I have my gun license but it's been several years since I tagged along with my dad hunting. He just hunts birds. We usually have a lot of duck and pheasant meat in our freezer.
I think it's important to know how to hunt. It's a useful skill to have if you live somewhere with access to wilderness. Free, fresh meat is nice when you're broke. I guess I have a bit of a survivalist streak in me, because I've tried to develop my hunting and foraging skills despite living in a city. Most of my state is vast expanses of nature, so I learned how to survive outdoors and build shelters in the winter and read maps and a compass as part of my gym class curriculum in high school XD Concidentally, it has been snowing for over 24 hours now here and by the time it stops we'll have almost a foot of snow just from this one system. It is very easy to slip off the road and get stuck overnight in your car. Being prepared for it and knowing what to do is a huge deal.
I do not eat mammals and I couldn't hunt one. I've seen them butchered and I just can't stomach the thought of eating them. To each their own though.
I like all your comments. We only shoot what we need. We freeze alll our meat and it doesnt go to waste, we leave some bones for dog treats and the rest is taken to the bush to be eaten by thw animals. Hunting is way more humane than eating meat from a store because the animals are loaded with hormones. We eat our own beef and they have a great life being raised out in the green pastures. As stated above, if everyone stopped hunting, the ecosystem would become overwhelmed as those species thrive
I was planning to go this year for my first time. But things fell through with that.
I do a lot of range shooting, I'm a mounted member of the sheriffs office, and I do mounted shooting, so it seems like natural next step to move to hunting actual animals instead of targets. Just havent had the chance yet.
I have hit a lot of deer in my life by accident though!
I never went hunting, but if I did, Id use a cross bow,
1. because thats sooo epic, a
2. Its more like native american-esque, hahaha just kidding.
There are alot of deer around where I live (philly) and they get hit by cars, carry disease, and even kill people (when hit by a car! you can die from that!). I'm guessing wolves would be the geographic-correct predators of deer around where I live, and I have never seen a wolf in the wild in my life, so therefore, keeping deer population under control is needed, and even humane in a scene for the animal's population and the greater good of the animal at that! also, its not like hunters go out into the woods and spray a machine gun at every animal, you can't shoot babies and female deer and all that jazz, so hunting is, in my opinion, necessary.
MY mom is willing to pay a hunter a pretty penny for some deer meat, since its illegal to sell / trade in PA!
That is so cool you do mounted shooting! At a local fair, we got to watch many people do that and shoot balloons! Takes a lot of skill!put ook at hunting to be really connected to nature. Its in our blood as our ancestors didnt survive on just berries. We thank a creature to giving its life to us to feed us. In Alberta, our fishing wildlife manages the population control, if a certain species numbers drop too low, they will put them on a protection list. In Alberta, we aren't aloud to shoot grizzly bears execpt problem ones.
We almost hit a deer the other day!!
We dont have pheasants up here :( When we drove through the states I got to see a couple for the first time ever!!
That is so cool you do mounted shooting! At a local fair, we got to watch many people do that and shoot balloons! Takes a lot of skill!put ook at hunting to be really connected to nature. Its in our blood as our ancestors didnt survive on just berries. We thank a creature to giving its life to us to feed us. In Alberta, our fishing wildlife manages the population control, if a certain species numbers drop too low, they will put them on a protection list. In Alberta, we aren't aloud to shoot grizzly bears execpt problem ones.
We almost hit a deer the other day!!
We dont have pheasants up here :( When we drove through the states I got to see a couple for the first time ever!!
Mounted shooting is a lot of fun but takes a ton of skill.
I wasn't trying to make it sound like I just wanted to shoot them for fun though when I read it I imagine it sounded like that. Oops!
im on the fence regarding sport hunting, its not exactly a sport for the animal's part. i do cringe and cant stand looking at the act of taking one for sport but the person has their own reasons for doing so (hopefully not for poaching). sport hunting for food charity is a sticky issue with me that i cant decide on an oppinion.
killing for culling purposes is a bit sad to stomach but it would help balance out the ecosystem. if the animal is posing serious security risks and cant break the habit then taking the life is ok. subsistence hunting is just a normal routine for those harsher climates with limited food. i do mind taking those taking top predators for sport as they'll let more prey animals survive. lol you could see that hunting is a difficult activity for me to judge.
i despise those habitual thrill killers and poachers. those elements are unpredicatable and dangerous.
im on the fence regarding sport hunting, its not exactly a sport for the animal's part. i do cringe and cant stand looking at the act of taking one for sport but the person has their own reasons for doing so (hopefully not for poaching). sport hunting for food charity is a sticky issue with me that i cant decide on an oppinion.
killing for culling purposes is a bit sad to stomach but it would help balance out the ecosystem. if the animal is posing serious security risks and cant break the habit then taking the life is ok. subsistence hunting is just a normal routine for those harsher climates with limited food. i do mind taking those taking top predators for sport as they'll let more prey animals survive. lol you could see that hunting is a difficult activity for me to judge.
i despise those habitual thrill killers and poachers. those elements are unpredicatable and dangerous.
You have some really good points, and truth be told, I've been working through a lot of these myself. Hunting can be a rather large ethical delema. Personally, I don't think I could ever view hunting purely as a sport. I could never make a kill and not use every part of the animal that could be put to use - to me, that seems to be both extremely wasteful and disrespectful to the life of the animal. If a person feels the need to hunt but doesn't need the meat, I could see putting it to use by feeding those who may otherwise not have anything to eat.
I had to take a class on the conservation of natural resources this term for my major, and it was amazing to see what the affect of removing the top predator from the ecosystem did - we went to a nature preserve in the middle of a semi-urban that had a serious problem with deer overpopulation and there was no vegitation under around seven feet off the ground because the deer would eat everything. No bushes, no young trees, no grasses or flowers, absolutely nothing but trees that were too big for a deer to eat. If the park hadn't implemented a strict hunting program, the park would have serious erosion problems and the overall ecosystem would take a nosedive.
Then they throw in another issue that many of the "prized" animals to a hunter are also critical to the ecosystem - take deer, for example. Most hunters look for bucks with large antlers, which are the older ones; overhunt the old males, you end up with a population that is primarily composed of females and young (and therefore naive) males. This can actually seriously harm the breeding population and cause a major decline in overall numbers. It's similar with fish - many of the large "trophy" fish are the breeding females. It's not rocket science to figure out that if you take all of the breeding females out of the population that the numbers decline will dramatically, possibly to the point of extinction.
lol And don't get me started with poaching and removing apex predators or other animals for the heck of it or because you're afraid of them... That's just about enough to drive me batty(er than I already am).
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