My family are hunters. I'd like to talk to you about hunting and what I know about hunting

[DirkGently]

56. Do you have a take on what motivates "trophy hunting?"

Last edited Wed Jul 29, 2015, 01:58 PM - Edit history (2)

I don't think there's that much confusion at this point between eating meat, which requires killing an animal, and slaughtering something, particularly a rare species, for entertainment. Most of us, hunters or not, get that.

Clearly we all used to feel differently about hunting for "sport." Teddy Roosevelt was and probably still is considered a great early conservationist, but his idea of appreciating wild animals included killing them for sport. I think there was a time when people were less secure in their dominance over nature, and felt like bringing down a large or fierce animal was a test of some kind. Of courage? Skill? At some point, maybe as a species we needed to take some kind of joy or pride in being able to "fight" animals.

But now? With modern weapons, vehicles, tracking devices? What is there left to prove regarding our ability to effortlessly kill anything that walks, flys, swims or crawls?

What chills me most is not the act of killing an animal by itself. I eat meat, and I acknowledge that industrial farms need reform and are likely far more cruel to the pigs and chickens and cows that we eat than a hunter's bullet. I wouldn't for a second contemplate that shooting a deer to eat was somehow inhumane.

It's the attitude of trophy or "canned hunting" I don't understand. The grinning pose next to a rhinoceros or a leopard -- the apparent sense of ... accomplishment? With modern equipment, guides, and hunting preserves, what kind of *person* takes pleasure in just shooting something to death? I can grasp the sense of accomplishment in getting food. I know it's not easy to "get" a deer in the woods. But to just have someone drive you to where a rhino or zebra or lion is, and kill it?

It feels to me like the very worst of humanity. People consumed with a sickening mix of insecurity and a sense of entitlement to "take" what others cannot, or what we have collectively decided we should not. That's even the word they use -- "take."

I grew up with a person who is now a fairly high-ranking federal law enforcement officer. Looking him up one day, I found pictures of him, grinning next to a dead zebra in Africa, guide and gun by his side. A relative married into a rich family that owns a "hunting preserve" in Texas. I get to hear "funny" stories like one about one of the in-laws, a woman with no skill at all with a weapon, having quail or partridge literally tossed in the air in front of her shotgun so that she could manage to kill them. She was apparently delighted.

It bothers me in a way I cannot completely explain that people with privilege, rank, wealth, and authority appear to take their amusement in slaughtering a beautiful animal just to show they can.

I care about the animals. But it is the people that bother me here.

Do you have any insight into where they're coming from? Have they displaced the sense of accomplishment one might feel by being in nature and working hard to gain something useful for your family under difficult circumstances with this empty, talentless process of just blowing holes in living things for amusement?

Are these not among the worst, most depraved people in our society? And why do they also seem to be the same ones most determined to seek out power and authority, and of course, firearms?