Recreational Hunting

No need for apologies, take all the time you can.Morality and Independence:Con has opined that shooting an animal to prove one's personal skills and independence to be highly impractical, and there is nothing moral about shooting a defenseless creature, specifically with a gun, at distance. While broken down into component parts for shock, Con decided to avoid a very prominent factor of Pro's argument, which Pro would contend is rather important to a basic understanding of freedom. Pro wouldn't be so base as to call it patriotic, but there is a certain degree of latitude one must assign to an individual whom would prefer to stalk and kill their own food rathern than depend upon others for their provisions, and that skill is one deserving of practice. Con furthers their opinion into the human realm, by stating that murdering a human for the purposes of seeing if they could would be psychotic, but there is a fundamental difference between humans and animals. Well, in light of appreciating differences between humans and animals, I would like to remind Con that we do hold regular competitions in which we as humans beat, shoot, punch, kick, tackle, and grapple with eachother, for no better reason than to demonstrate superiority and martial prowess. Boxing, mixed martial arts competitions, paint ball/airsoft events, football, wrestling... these are all contests in which we demonstrate as a human we could have done in another human, and in some extreme cases, some actually are and have been at such events. Now, on the topic of impractical: it is NOT immoral for one to have a taste for duck. Or venison. Or turkey. Is there really an appreciable difference in morality in which hundreds are slaughtered in mass, as opposed to one wanting to shoot a duck for one's self to eat? Clearly, it was a recreational hunt, one doesn't need to chase and kill anything. Pro contends that a hunt of such a nature is more 'moral' than a store bought counterpart. If the hunt fails, no duck (or venison or turkey) is killed. On the flip side, in the name of what Con is calling 'practicality', thousands are still butchered regardless of the appetite. How is it immoral for ONE person to feed ONE self a desired flavor of game? Considering that "...Eliminating just half of the waste at just the consumer level would spare the lives of over 500 million chickens used for their meat, over 35 million egg-laying hens, over 15 million pigs and over 3 million cows each year....", suddenly recreational hunting on a meal-to-occasional-meal basis seems decidedly sound, rather than leaving millions of pounds of domesticated stock to rot. [1] This makes the unrecoverable or wounded animals from hunters seem paltry by comparison, if operating on a moral scale. How does game that a recreational hunter want to eat but gets left in-field due to circumstances morally stack up against thousands, no, millions of other animals whom were killed and subsequently wasted based on flighty consumer buying trends? The pain of the animal is of course a serious question, but lets be real: no hunter wants that! Further expenditure of ammunition, further tracking a wounded animal, then lugging it back to a base camp or vehicle... its all a much greater chore than to shoot once, decisively through a practiced skill. The recreational hunter no more wants an unclean kill than a slaughterhouse wants the same for its raw materials, its not worth the cleanup to do a sloppy job in the first place. Not to argue in a circle, but if we are speaking on a morally relativistic scale, again, how does wounded and suffering animals stack up to the millions wasted via a so called 'practical' method? Kantian philosophy aside, surely a quantity argument could be made for cruelty through industrial farming versus recreational hunting. By sheer volume of waste, and how its self perpetuating and largely unchecked, Con doesn't have a moral leg to stand on.Invasive Specie: Pro does not consider boar, nutria, pythons, lionfish, carp, or certain frog varieties to be 'plant' life. These have all been listed as invasive specie around the US, whose hunts (or potential hunts) all can halt their numbers, and generate money for further conservation and (in the case of say.... certain wolves?) fund repopulation and reintroduction efforts. On Gray Wolves and deer: "Afraid that the wolves would kill both their livestock and their children, the colonists sought to eradicate the Gray Wolf population by hunting them." Pro was under the impression that this debate was about recreational hunting, and not the protection of a livelihood, or protection of children. Pro would further ask of Con regarding wolves and deer, which we are to be more concerned with? The specie that doubled, and subsequently was being returned to its numbers post-end of wolf hunts? By looking at that graph, it would seem that the numbers of deer were roughly equivalent to numbers pre wolf shoots, and by extension problematic over population and over grazing, has been satisfied, assuming of course the fires and drought didn't immediately rectify part of that problem already. Pro is begining to notice that a lot of the arguments put forth by Con are relying on form of pre-enlightenment. In the way of technology and tracking, things really took off in the 60's. People (Hippies!) became more aware of the world around them, and a generation of advocates, conservationists, and even educated hunters came about. The "Green Movement" spurred various eco-movements that have both benefitted from and contributed to well regulated recreational hunting. Bluntly, Pro would like to suggest that an immoral hunter whom kills animals to extinction, wastes their meat, and inflicts cruelty for the purpose of cruelty is a charicature. Its an illogical construction designed to embody the worst of an idea to bring a gain. Even the most selfish of people could understand that if they enjoy hunting, killing something for the sheer joy of killing it into annhilation becomes self defeating, their source of joy would be gone. It begs the question if this is a 'sins of the father' discussion? Even then I would contend that hunters of bygone eras weren't immoral. Just uneducated. [1] http://www.countinganimals.com...