• Major_Tsiom@fedia.io
    454·
    13 hours ago

    Back when I was on Reddit, I would always get downvoted for saying that hunting wild animals with a gun is fucked up. To this day, I don’t fucking get it. Why? I think those who like it are fucked up, and if that is the case, maybe it’s good to have an outlet for these people so that they don’t shoot other people.

    • smegger@aussie.zone
      34·
      12 hours ago

      Doing so just for sport? Absolutely.

      If it’s for food, I kinda give it a pass. Killing for no good reason is a waste of a life.

      • Kacarott@aussie.zone
        3·
        2 hours ago

        I think eating hunted meat is more ethical than farmed meat, since the animal at least lived a natural life until it was killed.

        • SpaceScotsman@startrek.website
          2·
          2 hours ago

          Especially if you live somewhere like the UK where we killed off all the apex predators. We need to hunt deer,or else they’ll do more environmental damage.

        • fonix232@fedia.io
          12·
          9 hours ago

          As long as there’s a valid reason (no, “for fun” isn’t a valid reason), hunting with a gun is acceptable.

          My dad used to take me to shoot wild ducks near my hometown. It was a sort of artificial “wilderness” - used to be open fields and sandy dunes that got transformed into a forest (partly for wood, partly to bind the soil so a canal could be cut to provide water). With that forest and canal came a bunch of animals finding new home. Except… any predator was basically already driven out of the area centuries before. Leading to the mostly waterfowl population getting out of control.

          So we’d go a few times a year and shoot a bunch of ducks and geese. On average we’d take home 15-20 birds. My mum “loved” it, because she got to de-feather them by hand, butcher and process (though I did help with that), and about half the meat would be handed out to neighbours and friends. On the bright side of things we’d eat like kings for a week or two. Wild duck liver, roasted with some bacon, and of course duck breast rosè 🤤

          Nothing would go to waste, the wandering Romani pillowmakers would buy the feathers, all the innards would be either used in a meal or made into sausages (yes, including the feet and head), the roast bones would be good for a stock base, and our neighbour was always happy to take any leftover bones to grind up and give it to his dog or use it in his garden.

          For a long time I thought it was a fun activity for us to do together, and only recently asked why he never took my younger brothers… turns out he got his licence for population control, had to report any bird he took out, and thanks to climate change, the canal became useless around the time my older younger brother was the age my dad would’ve taken him for such a trip, and because of no canal = no birds = no need to control the population.