Thread: Defending hunters

This week I read an article in the NZ Herald from a lady called Sandra Kyle about Cecil the lion and how it draws common grounds with hunters all over the world, how it is barbaric, murder, and cruel with no skills required what so ever. I felt like writing a response, but it seems someone else that we know of has done the good thing and put some perspective on the topic. Shot Daryl!

Sandra Kyles ramble:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/ne...ectid=11491271

Daryl's response:

Daryl Crimp: Hunting part of NZ's national identity - Opinion - NZ Herald News

You can only defend the hunters you know and have hunted with. There are plenty dickheads that kill for fun or are unethical or just plain dont care. This also goes the other way and when people generalise hunters into the one group it pisses the hunters off. Head down bum up, do what you think is right

Originally Posted by Gibo

You can only defend the hunters you know and have hunted with. There are plenty dickheads that kill for fun or are unethical or just plain dont care. This also goes the other way and when people generalise hunters into the one group it pisses the hunters off. Head down bum up, do what you think is right

The fact that Sandra Kyle's article is a complete generalisation is actually a strong argument against her and what she stands for.

By writing in the style she has she has actually managed to get most Kiwis to think about the fact that a LOT of hunters do not fit the mould that she says they do - and in so doing has highlighted herself as a stupid radical (like most of the SAFE organisation).

That is true Gibo, there are hunters and then there are hunters. I certainly don't condone what happen to Cecil because I fall under the title of a meat hunter.

Poor ethics and animal cruelty takes many forms.
To me, keeping animals such as Orca in small pools for their entire life, purely for profit and human entertainment is both unethical and cruel.
Others will of course did agree.

Hunters don't need defending - we have guns!

Pieces like Sandra Kyles's make me angry, especially when they don't seem to be very informed about what they are writing about.

The fact is that we do not need to kill animals to control populations. If we leave nature to her own devices things will tend to balance out. For example, natural predators help maintain a balance by killing the sickest and weakest individuals.

If we left animals like deer, possums and rabbits to be killed off by their natural predators in NZ we would trip over them every time we cycled to the health store for our tofu.
On a more serious note though I don't agree with the killing of endangered animals just for the sake of killing them.

Found this an interesting watch.
His comment about putting knowledge before emotion seems on the money to me!
http://outdooroverload.com/ban-lion-...f-lions-video/

Thanks for putting that up @Rusky.

I thought Daryls response was very good & well balanced.

I tried to make this point in the thread about the bloke who killed Cecil the Lion but failed. If we condem or don't condone the dentist bloke who pulled the trigger then we condem ourselves because there is only a subtle difference as to why he wanted to kill a lion and why we want to hunt the species we hunt.

We hunt thing for many reasons, food, trophies, pest control and sport. All of these reasons are valid in the right context and it's fair to say the thing being hunted doesn't care about the reason or what happens to it after it's death - it just wants to keep on living.

The dentist bloke paid for a above board and legal lion hunt. His guides may have done something that could be clasified as poaching but but he paid for and expected a legal hunt so this isn't his crime.

The angry mob on bookface and the rest of the internet is now up in arms about how somone could kill the cuddly wuddly lion and why would anyone do that? This cuts to the heart of the very reason why we hunt and if we can't answer this question then our children won't get to enjoy the same hunting culture that we have.

The reason why we hunt is the same reason Cecil (used to) hunt - we are preaditors, it's in our nature and it's natural for us to do this.

The way the world should work is that humans are scard of Lions and stay out of their territory and Lions are scared of people and like all true wild animals avoid humans if at all possible. A good example of this dynamic is black bears in the USA. When reading Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardin it contained the following info about bear encounters. In areas where bears are hunting in season they will avoid humans at all cost, run at the sight of humans and they are not regarded as a problem.

In areas where hunting is banned (e.g. yosomite national park) the bears know they have nothing to fear from humans and spend most of their day trying to get at the food in trampers backpacks. The payoff (energy expended vs energy gained from eating the food) for human food is massivly better than it is for foraging for blueberries so this is what they focus on.

So by protecting these animals and then intruding on their space we have completely fucked up the natural relationship between our speices than theirs. The same thing would have happened with Cecil as he was part of a tracking study and tv show. The inevitable conact with humans that this would have brought has taught him that he has nothing to fear from humans and made him unwary of running towards a dentist armed with a bow and arrow. In many ways the humans who tried to protect him are the reason for his death.

Addiontal questions that occured to me:
Would there be as much publicity if Cesil had eaten a person in a village next to the park?
If Snoop Lion had been shot by an american dentists would we be as upset as we are now when Cecil the Lion was shot by said dentist?
For all the animal rights people who say it's cruel to kill for trophies how do they justify letting Cecil kill antelopes while we film it for a nature documentary?
Why does nobody cry for all the fish that are fished out of the sea?

Originally Posted by MassiveAttack

I tried to make this point in the thread about the bloke who killed Cecil the Lion but failed. If we condem or don't condone the dentist bloke who pulled the trigger then we condem ourselves because there is only a subtle difference as to why he wanted to kill a lion and why we want to hunt the species we hunt.

We hunt thing for many reasons, food, trophies, pest control and sport. All of these reasons are valid in the right context and it's fair to say the thing being hunted doesn't care about the reason or what happens to it after it's death - it just wants to keep on living.

The dentist bloke paid for a above board and legal lion hunt. His guides may have done something that could be clasified as poaching but but he paid for and expected a legal hunt so this isn't his crime.

The angry mob on bookface and the rest of the internet is now up in arms about how somone could kill the cuddly wuddly lion and why would anyone do that? This cuts to the heart of the very reason why we hunt and if we can't answer this question then our children won't get to enjoy the same hunting culture that we have.

The reason why we hunt is the same reason Cecil (used to) hunt - we are preaditors, it's in our nature and it's natural for us to do this.

The way the world should work is that humans are scard of Lions and stay out of their territory and Lions are scared of people and like all true wild animals avoid humans if at all possible. A good example of this dynamic is black bears in the USA. When reading Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardin it contained the following info about bear encounters. In areas where bears are hunting in season they will avoid humans at all cost, run at the sight of humans and they are not regarded as a problem.

In areas where hunting is banned (e.g. yosomite national park) the bears know they have nothing to fear from humans and spend most of their day trying to get at the food in trampers backpacks. The payoff (energy expended vs energy gained from eating the food) for human food is massivly better than it is for foraging for blueberries so this is what they focus on.

So by protecting these animals and then intruding on their space we have completely fucked up the natural relationship between our speices than theirs. The same thing would have happened with Cecil as he was part of a tracking study and tv show. The inevitable conact with humans that this would have brought has taught him that he has nothing to fear from humans and made him unwary of running towards a dentist armed with a bow and arrow. In many ways the humans who tried to protect him are the reason for his death.

Addiontal questions that occured to me:
Would there be as much publicity if Cesil had eaten a person in a village next to the park?
If Snoop Lion had been shot by an american dentists would we be as upset as we are now when Cecil the Lion was shot by said dentist?
For all the animal rights people who say it's cruel to kill for trophies how do they justify letting Cecil kill antelopes while we film it for a nature documentary?
Why does nobody cry for all the fish that are fished out of the sea?

" If we condem or don't condone the dentist bloke who pulled the trigger then we condem ourselves because there is only a subtle difference as to why he wanted to kill a lion and why we want to hunt the species we hunt."......

Not ALL of us agree with that statement, i dont condone some rich bastard who puts an arrow in a lion, does not kill it outright, has 'somebody else' shoot the lion the next day after a nights agony then has the balls to have his photo taken next to the lion with his bow like he's 'The man'.....i dont support that type of hunting, never have, never will!!!!!!....just my 2c

Originally Posted by Scouser

" If we condem or don't condone the dentist bloke who pulled the trigger then we condem ourselves because there is only a subtle difference as to why he wanted to kill a lion and why we want to hunt the species we hunt."......

Not ALL of us agree with that statement, i dont condone some rich bastard who puts an arrow in a lion, does not kill it outright, has 'somebody else' shoot the lion the next day after a nights agony then has the balls to have his photo taken next to the lion with his bow like he's 'The man'.....i dont support that type of hunting, never have, never will!!!!!!....just my 2c

Have you never in your entier hunting career wounded an animal that you didn't recover?

if sandra kyle thinks that our sport is cruel and barbaric then i suggest that she should watch blood brothers, its about male lions killing each other to take over the pride, if you haven;t watched keep an eye out on discovery channel

Originally Posted by pope2506

if sandra kyle thinks that our sport is cruel and barbaric then i suggest that she should watch blood brothers, its about male lions killing each other to take over the pride, if you haven;t watched keep an eye out on discovery channel

I've seen that, and that is brutal and made me cringe when they would bite into a male lions rear legs and basically disable it from moving.