Why I like animals better than large numbers of people

[geekchick]

Country star accused of illegally killing tame bear

Authorities allege that Gentry purchased the bear from Greenly, a wildlife photographer and hunting guide, then killed it with a bow and arrow in an enclosed pen on Greenly's property in October 2004.

The government alleges that Gentry and Greenly tagged the bear with a Minnesota hunting license and registered the animal with the state Department of Natural Resources as a wild kill.

[...] The bear's death was videotaped, and the tape later edited so Gentry appeared to shoot the animal in a "fair chase" hunting situation, the government alleges.

Yeah. Real sporting there, champ. Takes a big, brave, manly man to shoot a penned animal, particularly a tame one. I can see why you'd want to do some creative editing to make it look like it happened otherwise. I have, quite frankly, zero support for sport hunting to start with, and this just nauseates me.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007866.html

TK

[geekchick]

I have to admit that the anecdote about the 300-pound boar and the dogs destroying the inside of the "hunter"'s truck made me giggle. No small amount of schadenfreude there or anything, nope.

I don't like trophy hunting to start with, and I think canned hunts are pretty much beneath contempt.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

This is disgusting.

[geekchick]

Indeed. As I said to Terry, I think canned trophy hunts are beneath contempt, but if there is a way it could be made worse, I'd have to say that using a TAME animal would be it.

[lostvirtue.livejournal.com]

Our species isn't exactly known for being kind to animals. Just knowing what goes on at most farms and then continuing to eat meat really demonstrates a lack of compassion (for the people who do) and if you know the reality then I strongly feel that it is indeed animal cruelty.

But people justify it because there is a purpose. (eating the animal/using it's fur) Not because they need it (other food is plentiful in this country).

So how is it all that different if this man kills this bear that is tame and eats it or uses its fur? People hunt bears all the time, is this an outrage this time because the bear was tame?

Then whats the different between this and raising an animal for food *aka taming it, then killing it? Because bears are unique?

I have no support for sport hunting, or killing an animal for any reason but necessity or mercy killing (euthinasia). Aka societies that actually needed to use animals to survive in their culture. (such as native americans) There are a few other instances, but generally, you get my point.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Because intent matters.

There's no reason for me to go into it more than that (not the least of which is that you think me immoral, and that, as a basis for discussion is prone to prejudice the both of us).

I see the exclusion you make (Native Americans) as questionable, at best. Given the ability of vegetable food, what need (apart from cultural preference) is there for killing animals to them?

I eat meat because I like it. I belong to a culture with a preference for meat, and for certain types (most organ meats are considered offal, some; e.g. lungs and paunch of sheep, which are perfectly edible are prohibited). What, pray tell, makes my cultural prefrents less valuable than a Native Americans?

I can't think of any Native American group (even those living above the Arctic Circle), which isn't so involved with the greater culture around them that the cultural holdovers they keep aren't just that, things they keep.

I fail to see how their preferences are in someway morally superior to mine, ipso facto.

TK

[lostvirtue.livejournal.com]

No, I think that the way their culture developed did indeed necessitate meat eating. Had they developed among more agricultural lines things may have been different. They DID NOT have immediate options for a sustainable ONLY plant based diet.

We do.

I can't stop you. But I do urge you to educate yourself about modern meat production if you care about how animals are treated at all.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Some did, some didn't (compare the culture of the Pequod to the Lakota, now compare the latter to themselves, before and after the horse.

Some had immediate options, some didn't, they do now. So the only reason to allow them to eat meat is that somehow the culture they are trying to keep is in some way, by your lights, superior to mine.

Bullshit. They are people, no more, no less.

As for schooling me on meat. I went to an ag school, my better half has three degrees in Large Animal Science (an AA, an AS [different schools in parallel] and a BS: Cal Poly SLO).

I am intimately acquainted with the means and production of beef, veal, pork, chicken, goose, duck venison, dairy (which I have worked in), eggs (eat those we grow, pass on generic, will eat free range, but prefer to avoid cage free), buffalo and kangaroo.

I can tell you when, and why, we went from having slaughter, to harvest; butchery to manufacture, why downer meat is unacceptable, and how Smith-Armour get around it.

I am no naïf. I make informed decisions about what I eat (from the vegetables I grow, to the steaks I cook, the roasts I turn and the eggs I create custards with).

I am perfectly comfortable with my choices, and I see no need to lecture to others about the choices they make, be they never so simple and deluded, to my minds eye.

Holier than thee is pride, and it goeth before the fall.

TK

[geekchick]

So how is it all that different if this man kills this bear that is tame and eats it or uses its fur? People hunt bears all the time, is this an outrage this time because the bear was tame?

The assumption that I'm starting with here is that a person who pays $5000 for someone to put a bear in a pen so that he can shoot it and then edit a videotape to make it look like it was a real hunt probably wasn't doing it because he wanted bear meat, but because this was a trophy hunt so that he could get himself a bearskin rug or a stuffed bear to show off in his den. I could be wrong about Mr. Gentry's motivation though, because I only know what I read on CNN.

I am ambivalent *at best* about hunting in general, but in my mind there is a difference between a hunter who goes out into the woods and hunts an animal, fully intending to eat the meat and make as much use of the rest of it as he can, and someone who takes an animal that's been socialized to not view humans as a threat, puts it in an enclosed area where it has no chance of escape, and kills it for a trophy. Ideally there'd not be a hunt at all, but if it's going to happen I'd rather that it be something like the former. My upset wasn't as much about it being a tame bear in particular as it was about being a canned hunt.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

This is one for "let the punishment fit the crime"! Granted, it may not be possible to
tame this stain on humanity, but it is CERTAINLY possible to cage and shoot him,
and even videotape the process and make it look like something else.