I have been a hunter -in my teens- , I have been a farmer who killed his own stock for the table.
I am now a vegetarian.
Drawing comparisons from other predators is facile, and ignores the fact that humans can analyse both the past and the future, and can conceive of a moral code.
Should we treat each other, as Komodo Dragons do?
We know in the past, humans were more savage, more brutal and less compassionate than we in the 'civilised' world. Even Christians were in certain ages, incredibly brutal. Witness the pogroms and witch hunts, the inquisitions.
Most of us, I would think, would like to think we are more 'civilised', more compassionate, than our forebears.
So what will our children be like? And their offspring, a thousand years from now?
If we consider ourselves to be 'better' or more civilised than our predecessors, and can see a progression where our successors are more civilised than us, why do we wait?
Why not go there now?
I have no doubt, barring an apocalypse which shunts us backwards sociologically, the very thought of killing, maiming and deliberately injuring animals will anathema to people in the centuries to come.
Who should we emulate? The inquisitors? The witch hunters?
When we look back at history, we deplore the barbarous acts and applaud those who demonstrated a morality consistent with our own.
How will history judge the 'sports hunters'?
What will your great great grandchildren think of you, finding enjoyment in killing and injuring animals and birds, for fun?
If you enjoy the natural world, take a camera. Leave the gun at home.

Nature is a cruel bitch alright. But I'm still not sold on hunting in national parks because I like to go bushwalking in them. Without hunting there is no chance of me getting shot while doing this: the hunters are asking me to accept the small but non-zero probability that I will get shot by accident. Shot as in 'shot with a bullet'. From a gun. The sort of thing that only happens to bikies and soldiers and Americans. Not to nice law-abiding gentlemen who enjoy reading and bush-walking.

My response to this is entirely reasonable: piss off. Go play with your dangerous toys somewhere where I'm not out walking. What part of that seems unreasonable to you?

Now for something that is unreasonable but quite funny. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A92_XFvez9U

Cheers,

Tony

Well said Garry. As a boy with a rifle, I supplied many a rabbit for a baked dinner, or stew, when rabbits were a plague & money short.

It is a long time since that rifle was used for hunting. In the last 20 years apart from dispatching a couple of dogs that were attacking my stock, it has been used to put down a couple of very old, much loved horses, beyond saving, but mostly to put down injured kangaroos.

Going on the number of roos with broken hips I have found on my small property, that must be a very common way for them to go. I did call the wild life society the first time, & a quite old lady came along & endangered herself administering a tranquiliser injection, before a lethal one, to a very frightened largish kangaroo. Since then I do it more safely, & quickly myself, with the rifle.

I also have a shot gun, which I am proud to say, has provided food every time it has been fired. A few times that was only a hand of coconuts, shot down as I got too old to climb a large old palm, but it was only fired for good reason.

Grim, we can not even guess your conversion to a vegetarian, but the human has been a meat eater throughout its evolution, & I, like most, have no intention of trying to change that. Too many studies have suggested our health requires this protein.

While I respect your choice, I can not respect those who eat meat quite happily, but only when another does the butchering, & complains about hunting. That to me is total hypocrisy, & I can do nothing but despise that attitude.

Now that our population has been disarmed we have a fresh rabbit plague on the way as both myxomatosis and the calicivirus are no longer effective. Rabbits in my area are carrying 8 to 10 foetuses instead of the usual 4 or 5. Foxes, feral goats, cats and pigs are at population levels never experienced before. I also admit shooting a few rabbits will have no effect on their population spiral but it does give an appreciation of what is happening
While this is happening vegans are running around with cameras photographing and filming Indonesian abattoirs and Australian pig farms as well as egg and broiler sheds.

I always cringe when I see people catching fish & then leave them flip & flap themselves to a drawn-out agonising death on some jetty.

I agree individual, from both the cruelty & the point of view of good eating, any fish you are going to keep should be bleed & killed, by cutting it's throat the moment it is off the hook.

However I think nature is a damn sight crueler.

My son kept fish as a kid & young man. When he left home he talked me into letting him put 20 gold fish into the old swimming pool we no longer used & was going to be drained.

They breed, & 5 or 6 years later there were over 70 of them. They even mutated. Some turned a greenish white, Some remained black, the colour of the hatch-lings, & some became red & white. It was becoming interesting, & the grand kids named one Nemo, due to this colouring.

Then along can a shag. It ate a few, & I should have shot it, but didn't want to be unkind to something just following nature. But I should have, before it brought the whole flock to clean out the pool. If there are any left, I've not seen them.

However, I would rather be that fish flapping around on the jetty, than one swallowed live, trying to breath in the gut of a shag, & getting gills full of shag digestive acid. The thought makes me shudder.

I'd also rather be that fish, than my neighbours pet goats, torn apart by wild dogs, while my disarmed neighbour could only try to chase them off with a stick.

Anyone who tells you that man is less kind than nature is a bl00dy idiot.

Hasbeen, I quite agree.
I certainly have no problem with mercy killing, nor -in theory, at least- with killing to eat. I also despise those who abhor killing but have no objections to meat once it's 'plastic wrapped'.
As I understand the law, a person who contracts another person to do their killing for them, is just as culpable as the killer.
I agree with the ethical basis of that law, and that's why I'm a vegetarian. As I said, I have killed to put meat on the table, and I didn't enjoy it. Now I don't have to, so I don't.

But this article is about hunting as 'sport'. This is about people who do enjoy killing.

The simple fact that we as Humans can witness and judge nature -as you just have- and see it as amoral and cruel, proves conclusively that we are capable of being something more; dare I say something finer, than just being the world's top predator.
As a Human capable of making ethical and moral judgements -as you have-, I can see a world of difference between killing as an act of mercy, and killing in the name of 'fun'.
We of English speaking backgrounds can look back a century or two and marvel at how barbarous our ancestors were; slavery, genocide, massive and egregious exploitation of the less fortunate...
Yes, people like that still exist today.
And so do hunters.
The question I pose is: If we look back from the 21st century at people in the 18th, and judge them as uncivilised, how will people in the 23rd century judge us?
I believe the first step in making the world a better place must be trying to make myself a better person.
In that light, I would aspire to be a 23rd century man, rather than an 18th century one.

Anyone who tells you that man is less kind than nature is a bl00dy idiot.
Hasbeen,
You'll get no argument from me on this one. However, aren't we constantly accused or talk ourselves into somehow being "above" other animals ? I'd say Yes & No & I'd also say that this is in fact nature doing what it does best. We must accept that although we go successfully against nature in many ways i.e. medicine, construction etc., in the end nature always comes out standing on the centre podium.
It just gets my heckles up when I witness cruelty to animals by people who claim to be in tune with the land yet when they receive a tiny cut they line up at the hospital to get those nice looking white bandages plus the added benefit of being away from work for several hours.

...Garry Mallard writes from the point of view of the victor. Shooting in National parks is an obvious pay-back to the gun lobby, of that there is no doubt.

...I also believe shooting in national parks is the sole responsibility of park rangers, to be overseen by park management in its strictest form. On this debate I 100% concur with the sentiments of Tony Lavis! My extensive experience in weaponry over the years leads me to the conclusion of the impossible nature of success in sharing the confines of a national park, with shooters

Can't agree with you there diver, it just needs organising.

Sure it is not a great idea to have bush walkers & shooters wandering around parks at the same time, but restricting culling of feral animals to rangers makes even less sense. Most rangers I knew were not great shots, & bringing a bunch in to do a job of culling is hugely expensive.

Organised shooting weekends, run by rangers, but with private shooters doing the work would not only be much cheaper, but would be more successful in achieving the objective.

All too many of our so called National Parks, in less populated areas, such as those declared by Goss, but never funded, simply degenerated into Lantana choked vermin reserves, rarely if ever visited by rangers or tourists.

The thousands of pigs in these were dangerous to eat, due to high levels of TB infection, but many passing yachties & fisherman would cull any pigs they saw, & take the odd cow.

The number of goats on of shore islands got so high they were altering the vegetation. To complain if a passing boaty took one of them is ridiculous.

I'm all for intelligent order, but stopping a passing boaty from helping keep these populations in check, for free is just bloody mindedness prevailing among the bureaucracy, pandering to ratbag greenies.

Hasbeen:

...I understand the necessity to cull feral animals from national parks and this point is undisputed. The examples you used to describe the slaughter of animals in remote parks makes sense and I also agree with them. What worries me is the propensity of the hunting and shooting element towards the “gung-ho”. Mostly this group are confined within the boundaries of a private property, and as a consequence, any miss-behaviour is quickly identified and dealt with on a local level: But the same activity is now (apparently), about to migrate to national parks.

...It’s one thing for politicians to mouth assurances of safety and control; but who believes in those expedient promises?
I liken the aspects of shooting in parks to logging: If logging can be likened to licenced professional shooters and thus agreeable; and clear-felling likened to the entry of the free-for-all shooters and unacceptable, then there is my stand on the issue.

>>Organised shooting weekends, run by rangers, but with private shooters doing the work would not only be much cheaper, but would be more successful in achieving the objective.<<

I like this idea. As long as I have advance warning that there will be men with guns on a particular weekend I can stay home and as long as it's not every weekend I can't see a problem.

Cheers,

Tony

Anthropomorphising our emotions on animals is asinine but it occurs unilaterally.

I have no countenance with anyone who eats meat but is against hunting for food, that's a ludicrous point of view to take I just ignore them. That animal has had a great life accept for the last couple minutes, rather then some chicken jammed in a cage for you or your dogs Sunday roast pleasure.

Obviously hunting needs to be sustainable, other than that where's the issue ? Vegetarians bring a different moral code to the table and one with listening to but I am not vegetarian. I also despair of the vegetarians who keeps a dog/cat and feed them meat, I am not sure what level of cognitive dissonance allows the drive that square peg in a round hole.

I do have an issue with hunting for feral animals because I am not sure who made us God and allowed us to decide one animals life is worth more that anothers but acknowledge this is a heterodox point of view and most have placed a ranking on animal life. A dog rates above a cane toad based and one animal above another based on "cuteness" or geography or size (bigger animals like a Whale are worth more than say an endangered spider). I also despair at the endless resources thrown at this task. Can anyone present me with evidence of a forest in NSW for example that's successfully been cleared of Lantana ? I think not... I can see some sense in nipping something in the bud if it's caught early but after that ?

I think hunters will struggle and die away, most people don't care an iota as they are too far removed from the land these days, ensconced in suburbia. Occasionally going camping in manicured National Park camp grounds, bringing with them meat on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in cling film rather then hunting a fish/bird/possum/rabbit and eating it, which would be MUCH less environmentally intensive than said meat.

There are many people quite rightly concerned that hunters will have access to National Parks as well as State Forests.
Many lucrative 'farming' areas have been affected by the rambling hunters, who, with their Sat Nav systems, are able to pin-point 'interesting' crops and thus make continued production problematical.

Those 'farmers' who have had to move into National Parks don't want this last bastion of tax-free private enterprise invaded by hunters and neither do those with long established 'cropping rights'.

It's getting hard for the enterprising to make a decent living, think of this as a form of cruelty also.