CKMaddAll

Edit- just saw your first message. Will respond when home

Oink

That's because he's paw and its too deer.

jossie

You can't see the difference between living a natural healthy life in the wild and living a squalid life cooped up in a pen sitting in your own excrement each day because there is no space to move? Yes the end result is death but quality of life does matter.

dbd33

There can't be many ducks, or animals in general, killed instantly by hunters. Mostly they're damaged rather than killed.

You suggested that chickens were both raised for food and crushed up and spread over fields. That can only be so if they're plant food, if they were human food there wouldn't be much point in grinding them up and spreading them over fields as they'd have to be picked up again in order to smush them into nuggets.

Ask yourself, are you a lion? Look and see if you have a shaggy mane. If so, go for them impalas.

Oakvillian

Animals do not understand the concept of "innocent" - it helps nobody's argument to anthropomorphize wildlife with human values and emotions.

Carnivores and omnivores kill other animals for food. Humans, being omnivores, kill other animals for food. Tens of thousands of years ago this involved hunting with sharp sticks and flint spearheads. More recently, the domestication of livestock removed the need to hunt for survival, and is generally considered to have been a civilizing influence. More recently still, intensive farming methods have made the raising of livestock a more questionable practice in the eyes of many consumers.

Where do you get the thing about chickens being kept alive only to be used for fertilizer? No chicken farmer would waste money feeding up animals until "no longer required" only to grind them up for spreading on a field. Male chicks a couple of days old, perhaps - but then "packed together for their entire lives" seems a little disingenuous.

Almost Canadian

So, are those humans that, in certain regions of the world, still hunt for food uncivilized; are those that obtain their meat from Walmart civilized?

Oakvillian

No, that's not what I said. Domesticating livestock was, in terms of human history, a civilizing influence - that is, I believe, part of a reasonable definition of civilization. Hunting is not, per se, uncivilized. Nor, in most of the Western world including Canada, is it necessary.

Wal-mart is a fine example of what I meant by "more questionable practice." Driving everything to the lowest cost regardless of the ethics is, while the ultimate in civilization, not necessarily ethical or morally acceptable. I choose not to shop for groceries in Wal-mart, but I have the luxury of being able to make that choice, and I appreciate there are those who do not.

Likewise I do not hunt, not from any moral or ethical objection to the eating of wild game, more because I find the glorification of the kill somewhat distasteful. My general philosophy is that I will only eat that which I would, in extremis, be prepared to kill and cook myself. It hasn't stopped me from eating anything yet, though I'm not sure I would relish a mountain lion steak. I am not a good butcher - last time I dealt with a sheep carcass (some 25 years ago now) I made a bit of a mess of it. I consider it rather more respectful to the animal to have it prepared by somebody who knows what they're doing, if that option is available.

caretaker

If chickens are ground up and used as fertilizer that must mean something's gone wrong and they spoiled. I think normally even the old laying hens become canned chicken soup or pet food. The Hutterites get good money even for those birds. The way they 'battery raise' some chickens and eggs isn't very pretty. It's true that animals do get wounded and lost by hunters. I've probably lost 3 or 4 deer out of 40 or 50 that I've shot over the last 43 years, and I couldn't even guess at the numbers of ducks, but when I got hunting with a good dog it was a sea change, and almost all ducks were recovered. I don't know if I'd ever want to hunt ducks without a dog again.
In response to Oakvillan, if you've bought a rib roast and cut it into steaks, being your own butcher is just an extension of that. Having someone show you or a short course like our community college offers is usually all it takes.

Shard

I'm not so sure butchering can be learned by everybody. Someone from Smithfield Market was on the radio the other night, and he said he only managed six years at the butchering before it got too much for him. Obviously there are career butchers, but they are a minority of the population. There something quite macabre about it IMO.

Sally Redux

I read somewhere that early man was very poorly equipped for hunting, and probably survived mainly by gathering plants and carrion.

dbd33

And yet butchers are jolly, it's your fishmongers who are miserable buggers (actual fishmongers, obviously men with jellied eel carts are a happy bunch).

caretaker

I meant butchering your own game or a farm-gate lamb or sheep. If I had to do it day in day out standing at a cutting table I doubt I could last as long.

Shard

That's believed to be true for very early humans (like the chap in my avatar) but stone tools were developed about 2 million years ago for the purpose of hunting. And consumption of meat was essential to human brain growth and our evolution to homo sapiens.

Almost Canadian

I was pulling your leg.

I accept that many posters on this board view hunting as the domain of uncivilised humans, particularly if they take photographs of their kill.

I don't hunt. I know many that do. Some of them take pictures; some don't.

I have no objection to people hunting if they wish to do so for meat.

I object to those that wish to hunt purely for the trophy (whether that be a picture or something they can mount on a wall.)

I have no objection to those that hunt for the meat and then choose to take a picture. Just as some posters on here would view a picture of a family enjoying Disneyworld as distasteful, while others would not. I believe that calling them names is unlikely to change their view.

Each to their own

Sally Redux

I had not heard about the meat/brain growth connection.