Comedian Jay Leggett dies after killing deer

[ElboRuum]

311. I tend to agree with that.

I don't think that suffering should be inflicted on any living creature in any way that can be reasonably avoided.

I don't know how egregiously common this romanticizing of nature and predation and hunting is either. Is it wrong for someone to enjoy hunting? I don't think so, so long as we are mindful of what we've already established as agreed, that suffering should be avoided where possible, and it is in the effort of conservancy or sustenance (even if trophy hunting is used as a means to conservancy and waste of the animal is avoided). It has a way of connecting us back with our instinctual natures in a very real way, re-enacting what our species once did as a matter of survival.

I too see nature as "red in tooth and claw" and I am mystified that some people see something more genteel, implying or directly stating that our predatory natures are somehow unusually excessive when compared against the natural world, and thus pathological. All one has to do to see the savagery of the natural world is watch a big cat run down a gazelle on the Serengeti to see just how "tooth and claw" it really is, especially among the "higher" animals. But we evolved through this process just as every other predatory animal, different only in the respect that we can establish a moral framework for it and communicate that idea to others of our species.