From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Closure on Sport Hunting.
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 00:35:29 GMT

Eric M Chmiel writes:

>>(John S. Van Etten) writes:
>>> I
>>>find it quite hypocritical for people that eat meat to say I'm some
>>>sort of Bad Person (tm) for hunting while they're sitting there
>>>munching on a burger or a steak.  
>
>
>   Just to play the devil's advocate, isn't there a diference between killing
>an animal to eat and killing one just because you enjoy killing them?  After
>all, a lion or a wolf or a shark or a snake kills animals too, but only to
>eat them.  You don't see lions hunting just for the sake of killing something.
>In this sense, killing to eat is natural, killing for the fun of it isn't.  
>That's why I sometimes wonder if that argument (that to eat meat and be opposed
>to hunting is hypocritial) isn't just a red herring.

Eric, sorry I've taken so long to respond to this, but I've been busy.
I also see that several other hunters have already replied to it.

     I do indeed feel it is hypocritical for meat-eaters to be opposed
to hunting.  That does not in any way mean that meat-eaters *must*
hunt or something stupid like that.  I know a *lot* of meat eaters
that are far too sensitive to ever kill an animal -- and I know quite
a few hunters that have quit after their first kill (especially if it
was an unpleasant one) or even after their n-th kill.  And that's just
fine with me.  I will *NEVER* put them down for not killing an animal
with their own hands.  But I do feel they have no right to call me a
Bad Person because I do.  Heck, I'll even go kill the animals for
them, as is the case with the pheasants that I shoot for my father.
He would never lay a hand to a gun himself, but he loves roast
pheasant.  And he understands that an animal must die for him to eat
it, whether he kills it himself or not.  That is all I ask of any
meat-eater.  Only that he or she realize that the meat at the
supermarket is a dead animal and somebody *killed* it.  That is life.
And a trip to a farm where veal calves are raised, and then to the
slaughterhouse, will put to rest any arguments that hunting wild
animals is cruel but raising/killing domestic stock is not.  Not that
I have a problem with most ranching or farming.  But some of it seems
a bit overboard, where animals are force-fed (a case comes to mind
where we are petitioning to stop a local duck farm down home that
force-feeds ducks and then ties bands around their necks so they can't
even vomit up the excess feed; all to make the duck's liver enlarge to
make better pate' -- kind of makes an old mountain man like me want to
shove the nozzle in the owner's mouth and pump him full of feed...
then put a band around his scrawny little pencil neck and see how *he*
likes it -- good thing I'm not prone to such types of violence).


>   And take it easy.  I'm just playing the devil's advocate, remember?  I
>could never rationally oppose hunting for sport, but whenever I ask a hunter
>this question they fly off into a blind rage and I never end up getting a
>wortwhile answer.
>                                                 Just wondering,
>                                                       EMC

You probably get the blind rage because the hunter has seen his or her
quarry die and knows what happens to domestic animals as well, and he
or she doesn't understand that not all others have.  There is "no
difference," at least in the sense that animals *must* die.  It's
painfully obvious to hunters since we're aware of both sides.  If it's
not obvious to other meat-eaters, then either they haven't looked at
all the information, or else I must call them hypocrites.


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals