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> Um, just to clarify things, people who hunt are sadists.

2007-06-06 10:52:40

Um, just to clarify things, people who hunt are sadists.

Never met one. Every hunter I know goes to a lot of trouble to make sure that

the animals they eat - which live in the wild and pretty much never die of old

age - meet a rather instantaneous end. Do you eat fish? When was the last time

you saw to it that your salmon had a nice peaceful death, or a completely

abrupt one? Hooking or netting a fish is a painful, panicky thing, just like

capturing crabs, or running cattle into a chute for slaughter. I take very

seriously my opportunity and responsibility to take wild game in an ethical

manner.

I also participate in keeping the eastern seaboard whitetail deer population

under control. Since the natural predators are gone from suburbia, and such

developments create ideal deer habitat, you wind up with many times the

population of deer that were present even 300 years ago. When poor weather

happens, or during the rut, you get vast number of these animals moving across

highways or gathering in unnatually large herds. The result is painful (and

sometimes drawn-out) death by injury from a vehicle, or very high rates of

disease transmission from over crowding. People who want deer to live like that

are sadists (to use your word). People who take the role that wolves used to

play (in keeping the herds properly thinned out) not only are doing the species

a service, but are also putting into their freezers some very healthy, lean

meat that isn't soaked in steroids and anti-biotics, and which didn't involve

huge farming operations (which burn tons of fuel and drench the soil with

fertalizers) to raise and transport. While performing this little service, we

(hunters) also pay large sums of money into state coffers, and support all

sorts of wildlife conservation programs. Hunters do more to ensure the long

term viability of wildlife (from ducks to deer to foxes and wild turkey) than

most any other group.

Since you so obviously want everyone to know that you are a sadist you must

be even more deranged than the average hunter.

Says the anonymous coward.

I'm more than happy to tell people where the holiday meal they're eating came

from. In my family, it's nice pheasant appetizers followed by a really good

venison roast. All taken by me, in the field, while on my two feet. While I'm

at it, I pick up trash, dispose of old abandoned barbwire, report poachers to

the game wardens, tell farmers what I've seen on their back 40, and reduce - by

at least a few meals - the demand for factory farming and all of the waste that

goes with it.

So, since you're a vegetarian, tell me everything you know about how the

soybean farmers you buy from don't ever shoot the varmits that dig holes in

their crop sections. Tell me how they tuck each groundhog and jackrabbit into

bed every night. Do you sleep better at night knowing that the farmers you deal

with use special combines that are guaranteed not to slowly crush voles, mice,

and other small mammals as they drive over those animals' home turf? Oops! I

forgot. That's simply not true, is it? Tell me what you know about the

"organic" operations that, none the less, still practice ditch-to-ditch

farming, thus reducing the very habitat that would provide homes for grouse or

quail. You know, nature's little pest-bug patrol. In fact, tell me what you

know about any of this whatsoever, since your previous comment would imply that

you're an ignorant fool that thinks all food is produced by extracting it from

rainbows, and delivered by My Little Pony to your grocery store. Hunters aren't

sadists. But people who eat meat and wear leather without every personally

doing the work of producing it are: cowards (and usually shrill, hypocritical

asses, as well).