Hunting and fishing are for psychopaths
Hunting and fishing are for psychopaths
I'm not talking about the consumption of animals here, to be clear. What I'm talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they're obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Miss me with the "tradition" stuff, it's just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument. Don't tell me it's to eat, like I said, I'm not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point. And don't tell me you're respectful to the animals you kill; I don't believe the planning, stalking, and killing is a good way to show respect.
Agreed as far as sport hunting goes.
I grew up in the boonies where this was commonplace (and expected), and I realized early in life that there was just something "wrong" about trophy hunting and the people who relished in it. Don't get me wrong: I hunted in my youth and still go hunting on occasion, but I eat everything I kill and find taxidermy distasteful.
On the flip side, there is a legitimate population control aspect for hunting seasons. Left unchecked, deer population explodes to become a nuisance to humans (causing car accidents, eating crops, etc) as well as limiting resources for the deer (hence the strict laws / regulations surrounding it). So, it does have its purpose, but it also seems like it appeals mostly to the "psychopath" types you're describing.
I realize this doesn't cover fishing, but I don't have a horse in that race. Fishing is so damn boring that I could never get into it. But I'll agree with you on trophy fishing as it's the same mindset.
37Fishing to me is a niche, and it's been a thing for so long that I don't really care about people who go out on weekends and fish. Most fisherman I know are catch and release anyway.
Sport hunting though I agree. "Men" who are really just trying desperately to prove how manly they are by taking a compound bow or rifles with night vision and perfect scopes to go out and kill a deer in a field. It's posturing, and killing something for posturing is stupid as hell to me
11Fishing to me is a niche, and it's been a thing for so long that I don't really care about people who go out on weekends and fish. Most fisherman I know are catch and release anyway.
Yeah, same here. Most of the people I know who fish are all married and just use it as an excuse to get out and drink beer. I don't really need that excuse since I'm single, and if I want to go out (or stay in) and drink, I just do it lol.
4
I grew up in a small village, and there are far less hunters there now, in a place where deer have no natural predators left. This means the deer population has exploded, which sounds like a good thing until you consider there are too many deer now.
The deer are all dying of disease and hunger now at a much higher rate than with hunting. This is the price of 'hunting bad' mentality, at least in that particular area of America. Humans have destroyed nature, so because of that it's our job to ensure it doesn't deteriorate further, hunting serves its purpose for this, and must be considered.
7Yeah, deer do have a real impact on environments. Japan has an interesting relationship with them, too, that I learned about recently https://youtu.be/tYuGeqBVXFk
3Ohh, nice. Somewhat related, I recommend Radiolab's episode on the Galápagos and how conservationists used Judas goats to track and eradicate the population that was destroying the island. It's one of my favorites.
3
I'm not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point
You can not talk about it all you want but you're being intellectually dishonest by refusing to do so.
Eating meat that you know comes from a factory farm, a literal SAW like tortured life of cruelty, just to be on a conveyor assembly line to be slaughtered and you to eat, feels less psychopathic in the moment but in reality is just disassociating yourself from the literal torture you are causing.
What I'm talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they're obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beers all day.
The majority of the time spent hunting and fishing is spent hanging out in nature with your friends. There's lot ls of reasons to enjoy it, even if you don't enjoy the actual killing.
And if you're going to eat meat anyways, then forcing yourself to nut up and kill the animal yourself arguably leaves less suffering in the world than plugging your ears and contributing to factory farming. Both require disassociating from the evil you're committing, and our brains are good at that because disassociation from violence was an unfortunately necessary part of our survival.
33Permanently Deleted
-8While I agree with the ethical considerations here, there's a reason there are laws about slaughtering animals. Unless you're killing sick animals, I don't think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
If you think a factory farm where thousands of animals are slammed into cages next to each other watching their peers get slaughtered, is more ethical than shooting a solitary moose and getting several hundred pounds of meat then you are not arguing honestly or actually thinking through the scenario.
Quite frankly it doesn't matter whether or not it's a clean kill, it's still more ethical per pound of meat by orders of magnitude even if it's not, and your guess that most hunters don't get clean kills is pretty based on nothing to begin with.
7I don't think a hobbyist hunter is going to give their targets a swift and painless death every time.
That's because you're completely unfamiliar with the subject you're arguing about. Ethical hunters don't take the shot unless they're 100% sure they can kill the animal swiftly, and do it without endangering anything else. They drill this into your head throughout the 30-40 hour long hunter safety course which is required to obtain your hunting license.
2
Omg, it was to avoid exactly this. Bad commenter. Where's my spray bottle?
Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
-45Cognitive dissonance vis a vis actively gearing up, getting a license, and taking the time to hunt are different things and I only have an unpopular opinion on the latter.
Why would that require cognitive dissonance? A) cognitive dissonance isn't the right term, there's no two conflicting things that that requires you to believe and B) None of that is hard or unpleasant. It takes like 10min to get a fishing license, fishing rods and tackle are relatively cheap compared to most other camping gear and people love obsessing over and buying new camping gear and then spending time in nature with their friends.
The only part that requires mental disassociation is killing an animal, then cleaning it, then butchering it, then eating it. Why do you draw the disassociation line at the killing and cleaning, but not the butchering and eating?
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Miss me with the "tradition" stuff, it's just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument. Don't tell me it's to eat, like I said, I'm not talking about the consumption here, so please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point.
Well you're clearly not literate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_management
The population is managed through hunting to as to avoid the overpopulation of deer, which is catastrophic for the ecology.
Not because every single hunter is some sort of psychopath. What a childish notion.
26This entire thread is giving me deja vu from a thread I thought I read on Reddit years ago.
Not saying this one was, but I wonder how many posts are copy pasted from old reddit posts and placed her now. The comments all seem familiar as well. Maybe I'm just tired.
5This is a manmade problem though. We exterminated all or most of the predators that would usually do the duty of population control in our stead, because said predators didn't differentiate between livestock and wild animals.
3What of it?
Would you happen to have a time machine so we can go back and change history so humans never replace said apex predators, or does the fact that "we did it" mean that we don't need to keep hunting and we can just let species overpopulate and destroy the ecology completely, even for themselves and other species of plants and animals?
12Man-made or not, it exists now. You can't just go "this problem was made by people, so I'm not gonna do anything about it!".
2Where I live, literally the place where they killed the last wolf in the state, is landmark, and the guy who did it has a town named after him.
1
I get that we have some species that need to be culled for the sake of the greater good /circle of life / balance of nature, etc., but I have no desire to do that work myself.
Hunting is hobby-murder regardless of the justification you put behind it.
-9Not all killing is murder — and to pretend the killing of any animal is takes away from actual homicide.
"I realise this is a necessary part for society to function the way it does, but I think every single person who does it is doing it for the sheer pleasure of killing"
Using that same logic, all plumbers have a scat-fetish?
It's beyond amazing to me how disconnected some people are from nature. Death is seen as something horrible, instead of something that literally every single organism will one day face.
Yes there are really weird dudes in hunting groups, but there are also completely normal, non-psychopathic non-murderers, and if you pretend there isn't, then I don't think you're ready to have an adult conversation about the subject.
11
Thanks for not bringing up eating! I really appreciate it.
Yes, population management is a real thing. Not denying that, and I probably should have mentioned it.
I still find the people that want to participate in it for fun very creepy.
-9I still find the people that want to participate in it for fun very creepy.
Some are rather weird, but I can understand liking nature hobbies in which you are alone or with a few buddies if you've had social problems. (Talking about some people I know.) But yeah. Some are weird. But also, some aren't. I don't think killing an animal means you're a psychopath, per se.
Most of the hobby isn't about the kill. Hell, most of the year killing them isn't even allowed.
Since you mentioned eating though, I'll say that I actually really enjoy game meat. It's relatively cruelty free. An optimal killshot might not still instantly kill (as in you don't aim for the brain, but the heart), but at least they've lived an actually free life, unlike powerfarmed cattle, from which you can almost taste the misery. (I'm a flexitarian and try to make somewhat moral choices at least most of the time.)
7
You seriously think they are hunting because of a population issue? That is just why they are allowed to hunt so freely....
The hunters do not give a fuck, just want to kill some shit
-11You don't know a single hunter, nor did you grow up in the country.
That's painfully obvious.
You don't even know what country I'm in.
You're beyond arrogant, simplistic and naive.
They aren't allowed to hunt freely here, there's a very specific amount of felling permits.
You don't know shit and you're not willing to learn.
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12I know a lot of hunters and none of them like killing. They experience a complex series of emotions when they're successful with a hunt. Triumph over all their hard work paying off, excitement over having a successful hunt, joy over having meat for half a year, and remorse, over having killed a beautiful animal. I do not know a single hunter who doesn't experience remorse. I even know some people who have cried over what they've done. But in the end, they'll do it again, because they've chosen a lifestyle where they're willing to be active participants in the cycle of life, and aren't willing to just outsource all of the killing for their meat needs.
2You're not psychic, I'm afraid. It is impossible for you to know what anyone is thinking. Using what is 'in their eyes' to determine complex thought is absurd.
2
This is kind of a weird argument to make. Are specifically talking about only hunting/ fishing where the animal is killed and not consumed in any way?
Since I've personally never seen that as someone who's been hunting a couple times and around people who hunt.
And how do you not expect people to bring eating animals when that's basically half the purpose. People don't just go around hunting without the intent to utilise the meat.
Also do you kill roaches or worms etc. In which case what makes the thoughtless killing of one better than the other.
Also I personally love it as an outdoor activity which I rarely get.
Personally I don't see anything immoral with taxidermy either.
Upvoted for actual unpopular opinion tho.
11It was more to preemptively stop the people that bring up that they do it for the purposes of consumption. Like you can consume meat without hunting and many people do and just deal with the cognitive dissonance of somebody else doing the killing. Actually going out to hunt is a much more active choice and not something you can do without getting gear, maybe a license, and making time for it.
As for taxidermy, I guess it's just an extension of the planning/killing/cleaning into even more thinking about it, remembering it, celebrating it. Otherwise, it's pretty goth and I've got no issue with it.
There were some Buddhists that wore masks to avoid breathing in insects and accumulating karma (though iirc most sects now say insects don't cause karma that way). But there were also Buddhists warriors that justified killing people as helping the dead get to their next reincarnation faster. But yeah, why do people think cats deserve better treatment than chickens or cows or deer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-14
What about catch and release fishing ? Or is that just animal torture ?
9That's so much worse. Why are you going fishing if not to eat your catch? That's just animal cruelty.
5Sticking a hook into something to drag it around and then temporarily suffocate it, yeah, that doesn't seem pleasant.
4Idk man, I felt pretty bad when I hooked a fish through the eye and released him now an eye down
3
You sure nailed unpopular, although I'm on the fence about of its unpopular or your set of rules and refusing to hear the argument about eating is what's unpopular.
Either way going to the grocery shop and buying meat is a purely psychopathic trait.
Knowing the animal has farmed for the soul purpose of being consumed, its entire life spent in a small enclosed area awaiting death.
The amount of disassociation that must go on for you to do this is insane.
And miss me with the sustainable farming and ethically farmed story. I'm not talking about that, just the torture and slaughter of millions of animals so you can have a burger from the shop.
6I agree and don't eat meat, I just wanted to extra call out the creepiness of going out of ones way to personally end the life of something without bringing up the usual trash arguments about respecting something you killed by eating it. That didn't go well. Same dumb excuses as usual.
-10
I agree, also here in Europe in many countries hunting is a hobby for rich people, and it has nothing to do with respecting nature. Its more about killing and showing off the trophies.
Big cars, expensive weapons and over the top attitude. Wish they would ban it.
5Trophy hunting. I agree. It's disgusting.
1
Finally, an unpopular take.
5Wow. Really leaning into the unpopular. I can dig it.
“It’s just peer pressure from the dead AND a fallacious argument.” Man, this is great.
Let’s ignore the dead people in the room (are they with us now?) How is it fallacious?
4Literally the appeal to tradition, an informal fallacy.
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I'm not talking about the consumption of animals
So you're totally cool with outsourcing the killing of animals so that you can eat them, but draw the line at harvesting the meat yourself, eh? Animals from factory farmed meat plants live absolutely miserable lives. Participating in that industry is far more psychopathic than being willing to expend the time, and money to harvest your own meat, and being willing to be close enough to the process to completely understand exactly what you're doing when you eat that juicy steak.
Don't tell me it's to eat, like I said, I'm not talking about the consumption here
There are hunters who eat what they harvest, and trophy hunters. Trophy hunters are far more rare these days. They're pretty open about the fact that they're pursuing a trophy animal to kill them for sport. They're probably not reading your post, and they don't care what people think about what they do. Are they psychopaths because of that? Probably not, but they definitely lean more towards the apathetic side of the emotional spectrum.
4I met a dude that was a trophy Hunter. He was Mormon. Had some crazy ideas that the entire planet was given to people by God or whatever just to exploit and take. Fucking crazy.
2
With your logic, accidentally killing an animal with a car is the best thing. No premeditated thought, no planned anything. Just BAM! Finally some amino acids.
3Yeah, comparatively. I guess in human terms it would be the difference between manslaughter vs premeditated murder. I find the whoops it's dead less creepy than the let's plan and carry out a killing.
-2
Not an unpopular opinion here. I'd go as far as to include fishing just for the catch/photo/competition and horse riding, and most certainly horse racing.
3Kudos for posting an actually unpopular opinion.
I'm not vegan in the sense that I do still use animal products; I realize that it's wrong, but it's difficult to get away from. I haven't eaten meat in over a decade, so I guess that "vegetarian" is probably the best description.
That being said, I have FAR more respect for those who go hunting and fishing than for those who eat meat from a restaurant or supermarket. Eating a hamburger or a steak is easy. You simply go to a store and buy it. Yet people stick their head in the sand and ignore the fact that factory farming is a brutal practice that causes an absolutely disgusting amount of pain and suffering for animals. The masses conveniently ignore that fact and continue on with their meat-based diets.
Hunting an animal for food means that although you're killing the animal, it's still lived a natural life. It hasn't suffered on a factory farm and been raised solely for human consumption. Hunters cause far less suffering than farmers.
2Trigger admiral Patrick
1Disagree. It's a childish opinion easily refuted by anyone with just a basic understanding of communication. Clearly you've never had a single conversation with a farmer, hunter, or fisherman.
1My conversations here must not count, nor have they improved my opinion.
1
I think the people running over to have a debate aren't thinking this through.
You can read something that's a knee jerk reflexive argument they just thought and in an instant, shat it in the board and demand the rest of us debate them on their terms.
Or you can say "Wow! What an idiot. Glad I don't give a fuck about their worthless opinions!"
And just...live and be free.
IDGAF about hunting either, loser.
0Lol, come into a community about unpopular opinions, see people adverse to those opinions, get surprised and upset?
1Actually you know what? I got 10 minutes until my boarding.
I'm not talking about the consumption of animals here, to be clear. What I'm talking about is spending days and a bunch of money planning to kill something, doing the killing, and skinning/eviscerating what was killed, and often displaying the stuffed corpse. Hunters and fishers refuse to admit they're obsessed with taking pleasure in killing something.
Shitty take. Outside of whatever suburb you live in, many animals are considered pests, or even dangerous. For many people, this is the one opportunity they have to provide a cheap protein for their family.
You're coming at this at a "they REFUSE to ADMIT their SINS." Or maybe your posting your shit opinion and using the topic as a shield against criticism and you can't admit that your IQ struggles to get higher than an Alaskan winter nights temperature in Celsius and can't think about a topic, problem or idea in any way other than surface.
This reeks of reddit tier takes. You should go back.
Miss me with the "tradition" stuff, it's just peer pressure from the dead and a fallacious argument.
We all saw the same post. You should take a minute to come up with an original thought. I'm now wondering if some Tikgrammer influencer made this comment and you're just parroting. So much wasted oxygen Jesus.
Don't tell me it's to eat, like I said, I'm not talking about the consumption here,
Nobody hunts to eat. Source? It's just true bro trust me I'm almost 16!!!!
So please prove to me you are literate by not bringing up that point.
Translation: please don't talk about the obvious. I do NOT want to have to confront my own inability to conjure an argument.
And don't tell me you're respectful to the animals you kill; I don't believe the planning, stalking, and killing is a good way to show respect.
Wow! Appreciate your racist Eurocentric world view. You stupid piece of shit. All of those "Uncivilized" native tribes across the planet who apply great honor and respect to the very creatures that give their life so that theirs may continue are just PSYCHOPATHS
You're a racist idiot.
I still got 6 minutes to board. Damn. Guess I'll go for a stroll.
-1
Lol, up votes and down votes are pretty even for the post, but all the comments I'm making questioning people's excuses for why hunting is great, actually, are getting down voted. I can't tell if this is an unpopular opinion or not.
-15I think people only upvoted your post because it's unpopular, the rule doesn't apply to comments I think
8Yeah, I guess not. I'd just expect it to be just as one sided in the post as it is in the comments. Maybe it's just I thought it was unpopular because once side is so much louder than the other. Oh well.
-2