From: altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Why Hunters Quit
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:33:27 GMT
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

rigg@osnome.che.wisc.edu (Tim Rigg) writes:

>In article <altar.703144584@sfu.ca> altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar) writes:

>   [Deleted]

>	      Reasons why former hunters did not purchase
>	       a hunting licence in New Jersey in 1981.

>   [Deleted]

>     So guys,
>   don't blame us if your numbers are declining, blame this "sport"
>   for being uninteresting and yourselves for finding better things
>   to do.

>First, I'd like to commend you on posting scientific studies.  It is
>much nicer to discuss "facts and figures" than rhetoric.

Thanks; just call me stats Can.  I trust, however, that you are not 
implying by the second sentence that "moi" would ever resort to
mere rhetoric? ;-)
 


>Now, I'd like to ask why you thought this was so earth shattering? 

Far from it.  In fact, there is nothing earth shattering about
hunting or about the people who hunt.  Hunters are neither the
worst nor the best of humanity, they are comprised of ordinary 
people who have simply adopted, often by accident of upbringing,
a wrongheaded practice.  Certainly, nothing extraordinary about
people engaged in activities that have outlived their original 
usefulness and which no longer can be presumed to be ethically
neutral.  This is a fairly commonplace occurance as history
changes and societies, hopefully, progress. 



> I
>have tried a zillion recreational activities, most of which I no
>longer do..  The reason why I don't do them anymore is that I have
>found better ways to spend my time.  Does this say that all those
>other activities were too easy and unrewarding.  Perhaps.  However, a
>better explanation is that they simply didn't appeal to _me_.

Tim, have you decided to quit hunting and hang up your bow and
arrows?  I didn't think so.  Now, remember we were looking at data
regarding those hunters who apparently have quit the game.  Your
testimony, as interesting as might be, is probably irrelevant.  I
did ask that we suspend any self-reference as we inspect the
results of this survey of people who did not bother to renew their
hunting licence.

My point is that we AR folk are not the ones who are deterring you
hunters from killing harmless animals.  I wish appeals to ethical
rationality were more effective, but it is simply not the case. 
Hence, we AR folk are not the ones you should be so mad at, or 
even be so intent on arguing with.  Indeed, why do you bother, 
since my impression is that hunters have pretty well written us
off.  Now, this excuse about not wanting us to have our easy way
with the undecided is simply, I would guess, farfetched.  There
cannot be that many silent readers; who would want to bother with
reading through these interminable flame wars?  Probably the only
people who seriously read these messages are the participants themselves,
and it seems we have all made up our minds already.  So what's the
point?   Now, here is where your honest testimony would be
relevant.    

Relevant, but not necessarily informative.  After all, a common
problem with self-report questionnaires is that response sets occur
that are skewed by such factors as that of "social desirability".
This is where people answer in what they perceive to be the most
socially acceptable way.  For example, hunters are not likely 
to say that they enjoy "killing" animals, since to do so is 
to admit to something that might incur social disapproval.
Now, maybe hunters on the whole don't find the killing of the
animals as something enjoyable or even necessary to hunting, 
but we are not going to know by simply asking them.

If, for instance, the question of interest were to better assess how 
the killing of other living animals figures in this business of
hunting, then we are probably better off with using some indirect
behavioural or projective measure.  For instance, consider the
data of hunter desertion again.  Note that one of the reasons
given was that of not being sucessful in killing an animal.  Well,
this can be interpreted (as indeed our pro-hunting researchers
did so interprete this reason), as an indirect measure of how
much killing as such figures in continuing to hunt.

Anyway, the point of all this Tim, is to indicate that self-reports
are useful when what is being asked is something people can answer
with self-understanding and freedom from response sets like social
desirability.  Your testimony about why you continue to hunt may
indeed be problematic on these counts, unlike the self-reports of
those who quit.  Please take this as a fairly general statement,
more or less applicable and very much dependent on the nature of
what is being asked, what is being reported.

                                           ted
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals