Posted by Camille Dumont on May 26, 2005, at 0:12:01
In reply to Re: Internet Hunting ... I just have to jump in, posted by so on May 25, 2005, at 12:28:57
> > Think of what you would want, then have the decency of giving that same humane end to those creatures that you kill.
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> I want to die with my boots on. I don't know of any animals -- other than humans --- that want to wear my shoes.
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> The rules on this board just confound me. A person is chastend by admin for calling it monsterous to recruit suicide bombers but people can go on at length about my alleged lack of decency for the manner in which I euthenize my pet and gather my food.
>Hello? Where in my post did I make assuptions on your dealing with your pets. I don't even know if you have any pets. I was speaking my point of view on the issue of huting in general ... if you feel attacked, there is little I can do. I posted my opinion but you control your reaction to it.
> When, I wonder, did hunting become indecent? In 1800? Mabye 1776? How about 1500? Perhaps in the "year of our lord" aka "O" or maybe 33 a.d.?
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Why inflict pain when we can achieve the same end without it? That is basically what I'm asking.> Oddly, firearms became more efficient more recently -- with the invention of smokeless powder, cartridged projectiles and rifled barrel that let hunters deliver more punch more accurately.
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> Though many people classify their hunting activities as sport, others don't. Some adamently classify it as food gathering, especially in international treaties (regarding hunting of whales and seals by natives), and in other protected hunting practices by aboriginal nations. Is hunting food a privilage reserved as humane only for certain races?
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I'm not against hunting in general if something is made of the animal that is killed. Killing for the sake of killing a living being is just pointless. I'm against the infliction of needless pain.Actually I am Aboriginal ... and it bother me that people go on and on about the "traditional" hunting. Its an abused notion. Want to hunt the "traditional" way? Ok, take a spear of knife and go find yourself a moose or whatever. My money is on the moose.
Personally, I feel no need or desire to "go back to the way things were". Why would I want to? Go back to not having heat, electricity, dying because of a simple infection and so on ... no thank you.
> For sake a clarity, head shots are rare and are not the recommended target -- for large game, vital organ shots are the standard. With small game, shotguns land scattershot anywhere in the body. With fish, they as often suffocate for lack of waterflow through the gills. And death for a fish at the hands of an angler is no different than the death they suffer flopping in the hold of a commercial fishing vessel. Unless you refuse to eat fish sticks, you paid someone to kill a fish like that when you buy a fresh salmon steak at the store.
Just because huting is "not worse" than commercial fishing is not a justification ... its a lame excuse. Mediocrity makes for a poor benchmark.
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> Death by puncture wound to the head in the killing stall of a slaughter house isn't much different, albeit a bit quicker.Again, slaughterhouse practices and the meat industry in general do not employ methods that I find good or commendable.
>But then, once wounded, would you rather die sooner or later?
I would rather not feel the wound at all. That is what I would want.
>How about Terry Schiavo -- people said she should be kept alive no matter how badly injured was her brain. So letting a wounded animial have a few more hours to run in the woods, fueled by adrenaline and endorphines, well that's just more chance to live.
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In my opinion, Terry Schiavo was not given a decent death. Granted her brain was dead so she didn't feel a thing ... but it was still hypocritical. They wanted her to die yet did not act accordingly ... they used a detour. A shot of morphine would have been sufficient. She would have left in minutes. If the goal is death (as it was with Terry or an animal that you hunt) just don't make the being who is to die suffer if you can avoid it. Her death was made a spectacle of ... which I found very sad.> And yes, I've euthanized a pet by gunshot. My very humane neighbors asked that I do so. The death that pet suffered was far more humane than the deaths that neighbor caused or witnessed in the employ of the United States military. His stories made abu graib sound like a frat party by comparison.
Humans can be cruel I'm not denying that. Over the centuries we have manage to come up with very sick and twisted ways to destroy each other.
If the gunshot is in the head and is a clean shot then death is instantaneous and this is humane. To me a humane death is a death by whatever form in which the victim does not feel pain (a head shot would accomplish that) or a very minimal amount of pain (like a sub-cu shot) and which leads to a quick death and can be carried out with a very high degree of reliability. In my opinion, its in the departments of speed and reliability that gunshot in the context of hunting fall short of the mark.
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> How was that pet's death, in a natural setting, flopping for a few seconds after a gunshot to the head after being petted by her favorite human, any less humane than a painful prick to the paw while being held down by strangers on a cold steel table, after a few minutes or hours in a cage in a room full of other frightened animals?Again, a gunshot to the head can be humane. What I meant to say (again, my post was a general one and not directed at you per say) that for a great majority of pet owners, they take their pets to be pts at the vet so that it can die quickly and without suffering yet those same people are ready to run after a wild animal and wound it and potentially make it suffer for quite a long period. As if the suffering of a pet is more important that that of a wild animal.
As a matter of fact I find it even more ironic that we let terminally ill patients linger for months enduring horrible pain when they have no hope of recovery and do not want to keep on living. Our pets get a painless euthanasia but our relatives can't. How messed up is that? To me every human being (not under delusions or whatever) should be free to choose when and how they die and even benefit from medical assitance to do so painlessly
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> I could go further to explore the ethics of one person or group imposing their values on another, but in the context of this thread, I am more interested in the manner in which values are described, and how that does or does not fulfil the requirements of this site that people not insult others who might not agree with them.
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poster:Camille Dumont
thread:498173
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050509/msgs/503008.html