General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why is hunting so sacred? [View all]moriah
(8,311 posts)I've mentioned my second cousin. Our grandparents diverged by mine moving to the city, hers stayed in the farming/rural community. She's a grandma now, and still goes out every year.
She prefers archery because it does require more skill to get a clean kill. And yes, she posts when she gets what could be considered "trophy bucks" by bow.
But absolutely NO one sane enjoys the event of "shit, not a clean hit, now we have to track and put this suffering animal out of its misery". Which they would if it was a sadistic thing. They'd rather miss completely. Not for laziness -- but because ethical people who kill animals don't want more suffering for the animals than absolutely necessary to accomplish their goal. A single shot drop not just indicates skill, which people can feel a sense of pride for exercising, but also that the deer doesn't suffer long (at the worst a throat slice ends their pain).
And yes, this is the same side of the family where talk of castrating feeder calves has come up at Thanksgiving. I was against it if you were isolated enough from cows in estrus as the calves in the sustainable living collective where I raised two and they didn't get extremely onery before they got to weight. The relatives said they had too many and a good vet, though they did agree about dehorning being unnecessary for calves expected to be beef in a year.
Perhaps people who have raised meat are less distanced from the reality of meat, egg, and milk production.
But I see far less ethical issues with a hunter who follows all laws (especially here the CWD management regulations) and eat the deer they kill (unless harvested from the CWD zone and tests showed positive) than I do with commercial poultry operations. If nothing else, when you can smell the damn houses from a mile away, you know those animals are living a "life" that's horrible. Even if domesticated breeds can't realistically live wild, you can give them better lives, and deaths, than that.