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From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Defenseless Animals?
Message-ID: <2422@ncsu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Dec-83 10:34:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2422
Posted: Thu Dec  8 10:34:26 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Dec-83 00:45:33 EST
Lines: 33

References: ihuxm.740

Ihuxm!cwa gives two arguments in defense of hunting:
(1) it is no more cruel or inhumane than raising and slaughtering
    domesticated animals
(B) natural population controls have been lost or diminished, and
    must be augmented by hunting.

Since the bible says that the first shall be last,  we will take the
last one first:

(B) Most predators did not leave because they couldn't get along with man,
but because man could not get along with the predators.  I personally
would like to see the eastern US restocked with wolves (conversely,
anyone who kills predators should be hunted by machine gun from helicopters).
Further,  the purpose of most wildlife commissions is not to protect
the interests of the wildlife population,  but rather to insure that there
is sufficient game population for the hunters to shoot.  Thus we have,
z.B., wild pigs and goats remaining in the mountains of the Hawaiian islands,
where they are not natural and where they are rapidly destroying the native
flora;  efforts to eradicate them are violently opposed by local hunters.

(1) Hunting a deer may be less cruel than letting it starve,  and less cruel
than raising a steer in a pen and slaughtering it,  but the raising and killing
cattle is done for the necessity of human nutrition and for the esthetics of
food.  Hunting is done for the sport of killing.  Therefore there is a great
difference in viewpoint,  even if there is no difference in the result.

Not that I want to ban hunting.  But I object to claims that there is any
purpose to it beyond the fun of going out and killing Bambi.

				      Jon Mauney
				      ncsu!mauney