Oh go on, this thread could do with a little levity.

They have moose in Wales?

And this could all go horribly wrong as well.

But on a more serious note, I can sort of get my head around people going out purely to hunt for food (and that specifically excludes bear). I would however hope that the true food hunter would have the decency not to keep the parts of the unfortunate animal that are not eaten as a trophy.

The bonding experience is a valid point although I am sure that there are more humane mathods of bonding with your fellow man. Somebody did mention alcohol as part of the bonding experience. Hmm, guns and alcohol sounds rather redneck to me.

Seems logical, otherwise why not just go hunting with a paintball gun - same bonding, camaraderie etc.

Of course it's ultimately about the kill, but the kill is not the only thing. As I suggested in paragraph 2 of post 135, you can't very well take home a fellow paintballer for the cooking pot or freezer, can you?

In parachuting, the drop is the most important part of the event, but not the only part. I doubt parachutists get the same enjoyment without the company of like-minded people.

But it is the key critical part which separates hunting from other outdoor pursuits

and it the one part hunters spend a great deal of time glossing over, by talking about how they care about the animals, its more humane than farming, how they care about the environment, that its really a social pastime... (Which I find fascinating and also insightful too)

When deep down they know they are just one small step above the sick child that killed his pet for pleasure

The fact they do it in a social environment allows them to share/deny the collective guilt of giving into to their more primitive urges towards violence against the defenseless

I think you're wildly overstating this whole enjoyment-of-killing thing. I expect there is a very small minority of people who go hunting for whom the act of killing gives them some sort of thrill, but from everything I have read and from all of those people I know who hunt or shoot, the strongest emotion when confronted with the moment of pulling the trigger, or loosing the arrow, or whatever means you use, is one of respect for your prey and satisfaction at having achieved the goal. Many people have said they feel somewhat queasy immediately following the kill, hardly a feeling you'd associate with machismo or the enjoyment of death.

I can't reconcile your comment "the desired result is a dead animal" with your assertion that hunters enjoy the act of killing. There's no correlation between the two. I can want to shoot a deer dead so that I can eat venison through the next few months; that doesn't mean that I enjoy the act of killing the creature.

As I said earlier, I haven't partaken of a Canadian-style hunt. In the UK I did work as a beater for a couple of shoots near my parents' place when I was a teen. The "bag" was pretty much unimportant to real enthusiasts; the only people who went on about the number of birds they'd shot were the city types down for the day throwing their money around and playing the country squire. Even there, though, it was much more about bragging rights over one's proficiency with a shotgun rather than taking any particular pleasure in the death of the fowl.

That's way out of line.

Hunting is about a pleasurable form of killing animals !!!!

That statement may be rather blunt and rather 'in your face' but not out of line

Why is it so hard to accept that people get pleasure out of killing?

I used to do a lot of judo and I definitely got a lot of pleasure slapping my fellow man hard to the ground and winning
The ultimate fighting is another area where ‘civilized’ people bay for blood like they were at a roman arena and others actively participate and enjoy nearly killing each other
I struggle more with the fact that hunters seem to deny that they function on this primitive level and attempt to deny the kill factor

Otherwise why not rock climb, paraglide, parachute jump, hike, pothole, mountaineer all demand a skill and knowledge of nature and some putting your life in your hands as you bet against mother nature

What really separates the hunt from these…….

Or is it just that many are not willing to be honest enough to admit that they enjoy playing the role of a predator

There's a world of difference between predation of prey species for food and the killing of a family pet for pleasure. In the first, the "primitive desire" is for providing food and the killing is a necessary by-product of that desire. In the latter, it is the taking of life itself that provides the pleasure, with no other aim. If you cannot discriminate between those two situations, there's no point in continuing this discussion.

I maintain that your equating hunting with killing a family pet is way out of line and you should withdraw the remark.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~powlesla/per...t/pleasure.txt

Maybe this may explain my rational better

both are driven by instinct the child does not yet have the awareness to know that to just kill is considered by society to be wrong, the Hunter does and proceeds with the killing of a prey species with the justification of using the animal for food (doesn’t explain away the trophy hunter)
I see this as a small step created by society as the need to kill for food for many hunters is no longer a reality but a pastime done purely for pleasure
Isn’t it true that chimps will sometimes kill for fun, we're not that far removed that that level of instinct has ceased to exist within us

But by who's society???? Yours maybe, but not the one I am living in.

There is no predefinition of right and wrong.

Wrong to one is right to another and you can take that comment to as many extremes as you like. Just because you may not agree with what I consider a fun sport, does not make you right and me wrong.

All we have here are opinions, the way we have been brought up and the circles we move in.

And because a chimp kills for fun does that make him wrong - we are only seperated by the fact that we are supposed to have eveolved to use logic and so on. My logic may not agree with yours!

I'm surprised that you use that paper to try to support your position - it seems to support mine much more strongly.

Causey states
The emphasis is mine. This is the point I've been making and which you seem to have missed - the enjoyment is as much in the quest as in the achievement.

is pretty much what I said a few posts ago about the queasy feeling felt by some hunters after the kill.

In saying that it is an instinct, rather than a rational desire, Causey is removing the moral dimension altogether. Which rather takes the wind from the sails of any argument that there is a moral imperative not to enjoy hunting - elsewhere in the piece Causey draws the analogy with sex for enjoyment vs procreation that I pointed out earlier.

I still maintain, and have yet to see you rebut, that the parallel between a kid killing a family pet and a hunting expedition is not a fair one to draw. There are countless studies that point out the links between adolescents killing small animals for pleasure and the development of sociopathic behaviour in adulthood. Your linking this with hunting is effectively saying that all hunters are half a step removed from sociopathic serial killers. That is a gross mis-statement and you should withdraw it.

I see it as the same primitive instinct
It’s the same pleasure circuits being driven, one is socially acceptable (the Hunt) the other not

In one the urge to kill is controlled and the brain as stated can be tempered by reason

The other that reasoned response is missing……. its just one step away

It's legal to do so, and encouraged by government by the issuing of licences.

Let's take parachuting. Who in their right mind would jump out of a perfectly good aircraft for fun.
Motorsports, where you hurtle yourself around a track at 100+ miles per hour.
Running with the bulls as is currently happening in Spain, where you're likely to be seriously injured.

All of these and more are legal, yet there's always a possibility of someone dying, yet because hunting involves an animal dying it's seen as something that shouldn't be done, even though a by-product of it is that another source of food is available. If we ban hunting, do we then ban grouse shooting and the like as well, as it's pretty much the same thing?