Hunting is in a spot of bother

Burnttoast said:
It would be nice if that consideration could be extended to the 'vermin' shot by keepers/casual guns. Such as the guy who used to shoot pigeon over the rape on the farm where I was liveried a few years back, who clearly saw a fox and shot at it, never mind he had the wrong cartridges for the job. I found the fox bleeding all over my hay in our little shed, but unfortunately it wasn't wounded badly enough for me to get near it. Or the keeper who'd been round a day or two before I did my last hedge survey and left about 10 crows flapping around in the brambles, also none badly wounded enough to catch and dispatch, or I would have done. They were about the only visible wildlife on that farm. Bar some pheasants, if you can call them wildlife.
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Most do it properly. In every part of life there are people who take short cuts or do things badly.
 
Fred66 said:
As Clodagh says. It is inherent in all prey animals rather than conscious thought.

It can be a learned behaviour, you would see heightened response and awareness in elite sports (such as Formula 1) or elite soldiers.

This learning eventually can move to be subconscious awareness but doesn’t mean that the individual is consciously fretting about what might happen, just that their subconscious would prompt them ahead of conscious thought.

Ie most of us would see something, process the sight, recognise a hazard, and react to that sight. Whereas those who have trained to do something then the steps are less defined and the middle steps become almost defunct, leaving just the see-react steps
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If the middle steps are defunkt then how do they know it's a hazard? There has to be some sort of assesment process.



stangs said:
...Did you read any of the research I attached?

You cannot say "poaching and by extension trophy hunting". Though there is occasionally some overlap, one of those industries is always unregulated and illegal, and doesn't produce much income for the local people who do it, and the other produces a huge amount of income, some of which goes to the local people, and a hell of a lot of which goes back towards conservation. Poaching is not sustainable. Trophy hunting can be.

No one has said that the local communities are wild and uncivilised. No one has said that they're going to 'burn their land to the ground'. If you cared so much about pain, you wouldn't attack a poor strawman like this ;). The fact of the matter is that many of the local populations are poor, and consequently human-animal conflict (e.g., elephants destroying crops), has a huge impact on their livelihoods. Trophy hunting (more so than ecotourism/photo-tourism, because of how much people will pay for it) gives the presence of these animals in the local area a value. It gives the people income, so they don't have to turn to poaching. People don't poach for fun. They don't do it because they're obsessed with killing - as one might attribute to trophy hunters - but rather because they need to survive. There is nothing uncivilised about deciding to feed your children over saving the local lion. There's examples of this in Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania, to start: the banning of trophy hunting leads to poaching sky-rocketing, and populations crashing down.

And, yes, we don't know how individual species process the world. But we will never find that out if the whole species goes extinct because the morality of killing the occasional conscious being was prioritised over saving the actual animals.
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I'm sorry, am I right in saying the main benefits of trophy hunting are that money from these hunts is paid back into conservation projects and local communities and that target species appear to have a greater population density in areas of trophy hunting?
 
moosea said:
I'm sorry, am I right in saying the main benefits of trophy hunting are that money from these hunts is paid back into conservation projects and local communities and that target species appear to have a greater population density in areas of trophy hunting?
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Pretty much. It's exchanging the welfare of individual animals to give the overall species a financial value.
 
palo1 said:
Shooting a bird in flight is a skill that people take pride in honing. It isn't about bloodlust - it is about the pride in being able to aim and shoot something cleanly. There is absolutely a culture within shooting of being 'good' so it isn't ok to be an absolutely hopeless shot winging bird after bird; it has the same approbation as people riding badly ime (albeit limited)>
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no problem with people honing their shooting skills. No problem in them taking pride in their shooting ability. Just don't see why we have to include birds for pleasure in the equation.
 
paddy555 said:
no problem with people honing their shooting skills. No problem in them taking pride in their shooting ability. Just don't see why we have to include birds for pleasure in the equation.
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Well I guess there is a greater sense of value in despatching a bird that can be eaten, as well as the moral/emotional jeopardy in taking a life; I think it is deeply connected to a sense of wanting to hunt and provide; to connect with that essential need. Even when dressed in tweed breeks!
 
Millionwords said:
On another note....hunts or their followers throwing what are seemingly some type of Thunderflash explosive into a sab vehicle/at sabs, should surely warrant some police involvement.

Its not the sabs with explosives. I've used Thunderflashes and they are horrible when they go off near you.

What do hunts followers/hunts need these for exactly? ??
I've only encountered them in the military and I know airsofters use them.

https://fb.watch/gPsApedmZZ/
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Yes I have seen this, it’s awful and the violence directed towards Sabs and Monitors is escalating if they aren’t running us over they are throwing bombs at us now.
 
I think as ycbm says no one is ever going to change their views and generally apart from facts I try not to get too immersed in these debates. But I think if you’ve never eaten something you have hunted you can’t understand what it means to those who do. That sounds awfully pretentious!
 
Clodagh said:
I think as ycbm says no one is ever going to change their views and generally apart from facts I try not to get too immersed in these debates. But I think if you’ve never eaten something you have hunted you can’t understand what it means to those who do. That sounds awfully pretentious!
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This! There are so many things that seem pointless in human activity but for those participating, they are extremely valuable.
 
Clodagh said:
I think as ycbm says no one is ever going to change their views and generally apart from facts I try not to get too immersed in these debates. But I think if you’ve never eaten something you have hunted you can’t understand what it means to those who do. That sounds awfully pretentious!
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I don't think it sounds pretentious and there's no issue, for me, with hunting to kill something to eat, if the animal dies quickly, (or if a slower death is an accident and not an accepted part of the process). I can understand it must be very satisfying to go back to your primal roots like that. We do, after all, still have those genes that were responsible for our survival as a species.
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ycbm said:
I don't think it sounds pretentious and there's no issue, for me, with hunting to kill something to eat, if the animal dies quickly, (or if a slower death is an accident and not an accepted part of the process). I can understand it must be very satisfying to go back to your primal roots like that. We do, after all, still have those genes that were responsible for our survival as a species.
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But you want all shooting, snares and fishing banned? That’s rather going to put the stop on anyone killing their dinner unless they stab it or beat it to death.
 
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Clodagh said:
But you want all shooting, snares and fishing banned? That’s rather going to put the stop on anyone killing their dinner unless they stab it or beat it to death.
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I never said I wanted all shooting banned. I'm happy for any animal to be shot if it's a clean death.
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ycbm said:
I would like to see illegal hunting stop now, snares made illegal from tomorrow, and eventually coarse/fly fishing and shooting shut down in a way that gives everyone enough time to adjust to the idea..
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You said here. Maybe you only meant driven shooting? So stalking is ok? Pigeon shooting for both pest control and eating? One man and his spaniel in a hedge? I’m not sure why any is more or less cruel than others.
 
Clodagh said:
You said here. Maybe you only meant driven shooting? So stalking is ok? Pigeon shooting for both pest control and eating? One man and his spaniel in a hedge? I’m not sure why any is more or less cruel than others.
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This is the problem with some individuals “arguments “. There is no consistency or logical reason behind it, in some cases there isn’t even a consistent emotive reason.
Whilst I can disagree with their stance I can understand the pov of vegans who believe the killing of animals for any human use is wrong. There is a lack of hypocrisy in it, but for others I am just bemused
 
YorksG said:
As an aside, who do people think will despatch, in the shortest time possible, deer who are hit and injured on the roads, if sport shooting is stopped?
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Stockman? Local farmer who has a gun to protect his livestock? Local Police Force if they happen to be one that has a humane dispatch scheme?

Edit:
There's even guidelines on how to dispatch with a knife, so assuming it's safe enough to get in there with it then a gun isn't always needed:
https://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/127.pdf
 
Clodagh said:
You said here. Maybe you only meant driven shooting? So stalking is ok? Pigeon shooting for both pest control and eating? One man and his spaniel in a hedge? I’m not sure why any is more or less cruel than others.
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At the time of the post you quoted, the discussion was about mass bird shoots and that was what I was referring to.
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YorksG said:
As an aside, who do people think will despatch, in the shortest time possible, deer who are hit and injured on the roads, if sport shooting is stopped?
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The Policeman who shot a stray sheep on my land during the last foot&mouth crisis. The stalker who regularly culls the excess red deer in the western Peaks. Any farmer with a shotgun. The fallen stock people.
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Clodagh said:
You said here. Maybe you only meant driven shooting? So stalking is ok? Pigeon shooting for both pest control and eating? One man and his spaniel in a hedge? I’m not sure why any is more or less cruel than others.
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My own problem with driven shooting (as opposed to walked-up/rough, which I used to do with my ex) is two-fold: the management of a large (or not so large, depending) area of land for the benefit of one species (so including the encouragement of a particular flora to the exclusion of others, or the removal of native species so that there are more birds to shoot) or the release of numbers of raised birds (often in factory farms on the continent, with the resulting welfare and biosecurity issues) into a landscape already short on large inverts and reptiles, which are useful foods for native species; and the 'fun' element, where the fun is the primary point. Other social activities are available. Clays are available. Range shooting is available. The Olympics wouldn't continue to include shooting if animals were the only things you could aim at.
 
Clodagh said:
Most do it properly. In every part of life there are people who take short cuts or do things badly.
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I'm sure that thought would have been a comfort to me at the time. As it is I can still remember how furious and upset I felt that I could do nothing to relieve those animals' suffering and that no one else was apparently going to try. Even the person who was there at the time to cause it and in fact had the means on them to attempt a proper dispatch.
 
Surely stalking would also be banned! People shoot for pleasure while stalking. They are the people currently asked by the police to cull injured deer. Fallen stock people often don't have emergency call out, we are fortunate in that we have a local person who's family used to own a horse abattoir, who does have an emergency service. Police firearms officers are rarely deployed to shoot animals, they also cover hundreds of miles of service area and often they are also the service which forces entry to property.
Who will decide that the farmer is culling rabbits just for need and that they aren't deriving pleasure from the process.
 
Nasicus said:
Stockman? Local farmer who has a gun to protect his livestock? Local Police Force if they happen to be one that has a humane dispatch scheme?

Edit:
There's even guidelines on how to dispatch with a knife, so assuming it's safe enough to get in there with it then a gun isn't always needed:
https://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/127.pdf
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If you have ever encountered a wounded deer you would not believe that despatching with a knife would be in any way ethical. You would need a knife with a blade long enough to make carrying it just generally, illegal. Most people encountering a wounded/dying deer would be too emotionally upset to even consider knifing the poor thing! Most farmers do not own HV rifles though many will have a shotgun. You need a HVR to despatch deer quickly and humanely though it could be done with a shotgun at short range.
 
ycbm said:
The Policeman who shot a stray sheep on my land during the last foot&mouth crisis. The stalker who regularly culls the excess red deer in the western Peaks. Any farmer with a shotgun. The fallen stock people.
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Try getting a policeman to arrive within a reasonable time frame in any rural setting. A shotgun is not generally considered an appropriate weapon for despatching deer humanely. And the stalker who culls deer - surely that would also be banned as stalking is a sport?
 
It takes firearms police over two hours to turn up to injured deer in Essex. I doubt they’ve ever been called out to do it in Devon.
I completely agree a lot of what Burnttoast says about driven shooting, there are some that really don’t help themselves or the industry. I understand now that ycbm only meant driven shooting as well (or mainly).
Most people on here though seem to be against shooting of any description though. Would you suggest deer are not culled and allowed to breed unchecked? You realise the impact their population growth is having in many ways?
And pigeons eating crops. If they can’t be shot then what do you suggest?
 
Clodagh said:
It takes firearms police over two hours to turn up to injured deer in Essex. I doubt they’ve ever been called out to do it in Devon.
I completely agree a lot of what Burnttoast says about driven shooting, there are some that really don’t help themselves or the industry. I understand now that ycbm only meant driven shooting as well (or mainly).
Most people on here though seem to be against shooting of any description though. Would you suggest deer are not culled and allowed to breed unchecked? You realise the impact their population growth is having in many ways?
And pigeons eating crops. If they can’t be shot then what do you suggest?
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Since I live in a severely arable area I do see a lot of pigeons (actually, they exist in their tens round here, not hundreds or thousands, so the shooting has clearly been successful) over rape etc. And yes they certainly do eat some of the crops. But given how the not-strictly-agricultural elements of the countryside are managed it's hardly surprising. There is nothing else for them to eat. Pigeons don't preferentially eat leafy crops. They would rather have grains, seeds, berries and insects, particularly over winter, but those things don't exist anymore in hedges or woodland really, so they eat what's available. I find it infuriating that we have created a landscape in which only the most extreme generalists can survive, and then blame them for surviving.
 
Burnttoast said:
Since I live in a severely arable area I do see a lot of pigeons (actually, they exist in their tens round here, not hundreds or thousands, so the shooting has clearly been successful) over rape etc. And yes they certainly do eat some of the crops. But given how the not-strictly-agricultural elements of the countryside are managed it's hardly surprising. There is nothing else for them to eat. Pigeons don't preferentially eat leafy crops. They would rather have grains, seeds, berries and insects, particularly over winter, but those things don't exist anymore in hedges or woodland really, so they eat what's available. I find it infuriating that we have created a landscape in which only the most extreme generalists can survive, and then blame them for surviving.
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Perhaps you are lucky then, and you don’t have to make your living from the land? On our farm we had planted 20,000 trees and restored all the hedge lines, we had beetle banks, game cover (not maize) and we encouraged and enjoyed nature. We couldn’t though allow the literal thousands upon thousands on pigeons that could strip a field of rape or laid barley in a few days to go on unchecked.
 
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