I hear the same line used again and again by hunters.
We help to control animal populations, we eat what we hunt, and we hunt “respectfully”.
But my primary beef with these people is, that many get a great deal of satisfaction and rush from killing. I tell them, a peace-loving person, even if forced to hunt for survival, would not take joy in the act. But these types clearly do. Why is that?
They usually don’t reply back after that.

I was wondering if your guests could talk about hunting in places like New Zealand where all mammals are invasive species so hunting is actually encouraged (and so is buying furs from the hunted animals) as a way to try and keep the invasive mammalian population undercontrol and protect the ecosystem down there.

if people feel the need to hunt, let them fence off parts of areas where chickens, pigs, cows are raised, sell tickets and let folks blast away to their heart’s content.

If this is for sport, head out to the woods with a paint gun – or a camera – and have a go at it.

I hunt.  I am a woman and yes, I hunt.  The rule of my own household is that whatever you kill you eat.  How can anyone who eats meat can turn their nose up to hunting puzzles me….I choose not to be a contract killer and buy a faceless piece of meat from a grocery store.  You have to have respect for the animal and what you put in your own body !!  Please share this comment !!

Welcome these new types of hunters.  They are smarter and care more about their health than every before.  They know that a harvest of a wild animal (terrestrial or aquatic) have more health benefits than the way we manage domesticated animals.  The new hunter trust what they are killing is a healthier more trustworthy option to what is available from the market.  And if the hunter or fisherman is skilled, it can be cheaper and more pleasurable to harvest your own.

Even my 8 year old knows – hunt with a camera!  Camera hunting can give you all that you get from hunting with a gun – other than taking the animals life – killing it for no real reason other than to satisfy ones self.

I think most people would have a natural avulsion to hunting stray dogs and cats, because we are used to treating these species as parts of our families.

How is a wild deer different from a stray dog or cat? from a wild dog or cat? does it make a difference if the animal is dangerous? aggressive towards humans?

Hunting is a ritual, and there is a large set of attitudes and rationalizations for it, probably most of them irrational at their
core.

Might makes right, and the strong eat the weak.

The question is whether one thinks that this is the way things should be (because this is the way things are) or perhaps that the world could be better than this.

I am glad to hear this topic.  I have no view of hunting as ethical or unethical of itself, but the justifications of these hunters matches my own response to “moral” veganism or vegetarianism: The challenge to qualms about animals’ deaths is not to stop eating meat, but to make their death mean something.  Our lives must be meaningful enough to make the death of what we eat worthwhile.  From the time of the ancients, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and any number of others assumed as a philosophical and societal foundation the natural service of the inferior (intelligence) to the superior.

To: gentleman referring to his ham sandwich: you are disconnected from reality if you think you are doing anything more ethical by eating that than hunting a wild animal for food. If you had an honest & true understanding of how that animal was raised and how it lived I sincerely doubt your view would remain the same!

Most hunting isn’t heroic or sporting. Shooting a deer or a bird that’s minding it’s own business just seems kind of sick. I do eat meat and fish but if I think about it, it’s pretty creepy.

We have a family friend who has been hunting for a while; often times we have been gifted the hunted meat and we have had feasts around such events. Although he hunts mostly with a bow and arrow, it always makes me wonder what it would be like to hunt. I’m all for hunting what you eat which in my opinion evokes a sense of responsibility towards the animals, nature and humanity of how much you can take to your table. All of this with a sense of keeping the carbon footprint in check makes it even more appealing. However from a world standpoint, it is simply not possible to hunt our way out and sustainable means are necessary for providing food on the table.

IMO  the real person responsible for the deaths of animals is the person who sits down at a restaurant and orders a steak medium rare.    This is the driving force for many many more  animal deaths then hunters account for.  

Diet of Souls:  ‘The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls.’ So an Inuit shaman summarized the moral danger of being human. A paradox sparks director John Houston and producer Peter d’Entremont’s third Arctic journey:  Can animals be spiritual equals and one’s daily bread?  Diet of Souls was the 2004 Winner of the William F. White Cinematography Award at the 24th Atlantic Film Festival.  Shot in some of the harshest environment on earth, Diet of Souls was featured in Kodak Entertainment Imaging’s InCamera Magazine. Produced with the participation of Canadian Television Fund. View the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obH96eyIJXsI

I am one of the most liberal people in this country, by anyone’s standards. I also grew up back East where almost everyone hunts. The whitetail deer population MUST be thinned every year back there, or there is just carnage all over the road. Deer are prolific breeders. I don’t support anyone taking anything that is endangered, but if you are going to kill and eat a species that is plentiful, that is your business. Venison is delicious. I think it’s much better to take a deer in the proper season than eat factory farmed ANYTHING. 

In the show yesterday Tom makes reference to the “locavore” movement a couple of times. I thought I would point out that in Vermont (and perhaps more broadly across New England) we use the term “localvore”. I believe that the term locavore originated in California and that seems like a great fit for that area. I enjoy that a movement that celebrates regional food diversity is know by slightly different names in different parts of the country. 

Tom’s line of questioning in this discussion and the good majority of comments below demonstrate how out of touch with nature and reality the urban American is. Discussing isolated problems in the 3rd world is completely arbitrary in a discussion that starts with new hunters in the US chasing traditional big game species. Read Michael Pollan. Expand your mind. The whitetail deer, as an example, is 30 million strong and is sustenance for numerous predators across the continent beyond humans. It is as the herring is to ocean. It should be looked at as a herd, a population. To snivel over the loss of a single individual to another member of the ecosystem, humans, is preposterous. Spend a day out in the elements as hunters do this time of year. You might just realize who actually has the moral high ground here.

Great program that raises important issues. Many fine and insightful comments too, hunter and non-hunter alike. As someone who works on ethics and public policy, and specifically human-wildlife interactions, I want to share a few thoughts. 

No ethic of hunting is worth its salt if it does not start by recognizing the intrinsic moral value of the animals we hunt. Non-human animals are not simply biological automatons, or functional units of ecosystems. They are living, feeling and often thinking creatures whose well being we can either help or harm through our actions. This makes them part of what ethicists term a moral community. The intentions and consequences of our actions on animals is what makes hunting (and human-animal interactions generally) an unavoidable ethical issue. This does not automatically translate into determining whether hunting is good or bad, but it does mean it is always subject to moral evaluation and challenge. 

Deciding whether hunting is right or wrong is not a matter of black or white morality. It is a situated moral decision — a moral judgment rooted in particular cases. Considerations of suffering, degrees of intelligence, the social and cultural impacts on animal lives, ecological context, and aligning our actions with nature, are some of the key moral consideration that go into deciding whether hunting this or that animal, in this or that place, is justified or not. 

I have taught and trained a great many people in ethical decision making over the years. The major pitfall in considering issues like hunting is to rely too heavily on one moral concept to the exclusion of others. Stressing compassion for animals alone, or looking at animals as simply a recreational resource, are two cases in point. One is better off trying to triangulate on the ethics of hunting by using a variety of moral concepts simultaneously. It is harder, but you will develop a deeper understanding overall. 

An ethics of hunting also has to be developed over the full range of moral issues that confront it. This includes everything from fair chase and clean shots, to the impact on the individual, to the effects on animal families and groups (e.g., packs, herds), to the broader ecological and social contexts in which hunting occurs. One cannot simply claim you adhere to fair chase, for instance, then dismiss the rest of the issues because they are complicated or make you uncomfortable.

It is also important to note that no human community is immune to critique of its hunting beliefs and practices, whether these people are of the First Nations, traditional use, sporting groups, animal rights, and so on. There is vibrant debate within these and other groups, that can inform all of us about hunting. The divisions within the Makah peoples over whale hunting is a case in point. Some saw whaling as a traditional practice that would help young men avoid drugs and crime. Others saw it as morally offensive to kill another being to solve their societies problems. Their debate raised resonant issues with whaling throughout the world, bring questions of animal welfare, marine ecology, and cultural diversity to the foreground. 

Finally, we must remember that hunting is never responsible for maintaining the balance of nature, and is a crude and ineffective means of wildlife management. Proper land use management, habitat protection, and intact predator-prey relations are the keys to maintaining healthy populations of wildlife. For an example of this applied to hunting deer in suburban areas, please see my blog post, http://practicalethics.net/blog/aldo-leopold-and-green-fire/. 

I must admit that as an ethicist, the question of hunting has bedevilled me for a long time. My dad was a hunter, and I am not. Yet I am not opposed to hunting per se. I have known many ethical hunters with a deep love of the natural world and an abiding respect and care for wildlife. I have also known hunters who strut about and kill other creatures to make themselves look and feel important. So when I take all the factors into account, I think hunting must minimally conform to four principles (rules of thumb).

First, it must focus on animals that humans in aboriginal contexts would hunt for food. Hunting for sporting thrill or to mount trophies is not an ethical approach to wildlife. The attempts in western states to virtually eliminate recovering wolf populations under the ruse of sports hunting illustrates the abuse of wildlife for these base motivations. 

Second, hunting has to balance its use of technology to ensure a fair chase that is aligned with what prey would experience in nature. The use of bait stations, global positioning systems, radio collars, corrals (“canned hunts”), drugs, packs of dogs, all terrain vehicles, assault weapons, and so on exceed this balance, and should not be used. 

Third, the hunter must take full responsibility for his or her actions. This means clean shots, trailing and humanely killing wounded animals, dressing and consuming, and finally culpability for harming other human beings. I was at a meeting the other day where a hunter dismissed the deaths of bystanders with the claim that “accidents happen”. That is a callous attitude toward the lives of other citizens, and to my mind, probably bespeaks a callous attitude toward the lives of animals as well. 

Fourth, hunting must be undertaken by someone knowledgable and deeply respectful of animals and the environment. I am of a mind that ethics and ecology based continuing education programs should be required for the privilege of hunting. Nothing onerous or doctrinaire, but something that would generate increasing knowledge and conversation around ethics, wildlife and ecology.