Do you think Hunting is still necessary? (developed nations)

[Azov Battalion]

I don't use guns to hunt. I use either a kukri knife or a double headed axe both from SOG

Right. So, do you have any bridges to sell?

I don't have anything to sell.

I'm a college student. In any case I don't understand what you're asking me

[Big Jim P]

Right. So, do you have any bridges to sell?

I don't have anything to sell.

I'm a college student. In any case I don't understand what you're asking me

I was sarcastically saying that I think your statement about using a kukri knife or a double headed axe is bullshit.

[Azov Battalion]

I don't have anything to sell.

I'm a college student. In any case I don't understand what you're asking me

I was sarcastically saying that I think your statement about using a kukri knife or a double headed axe is bullshit.

Oh okay.

Good for you then I guess

[Washington Resistance Army]

I don't use guns to hunt. I use either a kukri knife or a double headed axe both from SOG

And I kill bears with nothing but my hands because Muay Thai.

[Azov Battalion]

I don't use guns to hunt. I use either a kukri knife or a double headed axe both from SOG

And I kill bears with nothing but my hands because Muay Thai.

You should be careful, a lot of bears can be timid and run off if you threaten them, but they can also be aggressive.

I wouldn't condone trying to kill a bear with your hands, it just seems like you're inviting death.

[Exxosia]

I think the concept of it being necessary in developed and well-off nations is in itself problematic.

Canada and the US have massive regions where people rely on hunting to survive. And in some cases, hunting gets banned and people end up starving and/or paying $70 for a head of rotten lettuce (glares at Canada).

Then you have countries like Sweden, Norway, and Finland that rely on hunting for supplementary subsistence and for cultural reasons.

And so on...

So the question almost becomes a country-by-country one for if it is still necessary. For instance, if you asked if hunting was still necessary in Germany, the UK, or France, I'd say no.

[Big Jim P]

I don't use guns to hunt. I use either a kukri knife or a double headed axe both from SOG

And I kill bears with nothing but my hands because Muay Thai.

You called the B.S. better than I did.

[Washington Resistance Army]

And I kill bears with nothing but my hands because Muay Thai.

You should be careful, a lot of bears can be timid and run off if you threaten them, but they can also be aggressive.

I wouldn't condone trying to kill a bear with your hands, it just seems like you're inviting death.

Ha, I've done it before. I just got that fucker into a clinch and it was all over for him.

As per the OP, no I don't think hunting is still necessary in developed nations.

[Washington Resistance Army]

And I kill bears with nothing but my hands because Muay Thai.

You called the B.S. better than I did.

Well thank you Jim.

I always feel better about myself when a Satanic Texan gunlover says I did something better than him

[Uawc]

As far as I'm concerned, hunting is the only way people should be getting their meat. Current farming practices result in immense cruelty to animals, and people have forgotten the value of the lives they take to fill their stomachs.

I'm probably the only omnivore who supports abolishing the meat industry.

[Costa Fierro]

Hunting is a necessary evil here. It helps keep the populations of various introduced animals in check. Because most of the country is overrun with deer, rabbits and possums.

[Ethel mermania]

Some people do need the food they hunt, so yes It is necessary. For others it's a sport, not a lot wrong with that either, as long as the meat does not go to waste.

[Quintium]

If you have ever been to a forest between man-made settlements, you would know that animal populations tend to quickly explode due to the disturbance. Swine, geese and small mammals tend to be the worst in my country. If you don't hunt them down, they'll push out other species of plant or animal entirely and then starve to death because the food chain has been disturbed. So each year, the government gives permits to hunters to bag a certain amount of animals deemed to be excess population. In addition to that, sometimes hunters are allowed to shoot animals that have been causing problems for farmers, for example by stealing crops or frightening cattle. Hunting is more of a profession than it is a sport nowadays.

[AiliailiA]

Hunting is a necessary evil here. It helps keep the populations of various introduced animals in check. Because most of the country is overrun with deer, rabbits and possums.

The deer are big enough and obvious enough that they can be effectively controlled by park rangers. You don't need citizens toting guns to control them.

Rabbits and possums (and stoats?) are a more invidious threat. But they also don't need citizens toting guns to control them.

Just put a bounty on them. Trapping of these smaller animals doesn't open up the pandora's box of citizens arming themselves with guns. They can make money trapping the animals, for the government bounty, without paying for ammo and without endangering any other citizen.

Ferals are a huge problem in NZ, I understand. But opening up a huge opportunity for otherwise unemployed people to own guns does not seem like a sensible solution.

[New Stephania]

I am about to ask a question from a position of honest ignorance, so if anyone would care to answer it factually I would appreciate it:

I understand that one of the justifications for hunting is population control, as Quintium just said an unchecked population can unbalance the local ecosystem. What confuses me is that natural selection tends to balance these things out, animal populations waxed and waned long before humans settled in many areas, so why are we concerned about maintaining a status quo as we see it? Is it harmful to us if some species displace others?

[Apparatchikstan]

The maintenence of both a hunting and growing tradition should be considered necessary, if you're wise enough to realize that the power won't always be on, the trains and trucks won't always run, and a Wal-Mart superstore has three weeks worth of non-perishable stock at most not accounting for looting. First worlders, on average, take their infrastructures entirely too much for granted, not realizing how fragile they are.

[Uawc]

The maintenence of both a hunting and growing tradition should be considered necessary, if you're wise enough to realize that the power won't always be on, the trains and trucks won't always run, and a Wal-Mart superstore has three weeks worth of non-perishable stock at most not accounting for looting. First worlders, on average, take their infrastructures entirely too much for granted, not realizing how fragile they are.

This is an excellent post, seconding this.

[Republic of Coldwater]

I know people who love hunting and use it as a legitimate form of recreation. Sure, this isn't 5000 BC when we needed to hunt to survive, but hunting has taken the new purpose of simply having fun, and it would be wrong to simply say that recreation is not necessary.

[Occupied Deutschland]

I am about to ask a question from a position of honest ignorance, so if anyone would care to answer it factually I would appreciate it:

I understand that one of the justifications for hunting is population control, as Quintium just said an unchecked population can unbalance the local ecosystem. What confuses me is that natural selection tends to balance these things out, animal populations waxed and waned long before humans settled in many areas, so why are we concerned about maintaining a status quo as we see it? Is it harmful to us if some species displace others?

Such waxes and wanes also produce agricultural or other ecological problems. Plants will get overgrazed if herbivore populations spike, which can result in much longer-lasting damage to an ecosystem (a population could even drive itself into extinction by eliminating its own food supply). An oberabundance of carnivores could, obviously drive herbivores to extinction (or out of the area), which could then lead to an explosion of plantlife in the region that those herbivore populations previously kept in check.

Which is independent of the more aesthetic/subjective ideals that wildlife and plantlife and biodiversity alongside of it are beneficial in and of themselves. Hunting wolves or bison to extinction was a bad idea from a purely moral standpoint to many folks and such populations should exist in ranges where they can, particularly if such were native to the region (though this does present its own unique set of challenges of its own, they're seperate and generally considered as less impactful than the primary 'point' that having such is a net positive just from human enjoyment of the natural world independent of ecological management concerns, which can exist alongside of these aesthetic ideas).

[The Wolven League]

No, everyone nowadays hunts for fun. It's cruel.

[New Stephania]

I am about to ask a question from a position of honest ignorance, so if anyone would care to answer it factually I would appreciate it:

I understand that one of the justifications for hunting is population control, as Quintium just said an unchecked population can unbalance the local ecosystem. What confuses me is that natural selection tends to balance these things out, animal populations waxed and waned long before humans settled in many areas, so why are we concerned about maintaining a status quo as we see it? Is it harmful to us if some species displace others?

Such waxes and wanes also produce agricultural or other ecological problems. Plants will get overgrazed if herbivore populations spike, which can result in much longer-lasting damage to an ecosystem (a population could even drive itself into extinction by eliminating its own food supply). An oberabundance of carnivores could, obviously drive herbivores to extinction (or out of the area), which could then lead to an explosion of plantlife in the region that those herbivore populations previously kept in check.

So is the concern that an uncontrolled ecosystem could cause irreparable damage to the agriculture in the region? Because, assuming this is the case and that it's not a problem that could be dealt with through other means, I do see this as a strong argument in favour of hunting. It would make me curious about other solutions to that problem though.

[Occupied Deutschland]

Such waxes and wanes also produce agricultural or other ecological problems. Plants will get overgrazed if herbivore populations spike, which can result in much longer-lasting damage to an ecosystem (a population could even drive itself into extinction by eliminating its own food supply). An oberabundance of carnivores could, obviously drive herbivores to extinction (or out of the area), which could then lead to an explosion of plantlife in the region that those herbivore populations previously kept in check.

So is the concern that an uncontrolled ecosystem could cause irreparable damage to the agriculture in the region? Because, assuming this is the case and that it's not a problem that could be dealt with through other means, I do see this as a strong argument in favour of hunting. It would make me curious about other solutions to that problem though.

Agriculture as well as the natural flora and fauna (via the avenue that human activity already displaces the ecosystem to a degree greater than it was in previous years, so consecutively smaller spikes and falls in populations of various flora and fauna could have extreme effects on even the non-agricultural plants and animals).

[Jerkmany]

My personal opinion is that no, hunting is not a necessary practice. But along with that I'm not a hunter, so I don't really understand their perspective.

[AiliailiA]

I am about to ask a question from a position of honest ignorance, so if anyone would care to answer it factually I would appreciate it:

I understand that one of the justifications for hunting is population control, as Quintium just said an unchecked population can unbalance the local ecosystem. What confuses me is that natural selection tends to balance these things out, animal populations waxed and waned long before humans settled in many areas, so why are we concerned about maintaining a status quo as we see it? Is it harmful to us if some species displace others?

My answer to that is just my answer. Few here would agree ...

Evolution is very slow, for animals which you can shoot (deer, geese, rats). Evolution is quicker in insects, and alarmingly quick in bacteria. If we wait for evolution to restore some balance and a stable ecosystem, pretty much everything "between the cities" as Quintium put it will be a wasteland. There won't be any frolicking fauns, or chirping birds. There will be starving and aggressive dog packs (they will kill all the feral cats) and as many rats as can flee underground to escape the dogs. Without any wild herbivores to tend the vegetation, vines will outcompete trees. Without trees there will be no birds, so even some of the vines and ground plants will perish because they depend on birds to spread their seeds.

But even worse than that, there will be so much dead vegetation with nothing to eat it that fungi and bacteria will proliferate. They don't need birds or insects to propagate. The spores of fungi are easily airborne, and bacteria themselves can be airborne. Of the millions of species of fungi and bacteria, only a few infect humans (eg golden staph), but killing and expelling those that are 'harmless' does put a burden on the human body. We would all be weaker and more prone to other infections if we had to deal with a burden of spores and airborne bacteria wafting in from the countryside. And sometimes there would be plagues, of bacteria particularly, until we developed a specific cure for each newly evolved bacteria.

Perhaps I'm overstating the risk somewhat. But evolution is not on our side this way. If we let ecosystems around us collapse and wait for evolution to sort it out we will be struggling for centuries with the organisms which evolve most quickly, and which even now are the greatest threat to our health. We won't have some new species of big cat, or flying sharks, or any other heroic natural adversary ... unless we make them ourselves. We will have a relentless tide of smelly, rotting, festering micro-organisms seeking to eat us, eat our food, and eat out belongings.

[New Stephania]

I am about to ask a question from a position of honest ignorance, so if anyone would care to answer it factually I would appreciate it:

I understand that one of the justifications for hunting is population control, as Quintium just said an unchecked population can unbalance the local ecosystem. What confuses me is that natural selection tends to balance these things out, animal populations waxed and waned long before humans settled in many areas, so why are we concerned about maintaining a status quo as we see it? Is it harmful to us if some species displace others?

My answer to that is just my answer. Few here would agree ...

Evolution is very slow, for animals which you can shoot (deer, geese, rats). Evolution is quicker in insects, and alarmingly quick in bacteria. If we wait for evolution to restore some balance and a stable ecosystem, pretty much everything "between the cities" as Quintium put it will be a wasteland. There won't be any frolicking fauns, or chirping birds. There will be starving and aggressive dog packs (they will kill all the feral cats) and as many rats as can flee underground to escape the dogs. Without any wild herbivores to tend the vegetation, vines will outcompete trees. Without trees there will be no birds, so even some of the vines and ground plants will perish because they depend on birds to spread their seeds.

But even worse than that, there will be so much dead vegetation with nothing to eat it that fungi and bacteria will proliferate. They don't need birds or insects to propagate. The spores of fungi are easily airborne, and bacteria themselves can be airborne. Of the millions of species of fungi and bacteria, only a few infect humans (eg golden staph), but killing and expelling those that are 'harmless' does put a burden on the human body. We would all be weaker and more prone to other infections if we had to deal with a burden of spores and airborne bacteria wafting in from the countryside. And sometimes there would be plagues, of bacteria particularly, until we developed a specific cure for each newly evolved bacteria.

Perhaps I'm overstating the risk somewhat. But evolution is not on our side this way. If we let ecosystems around us collapse and wait for evolution to sort it out we will be struggling for centuries with the organisms which evolve most quickly, and which even now are the greatest threat to our health. We won't have some new species of big cat, or flying sharks, or any other heroic natural adversary ... unless we make them ourselves. We will have a relentless tide of smelly, rotting, festering micro-organisms seeking to eat us, eat our food, and eat out belongings.

I'm no biologist but one issue I see with your example is that it doesn't seem to take in to account animal populations migrating from elsewhere to take advantage of changing conditions, would this not offset some of the ecological carnage that you predict would take place?