Jump to content
Banner by ~ Ice Princess Silky
  • entries
    65
  • comments
    240
  • views
    29,851

Hunting for sport is wasteful


lomk

6,516 views

Look, having grown up in the southern United States, I'm all for hunting. Especially if it's for food.

 

For me, hunting for food is almost always acceptable. This happens in the wild very often, and I firmly believe that if you want to shoot a deer and process the meat to feed yourself or your family, you should be able to go right ahead. Where I think it isn't okay to shoot or otherwise kill an animal for food is if the animal is endangered, regardless of whether you were aware of the animal's endangered status. If you hunt, you should have the common sense to do your research and determine whether or not the animal is endangered.

 

Now I say this in response to all the outrage at this Kendall Jones chick, a Texas Tech cheerleader who has come under the gun all over the place because she posted multiple pictures of herself posed with rare animals she killed for sport. I'm not passionately on one side or the other. I want to take more of a common sense approach to this.

 

First of all, Kendall Jones is from Texas. Being a student at Texas Tech, she probably lives in Lubbock, which is in the Texas panhandle. Much like California virtually always votes Democratic in presidential elections, Texas is overwhelmingly Republican. This is a state where you find a lot of people who like hunting, and (naturally) they like their guns. Many are old school, firmly believing marriage to be between only a man and a woman. Also, most of them like their big ass pickup trucks. I can say that because I live in an Oklahoma town that isn't far from Texas. I could drive a little over an hour and be in Texas.

 

One argument I see from a lot of the hunters who are backing her up is this: "Hunters are the biggest conservationists out there!" I think this is flat-out ridiculous, especially if you hunt purely for sport. Killing an animal just to have it stuffed is extremely wasteful in my opinion. To say that hunters are helping the farmers who are helping endangered animals recover by helping to control the population is also ridiculous. To kill is to reduce the population of a species, which is counterproductive to the cause. If you want to hunt something for sport, don't hunt something that is extremely rare, regardless of how much money you have.

 

I believe that if you want to hunt for sport, it's okay. I think it's wasteful, but it's okay under certain circumstances. What disgusts me about this Kendall Jones chick is that she didn't just kill a lion and a hippo and call it quits because she was concerned she might be taking too much. She's got a leopard, a zebra, a lion, an elephant, an antelope, a wildebeest, a hippo, a rhino, and probably a few others I haven't seen yet. That's crazy. There's no way she's going to use those animals. She'll probably stuff them or otherwise waste the animals. And it wasn't just a couple. She killed a multitude of animals. It did kinda piss me off to see her with the dead rhino. Rhinos aren't common. They need to make a comeback.

 

The difference between hunting for sport and hunting for food/survival is pictures on Facebook.

 

At the same time, I don't believe that all this outrage is the correct way to respond. You must really consider that this isn't the first time someone has paid a lot of money to go hunt rare and endangered animals in Africa. A lot of people go and have gone over there to kill a lot of animals. I don't want to defend her by any means. I don't think what she did was right. Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. But everybody in the world freaking out, making death threats, and wishing harm on someone is not the correct way to go about it. And petitioning the White House to do something in this case isn't correct either. A petition should be made for a generality, not a specific case. "Make same-sex marriage legal nationally and make it unlawful for states to make laws that contradict this" is the right way to petition the White House. "Keep Kendall Jones out of Africa" is not. The long arm of the law does not extend past American soil. There may be extradition treaties and whatnot, but the US government couldn't convict her in a court of law of a crime which was committed outside the US. Even if the petition got 200 million signatures, they couldn't do anything. Though killing some of those animals might be punishable by US law, she wasn't under US law while in South Africa.

 

The correct response to this is to make a movement to make it illegal to kill these animals by other countries' laws. The US government can't impose laws on a person when they are not in the US, regardless of citizenship. However, if South Africa were to make it illegal to kill, injure, or otherwise harm endangered animals like rhinos, that would be a big step forward and it would allow these endangered species to better recover since it would be illegal there for someone to hunt them.

 

My common sense approach on this is that hunting for food is hunting for necessity. People need to eat. I believe that you should be able to take from the wild if it is for necessity so long as what you take from it is quickly replaced or not otherwise in immediate danger of extinction. Hunting for sport is wasteful unless the animal being hunted is a danger to people or a pest (such as feral hogs--this is a problem down here, and many local governments have asked local hunters for assistance in population control) or if the hunter takes very little. While I don't agree with hunting for sport, I understand people enjoy hunting as a sport in itself. I believe that those who hunt for sport should only do so in moderation. Killing only a few animals is okay, especially if they are overwhelmingly common (such as wild rabbits). I don't think it is ever okay to kill a rare animal, regardless of how much money you have. If you really care about conservation, don't kill the animals. Just donate the money or go over there and go see the animals. There are ways to promote wildlife conservation that don't involve killing the animals.

 

As for you people who are disgusted with it, death threats aren't the way to go. Seriously. Think about how you would feel if the whole internet suddenly started threatening you with your death or if people described in gruesome detail how they want you to die. There are more effective ways to express your distaste for something.

  • Brohoof 2

6 Comments


Recommended Comments

I thoroughly enjoy hunting.
Whenever I hunt, it's for food.
Now, some animals I kill, and don't harvest them, because they're just no good.
I kill them because of what I call, "Homeland Security"
Usually, it's just a raccoon, I have chickens, and I can't afford to have the risk of one of them getting eaten. So, when I see a coon, I'll pop him off, and that's that.

Now, I agree, killing for sport is bad, makes everyone who hunts look like hill billy gunslinger who banged his sister last night.

But the people I hate more than those "Sport Hunters" are the people who are anti-hunting.
They're all just assholes in general, they'll just call you a killer all day, when little do they know, animals killed in factories are killed in a more gruesome way than we are doing it.
And, you have to keep population of each species down to a healthy level.
Too many of one species in one area, disease spreads and they all end up dead.

It's quite a touchy subject, and there's a variety of opinions out there. 
 

Link to comment

 

 

It did kinda piss me off to see her with the dead rhino.

That one was actually tranq'd. As was the elephant, and I believe the lion was as well...

 

The leopard was flat-out killed because the locals considered it a menace and she was issued a permit to kill it. It was gonna die either way, by her hand or theirs.

 

The springbok, wildebeest and the zebra are all listed under the conservation status of "Least Concern". There's a lot of them runnin' around, so it doesn't matter if a few get killed.

 

And come on, hippos are just assholes. I don't care if it was shot or tranq'd, it probably had it coming.

 

I really fail to see what Ms. Jones did wrong in this case. However, I do think such sport hunting should be in some way regulated, possibly by issuing set amounts of permits for certain types of animals, establishing renewable quotas... You know, shit like that.

Link to comment

Some of us like to do it as both at the same time?

 

And it's not a bad thing to waste when it's a population control tag.

(Wolf, deer, squirrel, etc) When there are too many that they are actually harming themselves and the environment, the state gives you permission to kill a certain amount in a time period to balance it out.

 

The same happens in fishing.

 

You can't just let them go willy nilly.

 

But for some bozo not using the animal, or in this case, being sadistically overzealous, then yes, it is a waste.

Link to comment

I believe that bitch had been told nicely about her stupid hunts before all the death threats thing, and yet she still did it. You can't really expect people not to rage, because people have actually fought to keep those animals from poachers, and she killed those animals just because it's fun.

 

People will stop when the cunt stops, sure, but at least if you've got the guts to murder a rare species, have the guts to receive death threats.

Link to comment

As long as you use the meat from the animal when you take it to a taxidermist (most of 'em will give you the meat), I see absolutely no problem with hunting for sport. I think it's perfectly acceptable to want to hang a trophy on the wall. As long as you don't just take the stuffed head and chuck everything else in the bin, there's absolutely zero problem with it.

Link to comment

I'm sorry, but you people are all in the wrong. Killing animals for fun is cruel, no matter what conservation status they are. If you had a cat or a dog that you loved with all of your heart, would you kill it?

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Join the herd!

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...