From: sherw@ocf.berkeley.edu (Gregory Sherwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Colorado Hunters under attack
Date: 7 Jan 1993 17:18:55 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <31453@nntp_server.ems.cdc.com> jsemrad@ems.cdc.com writes:
>Assuming a hunter eats his kills, uses legal methods, and follows all laws
>and bag limits, does his/her motivation matter, except perhaps as a mental
>exercise for philosophers?

But doesn't motivation matter?  If you simplify things as purely an act, you
neglect a lot of the truth.  There IS a difference between people who kill
to put food on the table and people who kill for fun.  The same is true
for killing people.  You might say that killing people is wrong and there
are varying degrees to which people hold to this ethic, but then other
circumstances creep in -- like war.  Is killing people in war ethical?
By law, yes.  What about war crimes - or killing the sick and injured or
medical personnel or civilians as stated in the four Geneva conventions?
What about self-defense?  What if there is a person who simply wants to
snuff out their spouse, and a person who is abused to the point of near-death
that kills his or her spouse (sexism avoided here)?  Even with that person
with the posting about cannibalism -- what of the Donner party or the
jet liner crash in the Andes mountains - cannibalism may be abhorrent, but
what if it becomes a necessity for survival?  These issues are a lot of
what ethics is about, which I will continue after this thought:

>
>eyes.  What about someone who could easily afford supermarket meat but
>enjoys the taste of wild game and enjoys the process of hunting?  What
>about the person who shoots a deer, mounts the head, and eats the rest of
>the meat?  Cases like these fall somewhere between a survival need to hunt and
>leaving a carcass to rot after killing it just for the antlers.  You seem to
>have this impression that hunters are either just out for a mount or use all
>parts of the animal down to the last hair, tooth, and claw.  I suspect most
>hunters fall between the two extremes.  Exactly where do you draw your line
>between ethical and unethical hunting?

You bring up an important point I agree with - and that is that NO ethical
issue can be neatly packaged into simplistic slogans or rules of thumb --
not even "Thou shall not kill" for those with a bent for the Bible.
In addition to the many varied circumstances and motivations for killing
people and when to some it is ethical and to others it isn't, there is
also capital punishment.  Is that okay?  Is it okay now, but wasn't 20
some years ago?  Why?  Is it okay here in California, but not in other states,
or here in this country and not in any other industrialized nation besides
South Africa or the ex-Soviet Union?  Ethics are complex issues that often
have to be dealt with on a case by case basis, but even that doesn't
specifically result in any infallible answers.  this is for only the
ethics of killing people - the same is true for ethical debate on hunting,
medical ethics, business ethics, personal ethics, etc.  Our constitution
and its amendments represent a form of governmental and individual ethics,
yet if it were that simple we would have no need for a Supreme Court.
(Add abortion to an ethical question of killing).

So to specifically draw an exact line between ethical and unethical hunting
would require a case by case basis of evaluation for that matter - something
you and I would have to quit our jobs for.  So although my use of 'drawing
the line' was used in respose to a poster who used that very phrase and I
only responded to him in the sort of 'language' to which he addressed me,
it is a rather useless concept and one that I should not have used except
in relation to his statements directed towards me.

Now then - back to hunting ethics.  I have been hunting with experienced
hunters as I professed early on in this tired, old thread, and I have
friends who do hunt.  However, many reponders seem to enjoy making assumptions
that I am speaking for all hunters, or that I have never been hunting, or
that I do not know anything about hunting or hunters, or that I believe
the majority hunters simply shoot animals and leave them to rot. Please!
I make no individual assumptions about what kind of hunters you each
individually are, please don't make the same for me.  You don't know me,
I don't know you - so any mutual knowledge about each other ends there.
Understood?  Now I have friends who religiously hunt deer, yet don't
even like vennison - nor do their families for that matter.  they do so
mainly out of an enjoyment of stalking and killing.  Personally, i find
that a bit twisted - and when I confront them with the idea that the
enjoyment and motivations they get out of stalking and killing are
likely shared in a great part by those who get off on stalking and killling
human victims - they see absolutely no connection whatsoever, that
somehow by psychologically severing themseleves with any association to
their enjoyment of the means of their activities (and little for the ends)
they are able to insulate themselves from any potential self-realization
that they may have something in common with a great many serial murderers.

Now that's NOT to say that if you kill something for food and  happen to
get some enjoyment out of it that it somehow makes you some unethical
psycho-killer.   I love my job and it is also a necessity that I work to
provide for myself - those are similar motivations and reactions.  It is
about what motivates people for sport hunting as opposed to hunting for
sport.  Because even if you kill an animal in the wild, it is hardly any
less ethical if you do so to eat it than if you paid someone to do that
for you when you pick up a steak at your local supermarket.  But there
are hunters I KNOW - maybe you don't know any like this, which I personally
doubt however - who could care little about what they do with their kill
in relation to their desire for the enjoyment of stalking and killing.  That
is what I think is bloodthirsty and barbaric.

But again, absolutes with ethics are nearly an impossible goal.  There is
no simple formula to determine what is ethical and what isn't - here in the
case of hunting.  You can throw in issues about eating the animal and
saving it's head for your wall to complicate matters, and it does - but
ethics are never easy.  People, like ethics, don't come in discrete
packages but are better represented by a continuum.

I'd go into more - but I think I will take the approach that a hunter who
has exchanged e-mails with me had stated : I don't think it is worth my effort
considering the responses I have been given.  That and I sincerely doubt
any of us are wiliing to quit our jobs to argue individual cases of hunting
ethics.  Believe what you will - it's your right.

greg