Why do Humans Hunt?

[blackwolfhell]

I'm working on a project and would like to know the different reasons for it. And what you think they would.

[Berserker]

Humans hunt for...

-Food
-Enjoyment
-Trade

That's about it.

[Terastas]

Warning: Strong language ahead.

2 the Ranting Griffin: Hunting

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[Ink]

[vrikasatma]

Ink pretty much hit the nail on the head, multiple times.

I'll weigh in anyway.

It's been awhile since I've gone hunting. I primarily hunt for meat and the last time I went, I got a bison bull — big guy, yielded 1200 pounds of meat after dressing out. That took about five years to go through, even sharing the meat with friends, and then my health started declining (from other factors, *not* from eating game meat).

By the time I got healthy enough to go hunting, the costs of hunting had gone up and I was in strange territory. I'm still finding hunting spots up here in Oregon; the good news is it's a shorter drive to get there than it was back in California.

Why'd I start in the first place? Well, I like to put it down to being an old soul. I like the way things are done the "old-fashioned" way, "archaic" is a compliment, and "atavistic" just ain't in my vocabulary. Take a look around: people are hanging their laundry to dry on clotheslines, riding bicycles more and more, turning their back yards into veggie gardens, panning for gold, horse-drawn carriage rides are in steady demand for weddings and funerals and sweet sixteen parties — people are "regressing." Last weekend I went to a carriage auction and the highest prices bid were for a Basque sheepherder wagon, an Austrian town carriage that came with its owners (who took nothing else) to America to escape WWI, and an Amish buggy.

People are also finding out that game meat is healthier, more wholesome and tastier than domestic. I like to say, "Game is organic free range meat." Consider: a deer will feed one person for a year and requires no medicine, no pasture infrastructure, and minimal outlay for ammo or arrows to harvest. And no-one's ever gotten cancer from eating venison.

It is indeed a stereotype, and a damned inaccurate one, that hunters despoil nature. Animal rightists like to say we hate nature and we have some sort of sick drive to conquer it. You know what? Sitting in a classroom, reading a book or listening to a professor, is conquering nature. Hunters know which side their bread's buttered on and have done more to keep America's natural spaces natural, than a million tree-sitters and the entire body politic of PeTA, the Sea Shepherd Society and Fund For Animals.

Fox guarding the henhouse? Listen, the fox has a vested interest in keeping snakes, pigs, wasps, weasels, bobcats, hawks and domestic dogs out of the henhouse, he'll probably do a better job of it than anything else. The price is the occasional chicken.

A hundred years ago, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys and bison were on the brink of extinction. Now they're back in force. This has nothing to do with the eco-anarchist movement and everything to do with the will, support and money of hunters across the country. Peregrine falcons were on the endangered species list when I was a child, now thanks to falconers embarking on a concerted and sustained breeding drive they're back and healthier than ever. Again, PeTA had nothing to do with this outcome. The price is a deer, bear, wild boar or turkey for every tenth hunter.

Considering a recent issue: Oregon is being colonized by wolves.
They're coming over from Idaho, where they're being hunted. We're wrestling with the implications. Eastern Oregonians are every bit as conservative as any Texan, Montanan or Kansan, and they're hard-bitten to boot. They don't want wolves killing their sheep/cattle and they don't trust no college-edjamacated city folksh from Portland or stinkin' lazy hippies from Eugene. What's worse (in their eyes) is that Oregon doesn't provide for shooting predators and the gummint — which they have no fondness for — is too broke to pay them livestock depredation. Faster and simpler to go out with the dogs and shoot 'em.

Most hunters here don't worry too much about wolves preying on "their" deer. First of all, they know they don't own them. They know that one deer a year will feed them and their families if they portion it out right. And in Oregon, hunting is a time-honoured and well-practiced means of keeping the larder full while making ends meet, a crucial skill when you're the second poorest state in the nation. Myself personally, I'd gladly give up one deer a year and a steelhead a month if it meant "wolf packs in Oregon." Even if it did take them ten years or so to cross the Cascades and spread out into the hills around the Willamette Valley. To me, it's a happy, easy price to pay for the chance to sit out on a quiet night, fifteen or twenty minutes from my apartment, stargazing, and listening to them howl.

[Vagrant]

S'funny, I'm an anarchist (as an ideal) but I support hunting I suppose, but then a good anarchist would, it's just taking what you need and no more than that.

The only thing I have against anyone who takes a gun to an animal is someone who'd shoot a carnivore, for whatever reason, be it out of greed for a trophy, or being overprotective of livestock in spite of everything else. They're not hunters, they're just hicks. In my opinion, no one should ever call those people hunters.

A hunter, to me, is someone who hunts for both necessity and enjoyment, but never hunts dishonourably. To kill a herbivore for meat, that I can understand. But we don't need to kill carnivores for skins today, and a knitted jumper won't do anyone any harm and it's as natural as anything else.

So yes, I support hunters, those who hunt for meat, but anyonw who'd shoot a predator is just a hick in my book, and I'd be happy to throw those to the Wolves (which in this case, ironically, would be the eco-anarchists, I suppose).

This post isn't just about my opinion though, I have a point with this; as seen in ALL of the posts above, with every person or word, there's a lot of subjective understanding, and that understanding can differ from person to person, from hunter to hunter, and from hunter to non-hunter.

Look at how furry differs when used by different people and you'll have an idea. So to answer the question: What is a hunter? You have to take a broad sampling from a variety of subjective views. Becasue as with anything of this sort, I doubt that there'll ever be one, true answer.

[vrikasatma]

Eco-anarchists are young, urban, often college-educated (if not -graduated) but sometimes not even that, and politically far-left. (For the record, I'm centre-left). And usually, white.

[thinking]

I guess you could call them hicks, they're urban hicks in the sense of "dangerous jerks." The people collared by Operation Blackwater came from my city and they were just bad news, every last one of 'em. The ringleader was into screwing minors, they'd threaten their neighbours with those "gentle, misunderstood" pit bulls they proclaim to miss so much in jail, and they blew up a closed-for-the-night police station to "practice" for their prime targets. Lovely people.

I did like your making a contrast between hunters and hicks. Fred Bear was a hunter; Mike Huckabee is a hick. To me, Sarah Palin is the consummate hick, everything that's bad about rural culture and none of the good. She needs to get off religion and catch a severe dose of wisdom. I wouldn't even compare her to a cowboy; those guys truly move and live according to nature's rhythms and if you ever get a chance to sit down and listen to a cowboy philosopher or poet talk, do it. They descend spiritually from the Celtic bards.

[Bloodyredbaron]

Hunting is, for met at least, cathartic, I suppose is the term I would use. Not just the kill either, the anticipation, hours of waiting, and then stalking. It's like therapy. I can always work out all my issues during a good hunt.

[RedEye]

Something that has been skirted around but not brought up... Allow me.

Hunting determines if you have what it takes to survive. Period.
A large number of people have no idea as to how the meat in the Supermarket gets there; the same thing applies to veggies to a lesser degree.
I'll say it. We can buy meat because somebody has killed an animal and cut it up for us.
That makes us scavengers. We eat things somebody else killed. Period. Scavenging works!
I hunt. Those of you who know me off this board know what it costs me in terms of discomfort and sheer misery. I broke my back twenty-five years ago...yet I go out and hunt.
Most recently, I killed a whitetail buck. After giving the spirit of the deer my "Hunter's Thanks", I and my guide harvested:
358 lbs of venison.
one deerhide.
One set of antlers: 6 points.
Bones and sinews: 55 lbs.

The gutpile and the rest were left for the hungry in the forested area where I had hunted. Undoudtedly some foxes and maybe a wolf or two had a meal, courtesy of my hunt.
The rest; what I had harvested, is being used. The skin has tanned out beautifully, and the horn, bone, and sinew are being made into useful things.

Here's the point to all of this:
If: Civilization falls, I can feed myself and my family. I can keep them warm and clothe them. I can make implements of daily use out of the things I find, and the animals I harvest. I can survive.

The one who made the "Rant"? He will either change his opinions or become a dependant on someone else...or he will starve to death when the cans run out; if he doesn't freeze of get malnourishment disease first.

That's why I hunt. Nif said.

[Berserker]

Something that has been skirted around but not brought up... Allow me.

Hunting determines if you have what it takes to survive. Period.
A large number of people have no idea as to how the meat in the Supermarket gets there; the same thing applies to veggies to a lesser degree.
I'll say it. We can buy meat because somebody has killed an animal and cut it up for us.
That makes us scavengers. We eat things somebody else killed. Period. Scavenging works!

I hate to pick, but unless I totally misunderstand what you're saying here, if you're trying to correlate hunting to the droning assembly lines of the modern meat industry, it doesn't follow.

In maybe 99 out of 100 cases, the meat we buy comes from Morlockian processing plants where living things are grown, mathematically eliminated, processed, packaged, and sold. This is an activity born entirely of leisure, and decadence; not survival. There's no spirit of the hunt here.

You also say a "large number of people have no as to how the meat in the Supermarket gets there," but who are you talking about? I'm not sure I could name a single person who doesn't clearly understand the concept of farms to butchers to stores to tables. We're introduced to it from a very young age. Cow goes moo, chicken goes cluck.

[vrikasatma]

I think what Red-Eye was trying to say was that most people know about the existence of ranching, range-grazing, factory farms and feedlots — but they shy away from the fact that they exist, and exist to feed them. And perversely, continue to pay for and consume what they oh-so-distastefully produce.

My dad was a butcher and he took my brother and I to a slaughterhouse when we were young. I wasn't scandalized in the least, not even when one of the workers gave my brother a cow's eye in a jar of formaldehyde to take home and put in his display cabinet. I was nervously fascinated, not so much by the fact that my brother kept a dead cow's eye but from the fact that Mom told me never to open the jar because formaldehyde was poison. The eye? Heh. It looked like a monster from The Outer Limits. And monsters were cool.

I adopted my first kitten from one of my father's hunting buddies. He took us over there when he came home with a deer he shot, we saw the kittens — and that was that. The deer was cool and fascinating to me, and the kittens clinched the deal.

Dad, unfortunately, never took us hunting. He got out of it and especially didn't take me hunting, because he didn't consider it a "fit activity for a little lady." This is why I didn't go on my first hunt until I was deeply into my twenties and had to learn on my own, via trial and error, sweat and blood.

[Wingman]

Well, it's been years since I went hunting, or fishing, or anything of the sort, but for me it was less about eating some delicious forest creature and more about trying something new, or spending time with my dad. We live together, but those rare trips probably contained more interaction between the two of us than the years separating them.

I can't help but verify what RedEye said. For two of the last three years I worked at a local grocery store, and usually three times a week I was in the meat department cleaning or helping out (The boss used us minimum-wage slave monkeys to cut costs, rather than getting the higher-paid full-time people to clean up after themselves.) I had only a marginal idea of what that was like, and only because I'd helped my dad skin a moose or two. It's one thing to make patties from a big bowl of hamburger at home, and quite another to be up to your elbows in blood and fat while carving slices off something that looks eerily similar to your thigh.
But, to be realistic, the same thing goes for just about every profession and activity on the planet. After I started working at a restaurant I gained a lot more respect for the faceless grunts in the kitchen and the waitstaff, and a deeper understanding of why your order of three pizzas might take half an hour to get to your table even though there's "only" a dozen other people in the restaurant. Honestly, I've served some customers who expected a pizza to be made, cooked, and delivered to their table in under two minutes...and it has a seven minute cook time at the minimum.

A little off topic towards the end, but there's a difference between knowing about something, and knowing about something. Animal, farm, truck, store, table. Just about everyone knows that, but if you were to do a random survey and ask what that involves; about just how bacteria found in the colon gets on meat cut from the shoulder, or which plants are safe to eat, and which ones you NEED to eat to survive, how many people could answer correctly? Like the majority of us, if our nice technological utopia were to go kaput, I'd be a scavenger, not a hunter-gatherer. In all likelihood I would be reliant on someone, or something, else to keep myself alive.

I have heard of some hunters who refuse to use firearms, and even a handful of guys who would go deer-hunting using spears, or in one case, a knife, because if our civilization were to fall, that's what they'd need to be able to do in order to eat when they ran out of bullets, or their gun broke and there were no replacement parts.

I suspect another aspect of what RedEye said is that many people have little real knowledge of the things they're shooting at and dragging home to mount in their garage. I've seen some guys complaining that they couldn't go out and kill half a dozen bucks for the antlers "and maybe a couple of steaks." That's a direct quote there, and I'm entirely certain they were being sarcastic, or joking. A couple of steaks, they were fully prepared to leave 95% of the animals lying there to rot. They seemed to have no concept of how those six deer might be the only ones in the area, and that there are families up here who rely on them for food. Not so many as in previous years, but they're still out there.

Or something, I think I switched trains of thought a couple times while writing this.

[blackwolfhell]

I'm starting to see all your points. Redeye's makes sense, and most of you who responded hunt as well. I have only hunted once and thought it was fun. I didn't shoot anything except for cans, but I had fun anyway. So I haven't killed anything yet...
just thought of one other thing...do any of you think hunting is fun? I'm not trying to pin you down with something or criticize you, I'm just curious.

[RedEye]

Considering my various ailments, if hunting wasn't fun...

I wouldn'g do it.

There is more to hunting than killing game. The major part of a hunt is walking through some mind-blowingly beautiful countryside. Then there is reading sign, finding where the game is hanging out at the time. Finally there is the stalk. Closing the distance between you and dinner without spooking or alarming your intended prey can take over an hour of moving an inch at a time until you are close enough to make a clean fast kill.

Then there is butchering and clean up. That is less than fun, but part of the price of the fun you just had.

And... I took (killed) the deer with one shot. He never even moved, he just dropped in a heap.

That is hunting. Work, pain, discomfort, effort, and more fun than anything else like it.

[PariahPoet]

I hunt because deer are tasty and because I kill as quickly and respectfully as possible. Cows get no such consideration from slaughterhouses.

[Kaebora]

Humans don't need to hunt anymore because of farms and slaughterhouses. These days, rather than doing it for survival, modern humans do it for sporting, spiritual, or capitalizing reasons.

[PariahPoet]

There are many more reasons than that Kae.
Natural meat is much healthier than what comes out of a slaughterhouse, so someone who is health conscious may feel they need to hunt for their food.