doesn’t seem very sporting to shoot an animal from a distance with a high-tech rifle or some such thing (this is the voice of ignorance talking here as I’ve never experienced this), and that it would seem sporting if someone took on, say, a bear with a couple of knives. ”
I can’t say how many times I’ve seen that or something similar said – first off rifle hunting isn’t that simple and do you *really* believe the only way to sportingly take an animal is to fight a bear with a bowie knife? Therein is a large part of your problem too – you have *no idea* what it is like to hunt, by your model it *doesn’t* make sense to hunt.
Frankly I’ve always found that statement to be inherently a rude one, the implications of that belief are not nice and you aren’t even putting the part you do not know anything about as a question. It is similar to “when did you quit raping women” – the basic premise is so largely incorrect that the question you are directly asking can not be answered. What you describe and ask why it is done can’t be answered because that isn’t a situation that occurs in reality.
The average hunter in Tennessee takes a single deer every two to three years. This average includes those that near live in the woods and harvest their yearly limit (which is well over 10). I have not seen a published median but it is in the years without killing a deer. Prey animals live because they know when they are being hunted.
Further there seems to be some misbegotten notion that hunters are somehow nature destroyers (think of the implications in Avatar where the hero learns to appreciate nature), as I said in another thread there are few hunters that *do not* understand and do that. It is lack of hunting and truly being a part of nature (as opposed to just being an outside observer) that makes people think that is the way everyone is.
Heck even poachers understand that part of our world better than ones that get their meat from a grocery store. You will probably never be a hunter or understand it (though that have been more than a few people who end up avid hunters after truly exploring it, most do not), however your view of that world is so flawed that it is impossible for you to understand at all, if you apply any of my answers to your world view it will *not* make sense.
I’ve never been a hunter or felt the impulse to hunt, so I probably would have fallen into the common trap of imagining that those who hunt do it out of some kind of primitive blood lust or cruel joy in killing, if not for my grandfather. He was a fisherman all his life and had been an eager deer hunter in his youth. The head of a deer he had killed was mounted on the wall in his vacation cabin. Once I asked him about it, wondering how he — an avid bird watcher and animal lover, a quintessentially kind person — could ever have chosen to kill an animal, as I imagined, “for fun.”
He took me seriously the way few adults treat children, sat down and explained. It wasn’t about fun, he said; it was about being part of a tradition handed down from generation to generation for as long as human beings have lived on the earth. His father taught him to hunt as his father’s father had done before. He said that, besides all the good practical reasons for hunting such as enjoying being out in the woods, and the need to control the population of deer now that big predators are gone — hunting and fishing, for him at least, were ways to remember what living really is. As best he could, an old man talking to a child, he tried to explain that death is in the heart of life — that we all must live by taking life, whether that life is a deer or a cow or a carrot, and that this is a wonderful and miraculous thing, not an evil or a tragedy. (He was a doctor and, looking back now on that discussion, I think he must have spent a lot of time contemplating this mystery.)
I never forgot that conversation; he was a wise man, and young as I was, he got across to me a respect for hunters that I’ve carried with me ever since — at least for the good, responsible ones, who are most of them, as far as I can tell.
I live now in a rural area where many of my friends and neighbors hunt. We have land that we don’t use for hunting ourselves, and a side benefit of letting others hunt on it is that venison and wild turkey tends to appear in my kitchen. It’s not the kind of cooking I ever expected to learn to do do, but I have learned, and wow. There’s something extraordinary about eating venison from a deer that grew up wild — never fed by a person, a creature entirely of the woods and hills — it’s almost like eating the forest itself. If I try to say any more along this line, I will start sounding too New-Agey to be able to stand myself, but there it is.
And besides, it’s delicious!
Hunting and Nascar. Maybe the two most important institutions we have. Limit the vote to those who hunt and those who Nascar and everything will be all right!
That he
farted
brutally
just puts the capper
on the whole fad.
You gotta have a strong stomach for English poetry, but one of its advantages is its ubiquity: it makes the true English master the greatest of all.
Art said : “it just occurred to me that there is ANOTHER facet of this argument from the progressives, and that is only those who are approved to do something should be allowed to do something.”
Yes-it goes right along with the demand for a government liscence to do this or that or the argument that an “expert” cannot be questioned-all part of he same push against indivdualism toward the collective.
gs:
everything I write is my opinion.
I don’t know fun. I do know that when the 5h!7 hits the fan, liberals who object to having Bambi in to dinner will starve. My family won’t. And they will be safe from the bad guys, too, because I have skills that I practice.
You can have this discussion because we are so far removed from the food chain, from the reality of hunting for our own food and for survival. It would not take much for us to be thrust back into that reality. And then the skillful hunter would be respected and rewarded. The thrill of the hunt is not just about “fun” but about the reward at the end, a full belly.
We grew up with freezers full of meat. Some from domestic sources, cows, sheep, rabbits, chickens, but also deer, elk, ducks and geese, pheasants…
Only recently has it come about that the hunting trip costs more than the meat is worth. But driving home one trip, we passed an elk farm, where the elk were in pens much like cattle, mothers were separated from babies – THAT struck me as cruel, and even horrific. Intellectually i KNOW the whys and wherefores, but the truth is, there’s more honor in the hunt.
I’m aware of it even as I buy my meat at Safeway. The man who provides for his family the old fashioned way barely exists anymore, thus well-heeled people today sneer and scoff at Palin. They have no idea.
Neo – this is the best place on the net. And Artfldgr, I love everything you write. It’s just nice knowing you guys are here in this increasingly upside down world.
Richard Johnson:
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I find qustions regarding why some people find hunting fun, coming from a guy who plays golf, to be hugely amusing.
Dear Neo,
One should distinguish the hunt from the kill. When I was growing up, my father, James Dickey, loved to take me hunting with a bow and arrow, but he never actually managed to kill anything when we were together, and neither did I. The point was to be out there in the woods and share in some primal way the world of the animals, which is, as the poem suggests, very much about the experience of hunting. Once when I was not with him he managed to kill a fox, which he skinned. When he got back home he tried to cure the pelt on a plank in our suburban back yard, but another little boy in the neighborhood ripped all the hair out of the tail, and the skin smelled. My father threw it away. Many years later, when I was in my 20s, he told me he had actually killed a deer at last, hunting from a tree stand on one of the islands off the Georgia coast. I never saw any part of the deer. I don’t know if the story’s true. (Such is life with a poet.) But I do know my father never went hunting again.
I notice that all this moral vaporing isn’t expended on, say, berrypicking or digging up potatoes, or even something more of a total harvest, like morel hunting. Nobody wants to spare the truffle’s life.
Deer are a lot more plentiful than truffles. I’ve never had or even seen or smelled a truffle, but I guarantee I’ve eaten venison! Obviously, it must be more sustainable to hunt deer.
Nobody vapors about hunting seashells, either. Nobody writes moving laments for the tiny crustaceans and mollusks silently shrieking out their lives in bleach and boiling water, for nothing but beauty.
Nobody objects to pearls. But venison is cruel. Yeah.
I am appalled by all the bloodthirsty commentary on this site. Killing animals for food is not what Gaia intended. I strongly encourage all you bloodthirsty murderers of gentle animals recommit yourselves toward protecting Nature in all its glory, starting with those gentle icons of vegetarianism, polar bears.
One of my stock lines is that the more “civilized” you are the less you know about where your food comes from. A liberal colleague likes to show classes a video on the production of chicken McNuggets, and students come away saying they’ll never eat them again. That’s when I ask them if that road-killed venison I’ve talked about looks more palatable now. And anyway, it must be more ethical to eat animals that commit suicide by jumping in front of cars.
I think it was Paul Reiser who came up with the following ( I don’t remember the exact wording):
People say we shouldn’t eat tuna, because tuna fishing kills the dolphins – how about, we shouldn’t eat tuna because it kills the tuna ?
This boils down to the issue of whether man is a part of nature or not. I submit that the closest we humans come to behaving unnaturally in the world of nature, is in thinking we possess the ability to behave unnaturally. We don’t and we can’t.
…Somehow it should be more “fair”, by which is meant the hunted should have an equal opportunity to off the hunter…
I used to hunt deer with bow and arrow. While deer aren’t especially dangerous, you can take it to the bank that hunting with bow and arrow is extremely “fair”–for the prey. Christopher Dickey writes the truth about the difficulty of bow hunting–I rarely went home with anything except a case of near-frostbite. On those rare occasions that a deer wandered into range, he still had to turn the right way for me to even have a shot.
Archery hunting is generally not a clean business. A hunting arrow kills by hemorrhage rather than by shock as a bullet does, so even an accurate hit meant I would have at least some tracking to do while the broadhead did its bloody work. I’m a very good shot with a bow, but broadheads of the 1970s weren’t nearly as effective as today’s, and that could mean a mile or more of stomping through the swamp, or the woods, trying to find where the deer went down. I carried a large-caliber revolver in case I had to dispatch a wounded animal, but never had to use it. But the venison that resulted from a successful hunt was worth the effort that I had to go through to obtain it.
Fun? Some of it sure was, like getting out of the city into the fresh air, and hanging out with my buds at the cabin or motel. Some of it, like freezing my a$$ off, not so much. Overall, as other people have said here, the experience was rewarding and satisfying rather than fun per se.
Hunting is highly regulated in this country, and often culls the herd in a beneficial way.
Indeed. I would go so far as to say that hunting is required for certain game species, as we have either eliminated or severely curtailed the number of predators not human. In the absence of predation, many species will reproduce like, ummm, rabbits until the limitation of their environment curtails further reproduction.
And that means disease and starvation, and unhealthy populations. And that will be an on-going yo-yo type cycle: not many critters, then more, then too many, then many die off, then the survivors start thriving again.
Maureen: not nobody—at least, not when the crustaceans are actually eaten alive (which, of course, is different from pearl farming). I seem to remember a funny passage in one of Doug Adams “Hitchhiker” books: “remember the oyster?”
Neo: “Artfldgr: what I said is not a myth. Cats torture mice, but I submit that the cats don’t think about it. ”
This is a somewhat anthropomorphic way to look it at. Lots of predators have an immediate response to prey, chasing and capturing or bringing to bay, but they have to be brought to a state of arousal before they can kill at all; it’s a species-protective mechanism that helps keep the adults from preying on offspring of their species. A related instance: the burros of Grand Canyon, like the bighorn, had as their predator mountain lions. Bighorn know to flee frantically, which evokes a state of pursuit arousal in the pumas, and puts the bighorn in an ideal position (running, with the back of the neck exposed) for the lion to kill them — in the only way the lions know how to kill any of their large prey. (Same way they kill deer, elk, joggers and mountain bikers.) The burros simply stood there, eying the lions, or if they were attacked from above and behind, kicked at them. Again, you could phrase the result in various ways, but preferential selection of bighorn, who knew their evolutions in the predatory dance, led to a crash in their population and (to the natural vegetation) a dangerous surplus of the burros, who did not know how to be hunted and how to die.
*waltj,
but I bet your deer was easier to cook and much more pleasant to eat if it was killed with an arrow rather than a rifle.
As I recall reading somewhere, the hunting ammunition is usually small-size bullets (sorry, don’t know technical term in English, in Russian it’s дробь) , which is a pain to take out from the meat later on – but take them ou you must if you want to keep your teeth.
Neo;
…and MFK Fisher wrote a book Consider the oyster in 1941…
I don’t hunt, but I have family and friends who do. As my husband, and avid fisherman and some-times hunter says, nature is indifferent.
Others commenters have done a wonderful job describing why they hunt, so I’ll only add this: Why is it cruel to hunt a grown deer (that the hunter will eat) with a rifle, but it’s not cruel for a lion to purposely pursue the young and disabled members of its prey? Is it fair that some predators hunt in a pack, actively separating their target from the herd, and then attacking it as group? Is is a fair fight when a bear goes after a salmon, a shark goes after a baby seal?
“Deer, for example would be a menace but for hunting.” You’d do yourself and your readers a favor if you googled “deer farms” – You’d all find that there are over 1500 in the U.S. The operate much the same way as factory-farm dairies: The does are artificially inseminated (usually with semen obtained through the internet) – The fawns are removed from their mothers shortly after birth to be “hand fed” — When they are old enough they usually join the “breeding herd” or are released for hunter’s “enjoyment”.
Now, the question is: Either we have too many deer and we should stop breeding them – OR deer “overpopulation” isn’t a problem in which case we should stop killing them. You can’t have it both ways!
Bea Elliot: but deer hunting exists, and it already limits the numbers of deer. I said that the deer population would explode without hunting. The explosion would be temporary; there would then be a die-off from starvation. Not a pretty picture.
See this.
Deer farms also cater to hunters who want an easier and more controlled environment in which to hunt, as well as those who don’t want to hunt but want to buy and eat venison.
Bea â“‹ Elliott –
mice are also farmed. That has nothing to do with the population of wild mice, nor with the issues involved in managing that population.
Many animals are farmed because it improves desired characteristics– number, year-round accessibly, quality of harvested material, etc.
Artfldgr:
I don’t dispute your point, but I wonder a bit at the figures you use to back them up.
For example:
Every human on planet earth can move to texas and would have property…
According to figures I just looked up, Texas is just under 700,000 square kilometers in size. We have approximately 6.888 billion people on Earth right now. Do the arithmetic, and you can indeed squeeze every person on Earth into Texas… with about 100 square meters apiece. That’s a square, 10 meters by 10 meters — hardly what I’d call living space, much less “property”.
Just sayin’. Your point remains — we don’t have a shortage of land, we just don’t always use it efficiently when we should.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
ny city: 468.9 sq mi (1,214.4 km2)
fir 8.9 million people… leaving 5.3284090909090909090909090909091e-5 sq miles for each…
a heck of a lot less than 10 meters each..
the point wasnt to actually try to fit everyone into texas… but to realize that if we could and did, everyone would get your 100 square meters…
and the whole rest of the planet would be empty and completely devoid of humans.
pointing out that their claims are that the world is overpopulated and there will be a disaster soon.
however, given that texas is not a country but a state, and that whole countries like russia could hold everyone and have LOTS of land…
lets say you move them ALL to the US
so now 30 feet by 30 feet is not enough
The nation is the third-largest country in the world in area behind Russia and Canada. It has a total area of 9,629,091 square kilometers (3,717,792 square miles). This total includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia, but not the nation’s territories and dependencies.
now each human being would have how much?
over 30 times what texas alone would give them.
given that the land surfaces of the earth tally 148,940,000 km2
there would then be 139,310,909 km2 left over!!
we are SOOOOO over crowded…
we have no shortage of land as you point out
go check out how much land is held for NO people but only for the government!!! (close to 75% of the land of the US is not available!)
Most of the public land managed by the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management is in the Western states. Public lands account for 25 to 75 percent of the total land area in these states
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public-Lands-Western-US.png
Most of russia is unsettled…
huge areas of australia are almost untouched.
most of what we believe is a myth and could easily be refuted from a children s text book from my childhood.
Tatyana: Why on earth would an arrow-killed deer taste “better” than a bullet-killed one? You are applying Rousseauvian logic. Ah! The romance of the mocassined noble savage stalker letting the arrow fly.
Clean quick deer kills are harder to accomplish with a bow shot than with a rifle, See some of the prior comments.
And you may be confused about shotgun pellets vs. rifle bullets. Never mind the Cyrillic.
But do not let any of this stand in your way. We value your opinions.
“The does are artificially inseminated (usually with semen obtained through the internet)”
Humm, I didn’t know there was an app for that.
But if there is it probably comes in very handy.
“Why on earth would an arrow-killed deer taste “better” than a bullet-killed one?”
There are a few primary things that affect taste: Age, diet, and manner in which they die matter quite a bit (and I list them in order of importance from high to low)
So age means the younger the better – the meat is more tender by far and has most of the flavor and older animals has. Though you can get too young and it not taste too good (we really eat our chickens too young, a few more months and they are MUCH more tasty).
Diet will depend on the animal, but for the most part a grain fed animal with a varied diet including other plant materials as a supplemental will taste best. The easier the animals life and better the nutrition the more marbling on the meat. One living on acorns and grass will be quite gamey.
Finally the less stressed the animal is (and the shorter the period of time that occurs – no nice easy stress free way to end an animals life) the better it will taste.
A clean archery kill tends to be less stressful than a clean gun kill – it isn’t unheard of for an animal harvested with a very sharp broadhead and a quite bow to stand in one spot confused until it dies – they often kinda trot away (not run in a panic) too. They ultimately know something happened but not much more than that. That being said it is harder to get that type of hit and if you do and the deer clearly see you move or you have a loud enough bow they run in a panic and run for a much longer time than with a gun.
Firearms, since they kill from shock, tend cause a sever panic. However it also isn’t uncommon for enough shock to be applied that the deer falls straight down and never moves again. The latter tends – in my experience – to produce what a good clean kill in archery does.
For the most part my experience is that a gun tends to produce an average slightly better tasting meat simply because it is VERY rare they do not die extremely quickly but even on the “instant deaths” they aren’t really instant (just because the brain shuts down doesn’t mean the rest of the animals bodies isn’t pumping things like adrenalin like crazy) – shock damage just produces that. Archery kills mostly average around the same as a gun but have a higher chance of the animal dying under a very low stress environment, especially for better hunters/woodsman.
So, I would say not exactly correct or incorrect. I give them about even odds myself and would never really seek one out over the other. However it is certainly possible (especially if they have only eaten a few pieces of wild deer) to have been lucky enough to eat the better meat taken with archery tackle and not really know the whole story.
Finally, some parts of the world *do* hunt medium game with shotshells (00 and 0 shot is certainly capable of the job up to fairly large game like moose and bears). I do not think any state in the US allows it, though I could be wrong.
strcpy: “There are a few primary things that affect taste: Age, diet, and manner in which they die matter quite a bit… ” To this list we can also subjoin the parts of the animal, and how it is handled after death. Certain parts of the animal are repositories of the gamy taste; these include organs like the liver, rumen, intestines and tarsals; the hide; the fat; the bones; and the blood. Hence properly handled venison is quickly skinned, deboned, and defatted. A deer killed by arrow generally dies of hemorrhage, so the extent to which blood can affect the taste is minimized; that source of off-flavor is drained when the chest cavity is opened. This is but one factor, and not the most important, but carcass for carcass, the mule deer I have taken by arrow have been less gamy than those taken by bullet, postulating competent shot placement through the aortic arch for both.
You are right that archery is so quiet that even the impacted deer is often not startled. I’ve seen them stand around in the herd; I have heard of, though not personally observed, them continuing to browse until they fall over. And for as long as I’ve held still after the shot, I’ve never seen the herd panicked; they continue browsing while the one lays down.
An arrow or a bolt is razor-sharp. People hit by them report what logic and experience suggest; unless the arrow hits bone, the wound is essentially painless until about 10 minutes after impact, at which point the deer has been dead between 9 and 9.5 minutes. Think of the times you have cut yourself with an extremely sharp implement. Again, people hit report something like syncope: grayness pours in from the corners of vision and there’s an instant of dizziness, then you’re done.
I’ve never hunted and I’ve never eaten meat from animals which were hunted. All the meat I’ve ever eaten came from supermarkets or restaurants.
It’s occurred to me that the farther humans get from hunting, the closer we resemble domesticated animals. Think of indoor cats compared to cats that go outdoors and hunt mice. The indoor cats become dependent on humans putting food in their bowls.
It’s also worth noting that domesticated pets tend to have more obesity issues than their wild kin. Modern humans are also having obesity issues.
Domesticated humans will tend to become more and more dependent on government to take care of them.
This is quite alarming for anyone who believes in liberty and freedom.
Can someone explain the difference in eating deer killed by a .30-06 and a steer killed with a sledge? Or any other significant difference in any respect?
strcpy –
You forgot the #1 difference– the way the animal was butchered.
I know first hand that the initial cleaning of an animal makes the difference if you can eat the meat or not.
Then there’s how it’s cooked.
Everything else (and I’d place diet way ahead of age, unless you’re going mutton-lamb angle) is minor though important in grading the result.
I don’t deer hunt myself, but I do know that folks who hunt at range frequently mention that deer shot correctly will not seem to realize they’ve been hit before they’re dead.
I also know that my aunt and uncle (who hunt with bows) have had to track deer for miles on a hit that should have killed the deer. (They both love life, so they don’t do the usual “oh, I missed and can’t find the arrow” thing.)
Death Mechanisms
The impact of a bullet from a .30-06 has produced coaxial cavities through the deer’s heart and lungs, permanent and temporary, and exited the other side of the animal, generally leaving in the vitals a light sprinkling of bullet fragments. (The bullet has been traveling almost 3000 ft/s and spinning 1 revolution per 0.8 ft, ie, 240,000 rpm, so it tends to mushroom and have lead ablated from the frontal surface. This is not true of monometallic – usually pure copper – bullets.) The deer may be quickly gutted, skinned, cleaned, and aged in the dark for a week at 41F. But it usually isn’t.
Air rushes in (a double pneumothorax) and blood from much of the body and brain pours back to the chest cavity; the animal dies of asphyxia.
The steer – either sledged or brain-stunned with a pneumatic or powder driven ‘humane killer’ – is instantly hooked by a gambrel, inverted by a hoist, its throat slashed (the heart has not yet quit beating despite the brain injury), and its guts freed by a slaughterer using a knife with a very long handle. It is skinned and aged for 1 – 3 weeks before butchering.
Eating
The deer meat may have lead fragments, though these mostly or entirely are avoided by proper dressing and butchering or, as I implied, by using copper bullets. The deer’s hormones are natural and it contains no antibiotics. Deer from a relatively small portion of the US should be tested for chronic wasting disease, no case of which has ever been documented as infecting humans; discard if positive. Venison is very low in fat and cholesterol. Western mule deer are somewhat gamier than whitetails. Venison is fairly horrible if shot badly, treated badly after death, or cooked beyond medium rare; otherwise a treat for the gods. Deer liver is actually pretty good even for those who don’t much like liver. Moose liver makes a grand pate.
The steer will have been injected and bolused with hormones and antibiotics throughout its life, and at all times will have a diet somewhat to extremely unnatural. (Evolutionarily our cattle developed to eat euro-asian grasses,; at best they now eat our grasses; at worst, sileage, artificial feed, supplements and even the ground-up effluvia and scraps of other cattle.) Mad cow disease has crossed to humans, but (I think) not on this continent. Beef is graded higher the more marbled it is with fat. That fat makes it possible to cook it to a greater degree of doneness without wholly destroying the flavor. I won’t touch beef liver.
Killing
If you buy supermarket meat, you are forcing someone – usually a poor black or hispanic – to undergo the psychic changes of being a killer, for you. I understand that the one doing the killing is transferred out regularly because the volume of death they deal makes them weird. If you hunt, you subject yourself to those changes, but in a natural, low-volume, high-precision, intensely-focused way. It seems more honest to me. In fact, while I’m happy to hear from vegans, I won’t abide people who claim moral purity based on displacing their killing to people below them on the economic scale. I also believe that until you take an animal through the whole cycle from free woodland creature to table, you don’t have the right to eat meat.
Tatyana, to be honest, my palate isn’t sensitive enough for me to tell the difference between arrow-killed venison and bullet-killed. I’ve had both, enjoyed both, and haven’t noticed any real variation in the flavor. Whether it hung out near farms and ate grain/corn, or roamed through evergreen forests and ate pine needles made a huge difference, however.
Biting down on a bullet, or buckshot pellet, is not a pleasant experience. Bullets sometimes fragment when they hit, and some can be left in the flesh, although not in prime cuts if you’re any kind of a marksman. Doesn’t happen with an arrow.
I don’t know what size bullet you were referring to, but the typical centerfire bullet used in North America for whitetail or mule deer probably ranges from 130 grains on the light side, and 220 on the heavy side. When I put up the bow and brought down the rifle, I used either 150 or 180 grain bullets in a Remington Model 700 in .308 caliber (7.62mm NATO). Or if I happened to be close to populated areas, I used a 12-ga. shotgun with a slug. Didn’t carry as far as a rifle bullet, but had all the stopping power I could want.
“buckshot”!
that’s the word I was looking for.
When people explain to me why killing and eating animals is wrong, I respond with one question: “what do you eat that has never been alive?”
It’s apparently obvious to moralizers that animals shouldn’t be eaten and plants should be. Not to me. Everything alive wishes to stay that way.
Thanks, Simon Kenton, that covers the mechanical differences between the two, though not the original, “Only arrogant humans think it’s ok to take a life” question.
It leads me to believe that the most logically coherent vegan position would be to eschew all meat, but accept the needs/desires of carnivores and omnivores without comment.
I could live with that.
Finally, some parts of the world *do* hunt medium game with shotshells (00 and 0 shot is certainly capable of the job up to fairly large game like moose and bears). I do not think any state in the US allows it, though I could be wrong.
To get one more comment in on this already-lengthy thread, you got some bum info. In some states, a shotgun, with either slug or buckshot, is all you can use to hunt large game. The reason is simple. A bullet from a centerfire rifle will carry up to five miles (not accurately, but still moving fast enough to be lethal), but a slug maybe a mile, and buckshot much less than that. In the more densely populated states, where you might be hunting a mile or two from a subdivision, less range is obviously safer in case of a miss.
honk! honk! honk! honk! honk!
There’s nothing I get pleasure from more compared to coming to this blogging every evening right after work. Hi and thanks for most of the amazing posts!!