Microblog Memes

I'll say this first, because I know this is a whopper of a comment from me, but it's stuff you might not encounter otherwise: your perspective matters in this thread, and overall. I deeply understand the place your comment comes from, for real. We need people like you, and people like you have caused me several times in my life to examine what I'm doing and change my behavior. I will not call you extreme, because, honestly, it is not, and I will make every effort to engage in good faith, with you and others. I expect the same in return though.

I know a lot of hunters and do some hunting myself. In my area, hunting is an old tradition and, though I feel it's on the decline, everyone knows someone who hunts, and (if they eat meat) has eaten wild deer or turkey or fish that's been harvested locally.

"Enjoyment" over killing animals is something I've never heard expressed by any hunter. If someone did (and I can only speak for myself and my community) they would be treated with immense suspicion and shunned. If I can be blunt and frank, it is a shallow and ignorant take on the activity. I'm not trying to put you down by saying that, but it is true. I would encourage further examination of what you think you know of this topic. I can't force it though. You retain the sovereign right to remain ignorant, it's fine, for real, but that will cause people like me to disengage and we'll go our separate ways. You will have more success advancing your view if you choose to learn more, though. But again, I get it, that is the more challenging route and I wouldn't blame you one bit for choosing not to. No harm, no foul, for real.

That actually may be the one part of hunting that we don't enjoy.

I enjoy being in the woods.

I enjoy hiking into the woods while it's dark, and witnessing the changes as the sun comes up and the animals awake.

I enjoy the exercise aspect, and also nerding out over gear.

I experience satisfaction over being able to feed myself and people I care about in this way. This is related to the closeness to this food, being able to close that loop myself without any help from a middleman or needing to ship bananas 3000 miles and what have you. Knowing and participating first hand in the entire process of getting that to the plate satisfies the "sustainable foodie" part of my brain. There is also connection to the land on which you live, which is hard to explain and must be experienced.

The actual killing of the animal produces complicated emotions. "Enjoyment" isn't one of them. It's also .001% of the process. Regardless, I go to tremendous lengths to ensure that the process goes as quickly, smoothly, and painlessly as possible, and other hunters I know also do this. This is heavily pushed. Ideally, when that moment comes, the animal does not detect you at all and it happens so quickly they do not even clock what happened. They experience no suffering or even discomfort, that is the goal, and that is what modern, humane hunting is. It's many times more humane than anything that happens every day in nature. Mistakes unfortunately do happen sometimes, that is an unfortunate reality, so we must plan for that too, have backup plans and backups for the backups, and the tools to do so. This activity requires a certain level of maturity and thought which is not for everyone.

In my state, hunting regulations are informed by the science of wildlife biologists, and limits and rules are designed to enhance the animal populations they apply to. All healthy, reasonable people who spend time in the woods love wildlife on a very deep level, and we all do what we can to protect that natural resource, so they are there for generations to come, hunter or not. It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes this includes population control. Bag limits and dates change year to year, and we do our best to follow the rules, keep up with new information, and understand the consequences of everything we do, the tools we use, every decision. The ethical modern hunter is a partner to the conservationist and the wildlife biologist, and is an important part (but not the only part) of keeping wild ecosystems alive and in balance, in spite of humanity.

This perspective is likely different from your own - I'm well aware of that. Hopefully you can take something from it. Hunters are not all elmer fudd. Those are not hunters - that is the consensus now. Our Fish & Game folks (the only "good cops" IMO) love to slip cuffs around those types and send them to jail. Those people do still exist, and we hate it, because they show up in the news and give us a bad name. There are thousands more people like me, but you won't hear about us. So and so two towns over who bought a hunting license online and tries to follow all the rules: not on the news. My own uncle who accidentally killed two turkeys instead of one, who immediately self-reported to F&G because he cares and has integrity? Also not on the news. Doing things the right way is relatively uninteresting.

You may have seen those images of the mountains of buffalo skulls made by white colonial settlers as they raped and killed their way through the West. That is not hunting - not as I know it, not as even my grandfather knew it. It is barbarism in its purest form, basically genocidal and psychopathic, disgusting, a black mark in history, and the American buffalo is still struggling to this day because of these horrendous acts that only humans are capable of at scale.

A more uplifting story I would encourage anyone to look into is that of the Wild Turkey in America, and how they were brought back from the brink, thanks to the cooperation and ingenuity of wildlife biologists in most of the 50 states. That one was mostly due to habitat loss rather than overhunting. (A surprising number of people don't know this, but nearly the entire Eastern half of the US's forests (like 90%+) have been subject to complete deforestation at least twice during our history, for industry. You can find pictures of the denuded landscapes - places that are now protected, healthy forests - and it is distressing.) Anyway, the wild turkey program was so successful, hunting is now part of that story.

https://www.audubon.org/new-york/news/how-wild-turkeys-made-49-state-comeback