American hunter's images of her black giraffe 'trophy kill' spark outrage

Not really. Giraffes, for example, are on the increase in South Africa, and are in need of culling. That's why the particular giraffe that started this argument was targeted. He was an old male beyond breeding age, who was killing the younger males.

 

if humans didn't destroy their habitats their numbers wouldn't be soo low.

 

how do you feel about trophy hunters who kill rare/protected/endangered species for sport?

 

Yes it is. Legal hunting is about effective game management, resource conservation and local economic interests. Hunters respect their prey. They respect nature. They understand its natural cycles of life.

Preservation and conservation are fundamental to the outdoorsman's philosophy.

 

Rare doesn't matter. It's not a legal term. Protected is a vague term legally. Technically speaking, all game animals in the U.S. are protected. So protected doesn't matter to me either. I'm against endangered species being hunted for. Giraffes are not endangered species in South Africa. If the hunt was in Kenya, (where lack of hunting money is causing giraffe numbers to plummet), I'd be against it.

 

We are part of the ecosystem and have a role in it... as a predator. We are, in fact, the ONLY predator that purposefully regulates its behavior to help the other animals thrive.

 

Creating a demand for these products subject animals to a life of suffering.

So abuse is okay as long as the species has sustainable numbers? The human species has strong numbers!

 

human beings have acted as a genocidal virus upon this planet.

our obsessive desire to constantly expand and destroy needs to be put in check, otherwise many more species will go extinct.

just look at what is happening to Orangutans.

 

Actually, no. Hunters (responsible ones, anyway) love the outdoors and love watching animals thrive in their natural habitat. They truly do seek to improve the lives of the animals, to enable them to be healthier and stronger; there is nothing more beautiful than seeing an animal standing strong and straight in its own habitat as opposed to weak and diseased from starvation.

True hunters live as part of nature, and that is a powerfully visceral, fundamental feeling. Every part of the hunting experience is challenging and rewarding in ways that non-hunters can never comprehend... but the moment of the kill itself is (at least for me) a somewhat melancholy moment; the moment when an animal's life actually ends. The hunt itself is a joy, but the culmination of it is an ending that is fundamental. Then, the job becomes the proper preparation of the meat and making sure no part of the animal goes to waste, that you honor that animal by seeing it be utilized responsibly and well.

In truth, no one better appreciates nature, nor respects it more, than a hunter.

 

Many remember you exactly made that bet and you have endlessly jumped back and forth between claiming you own no firearm and that you do.

There is no rule prohibiting a person making up facts about themselves or telling endlessly opposite personal claims. Even on this thread you have been quoted making exactly opposite fact claims about yourself (cheeseburgers) and this is typical for your messages. Simply in my view no one should consider any personal claims you make about yourself as having any value whatsoever, but that is for each person to decide.

In my opinion, I don't have a real problem if a person pretends an alternative reality about themselves. For example, If a person is crippled and old I have no problem if the person does not want to be that person on the forum. What I have a problem with is when a person endlessly changes who they are and their claims to diametric opposites because then it is just lying for the sake of lying.

 

100% false!!!!!!

I have NEVER denied being a gun owner.

Not once, not ever.

Nor did I promise to leave the forum of Jeb didn't win.

NEVER!!!

 

you cannot claim to love nature and the outdoors and yet take gleefull pleasure in the killing of an innocent creature.

if you need to hunt for food to feed your family, I understand.

but hunting for fun, hunting for sport, hunting for trophies, is sickening and pathological.

 

<Rule 2/3>

Do I use the meat I harvest when I hunt? Yes. I use every part of the animals I harvest. I do NOT "take gleeful pleasure in the killing of an innocent creature" but I DO take pleasure in the fieldcraft and the stalk, and I enjoy the satisfaction from eating a fresh cut of meat I harvested myself; meat without hormones or chemicals to help it stay "fresh" on the shelf of the supermarket.

As for "hunting for fun, hunting for sport", I remember one of my instructors, Col. Jeff Cooper, once said that he loved the hunt itself. Someone asked him what he had been doing on a given day, and Cooper said, "I've been out hunting!" The person talking to him asked if he'd gotten anything, to which Cooper replied in the negative and the person talking to him expressed his sorrow at Cooper's lack of success. Cooper's response: "I'm not sorry! I was hunting all day!" To him, the hunt itself was the pursuit, and I understand that to my core.

As for trophies, I don't have much interest in such. I only have a couple, and they are not to display the death of the animal but to remember the experience of a fine adventure. One was the very first game animal I ever took, and one was from the very last time I got to go hunting with my grandfather. Otherwise, I don't bother.

 

nothing to "understand" about taking pleasure in killing creatures.

if you have to kill for food, you should respect and honor the creature that you have sacrificed. Just as the Native Americans did.

There is NO honor in the "hunt" in this video

 

Its the poachers and illegal trophy hunters who go after endangered/rare species that give all hunters a bad name.

Notwithstanding the profound ignorance of many anti-hunters.

 

Well, I don't know any hunters who take "gleeful pleasure" in hunting, but it is a pleasure. When I hunted, I only shot guilty creatures--ones that stole from their friends, etc. (not really, but calling them innocent is an insulting anthromorphism. Wild animals aren't either innocent or guilty. They are simply doing what their instincts tell them).

Hunting is fun (not gleeful fun, but fun). Hunting for sport is fun. That's why we do it. It makes us realize that we are in the food chain, and there is something inherently satisfying about hunting. Our closest animal companions hunt for sport--my cats get plenty of food, yet they still enjoy killing those mice, snakes, lizards, etc. They don't do it only for food.

You are sick and pathological just like we are, because you choose to use animal products for your pleasure. You can live off of rice, corn and beans. Anything else is just for pleasure.

My guess is you never spend time in the woods for any reason. Have you ever seen a wild deer in nature?

 

Video is out of context. You don't know how long they'd been trailing that bear, how far they had hiked into the mountains, etc. Yes, the killing part of hunting isn't photogenic, but it's much better than a slaughterhouse, even a kosher one.

 

If American urban liberals were in charge, every protected and endangered animal would be extinct.

It is farmers, ranchers, hunters and fisherman/women who LOVE animals. Urban liberals love concrete. To them, wild life is watching cute kittens on YouTube.

ANYONE who understands animal husbandry understands that old males reduce population, particularly with growing limited land and food supplies. Depending on species, old males not only consume the most food, but many species will kill the young. It is females and young, not old males, that determine population health and growth.

It also is ONLY farmers, ranchers, hunters and fishermen/women who put up the MONEY for wild management and it is trophy hunters who put of the HUGE money that offer any chance to save the last of wildlife land in Africa, which otherwise would be razed - just as American did to our prairies - for agricultural land.

NOT ONE PERSON ranting about killing a 2 ton old giraffe that ate twice as much as females and so high no female and certain no young could reach it has indicated contributing even $1 towards protecting endangered animals.

Personally, we spend about $25 a day (literally) feeding wild animals - and protecting them - including 3 endangers/protected species. I just came back in from our porch where I was watching many of an endangered species of woodpeckers eating the nuts we put out for them and other critters - about 10 pounds a day - plus TOP quality seeds for other birds. 5 years ago there were 2. Now there are dozens. The feed quality draws them in and the layout of feeding offers some protection for hawks and owls. It also brings in squirrels - massively - and squirrels are the hawk alarms of the woods. A hawk shows up and the squirrels know it - and start their loud chipping. Ever bird instantly scatters to the safety of dense branches as to the squirrels - who then freeze like statues.

We protect an endangered species of black snake that live under or decks - protecting them from cats and rodents by how we designed the bottom of the decks. Earlier today, I surveyed the two holes for protected gopher turtles, including stopping weed poison being sprayed along their food path.

As for abandoned pets we find - young and old - starving and dying of worms, ticks and other pests, we have rescued dozens and have spent thousands of dollars doing so. We find them homes except for those too old or unattractive and we keep those.

I saw just how destruction the "good intentions" of urban liberals claiming they care about animals harmed manatees. Of the thousands of manatees who come here a year, the death rate was less than 1 per year - until the urban liberals brought in Obama liberals. First, they were shocked in that it was claimed that this area could provide for no more than 400 - yet their were thousands. Why? Because the people here - as conservative as conservative can be and this is HUGE hunting and fish areas - took care of them. With Team Obama and city liberals flocking in for regulations - manatee deaths rose rapidly. It took years of litigation - all personal contributed money - to FINALLY get a federal court to basically run off the DC and urban liberals and their deathly rules.

I recall us protecting an abandoned manatee (they live in groups) on our canal for over a year - protecting it from team Obama and their urban liberals - to then when large enough lead it 15 miles along with a pod willing to adopt it to get it out into the Gulf.

Wildlife management also involved culling - a nice word for killing certain animals - just like gardening requires killing weeds. Huge old males are a negative factor on ANY warm blooded species.

That 2 ton male giraffe did not add to giraffe population, but harmed it. It takes an IQ of 80 to understand that in 5 seconds of thought.

 

It is people with your opinion that will cause Orangutan extinction.

Stop pretending you have a CLUE about the attitude of Native Americans about animals and nature. Although you'll never believe it, the leftwing Hollywood presentation of NAs as naturalist hippies it a bunch of crap.

Tell us, how many orangutans or giraffes you have financially adopted? Oh that's right, none.

 

You're missing the point, but I find myself curiously unsurprised.

Would you be surprised to learn I agree with this sentiment?

The video is insufficient to illustrate the entirety of the circumstances of the hunt; but I myself find no interest whatsoever in predator hunting.

 

If Liberals had always been in charge, most Americans would live in cities and suburbs and the rest of the country would be open wilderness where animals could run free unharmed by mankind.

we would not have wiped out the Buffalo. we would respect nature.

if Liberals were incharge we wouldn't need hunters to "thin the herd" to prevent starvation and stand in for natural predators that were extinct long ago.

if Liberals were incharge, conservation efforts wouldn't even be needed. there would be no endangered or threatened species in the USA. humans would only use the natural resources they NEED, and not a drop more.

 

no its because the selfish need for palm oil that is destroying the forests in The Philipines and Indonesia and Malaysia where the Orangutan live.

if some humans weren't soo ****ing uber-consumerist and cared a little more about how their desperate habits hurt the planet, we wouldnt have such issues

 

Exactly why I am very thankful liberals aren't in charge. I refuse to be caged into a city or suburb, or to let anyone else dictate to me how I live my life.

If Liberals were in charge all humanity would be nothing but sheep waiting to be sheared. No thanks.

 

You willing to give up YOUR uber-consumerist issues and stop going to Burger King for those delicious Whoppers with cheese that you love?