Big strong predator that sucks at hunting so much that they need to lure the deer to stand directly in front of their gun.

At that point you’re not even a hunter, you’re a slob that might as well be ordering from a menu. Pathetic.

  • Hexbear2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    25·
    9 months ago

    I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. You are looking at hunting as a sport. I am looking at hunting as a means of obtaining food. I used to go hunting for rabbit and pheasant mostly, for food. It’s way more humane than modern livestock for chicken, pork, cows, etc, and for deer, it keeps the population to a manageable level since most of the natural predators were unfortunately wiped out.

      • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        9 months ago

        I think this is interesting. What is the specific thing that makes hunting inhumane? Some might say it’s about the act of killing, but really it’s about the act of suffering and dying that matters.

        And then you have to compare that suffering and death to whatever the alternative is. The obvious answer is less suffering and death. But nobody is reducing that, or really planning on reducing that.

        The nature of a wild animal is that they don’t write wills and crawl into hospital beds and take morphine and kiss their grandchildren goodbye. Every time a deer dies, it’s going out a few different ways or a combination of a few different ways. Those ways are all the worst things that can possibly happen to a sapient being.

        Usually they’ll break a leg, drag themselves around in constant pain for months, and then slowly wither away in the pure agony of starvation.

        Or if there are wolves, coyotes, wild dogs etc, those animals will do heinous torture to the deer that barely any human has ever done to an animal, so badly that doing so would put you in the company of our most infamous sadists. It’s slow and agonizing and outrageously disgusting. They ram their heads up the deer’s ass to tear organs out as the deer watches, for hours.

        The other main option for a deer is to be shot in the heart, sprint 100 yards and keel over. When hunters fuck up or take an unethical shot, they begin to approach the standard wild animal death but are very unlikely to get close.

        So if you accept that it’s not about the human, and it’s really about the animal, nothing about the process of hunting is actually adding any suffering to what a wild animal experiences.

        Your pet dog basically does get morphine and head pats and euthanasia, so none of that applies there. If deer were getting morphine and euthanasia in old age, it’s pretty bad to shoot them. But if you have no intention of reducing animal suffering, I don’t think the deer could, should, or even would give a shit about how “natural” a person thinks it is to be starving and devoured by wild dogs

        • crispy_lol [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          9 months ago

          Am I being trolled, is this some weird carnist realism bit? Eat vegetables. Some tofu maybe. Use your intelligence to realize you don’t have to kill sentient life to eat. Your point isn’t great anyway, each bullet to the heart robs the deer of years of life.

          • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            20·
            9 months ago

            It doesn’t really. Killing these large animals is an essential function of a natural or even a partially artificial ecosystem. They can’t have their full lives. If wolves fail to torture them to death, and humans fail to shoot them, they literally kill most of the rest of the plants and animals in their environment. If humans became allergic to meat next year and only ate vegetables, we would keep shooting deer and use the meat as feed or fertilizer.

            Long life is not on the table and never has been. One of the biggest failures of western forest management has actually been to let the deer live too long. So the difference really is the manner of death.

            • crispy_lol [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              source? Sounds more like game warden / hobby-hunter bullshit than ecology. Also, we don’t need to shoot deer for fertilizer if we stopped eating meet. If plants or ecosystems are imbalanced, it should be the work of ecologist not hunters

              • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                16·
                9 months ago

                The ecologist would generally prefer to introduce wolves or, if they weren’t allowed to, they would shoot the deer. In fact those are the 2 main things they are doing and encouraging in various out of wack, deer overpopulated ecosystems.

                  • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    2·
                    9 months ago

                    They should be reduced in various areas or replaced in all areas by natural predators. I assure you there are areas with not enough hunting because a) the bears and wolves were exterminated 100 years ago, b) livestock farmers lobby the local and state governments against introducing those predators and c) hunters either don’t hunt enough or only try to trophy hunt

              • ingirumimus [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                12·
                9 months ago

                Here’s an article.

                The abstract:

                Due to chronic high densities and preferential browsing, white-tailed deer have significant impacts on woody and herbaceous plants. These impacts have ramifications for animals that share resources and across trophic levels. High deer densities result from an absence of predators or high plant productivity, often due to human habitat modifications, and from the desires of stakeholders that set deer management goals based on cultural, rather than biological, carrying capacity. Success at maintaining forest ecosystems require regulating deer below biological carrying capacity, as measured by ecological impacts. Control methods limit reproduction through modifications in habitat productivity or increase mortality through increasing predators or hunting. Hunting is the primary deer management tool and relies on active participation of citizens. Hunters are capable of reducing deer densities but struggle with creating densities sufficiently low to ensure the persistence of rare species. Alternative management models may be necessary to achieve densities sufficiently below biological carrying capacity. Regardless of the population control adopted, success should be measured by ecological benchmarks and not solely by cultural acceptance.

                As this ecologist notes, hunters are essential parts of maintaining healthy, biodiverse ecosystems.

                  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    1·
                    9 months ago

                    “hunting is the primary population management tool” and “hunting should be reduced” are not mutually exclusive statements. You’re not clever for demanding people have a degree in ecology to give you information.

          • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            Oh…

            Never really thought of that, though humane has different, often-slaughter house connotations from ‘humanitarian’ (unless I am to presume the latter has similar roots to words like vegetarian…)

            I mean, I can see where you’re coming from, considering the mention of ‘humanitarian’ to refer to aid to Ukraine, according to Mainstream Media, must consist also of missiles, bombs and drones…

            • crispy_lol [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              Even going further back the nazis convinced themselves gassing people was a “humane” way to exterminate them. And there’s a big connection between animal agriculture and the nazis.