I personally support both hunting and fishing, when done with the intent of consuming the animal, and if it is killed as humanely as possible. I myself fish often, and hunt deer in the fall. I am against trophy hunting, as it serves no purpose aside from trying to look cool. What are everyone else’s thoughts, both for and against hunting/fishing?
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I agree completely with you. That’s exactly what I’ve always thought.
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I don’t consider myself a hunter (though I have run traplines for mice) or a fisher, though I have fished. However, I believe that properly regulated hunting and fishing should be allowed and indeed encouraged. Why?
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We humans have killed off most of the larger predators that used to control animal populations. Basically, all animal populations are controlled by starvation, predation, or disease. Now many prey animals (e.g. deer) exist at very high levels that harm plants (plants matter!) and habitats for other species. Their populations are too often controlled by starvation or disease, which are harmful to most of the individuals of the population. Predation, though fatal to some, leaves most of the others unharmed, usually.
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In some countries (e.g. the U.S.) hunters and fishers provide much of the funding that conserves wildlife, including setting up wildlife refuges. (I personally believe we should all fund this, but I don’t get to choose.)
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People who learn to hunt and fish well learn a lot about nature and usually come to care about it. (Decades ago, some organization ran a test of nature related knowledge in the U.S. Hunters ranked far above most people, though they were edged out of first place by birdwatchers.) It’s hard to care about what you don’t know, which I’m sure is one reason that iNaturalist has a goal of connecting humans with nature.
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I personally am not comfortable with trophy hunting, but it can help with the other issues above, especially #2 and especially in less developed countries. So I think it should be allowed.
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I don’t think there’s a moral difference between hunting animals for oneself and paying others to kill animals for us, e.g. by buying hamburger in the store. (I get annoyed with people who forget that.)
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All that said, as a former rural landowner, I have reason to despise many individual hunters.
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Yes! I forgot while I was typing my original post that hunting keeps deer populations sustainable.
I keep getting told by people that “hunting is animal abuse” or “you cant be against animal cruelty and support hunting”- thats why hunter safety courses include the specific details on where to shoot the deer.
Yes, as hunters are individuals, not all of them will be great people, although it seems that many people only see the negative side
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One reason is that the better hunters are usually much less conspicuous. Less likely to shoot a pheasant in a farm yard or hunt deer through a cow herd, for example.
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I believe that hunting and fishing should exclusively be allowed for the purpose of conservation and sustenance. Hunting of invasive species should be incentivized and facilitated. The hunting of most native birds and large predators is harmful and uncivilized. The problem of pollution caused by ammunition dispersal in natural environments is a serious issue that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
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This topic has been started in a number of previous threads. Here’s one of many: The ecological impact of hunting.
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Where I get annoyed is when public land is opened to hunting, but it’s not clearly communicated to the general public where and when this will be happening. I am willing to do my part to avoid getting in the way! But at some point the people making the rules, and the people carrying the guns, need to take some responsibility for communicating. “Hunters provide money for conservation” is not a free pass for putting other people in danger, nor does it mean that hunters are the only ones with any right to use public land.
I also have no time at all for people who hunt or fish but don’t know how to identify threatened or endangered species that they might encounter. To take a really obvious example, if you are not 100% sure that’s not a Whooping Crane, why are you pointing a gun at it?
Otherwise, as long as hunters are responsible and safe, I don’t have a problem with them hunting for food, even if they don’t really need the food. Trophy hunting in very limited cases, such as when populations really need to be controlled. Shooting at that rare duck I really wanted to see? The worst! 
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For a miniscule part of our recent history humans have been growing crops and raising livestock. Prior to that we were hunter gatherers. Homo sapiens is a predator, hunting (and fishing) is in our nature. I am fine with that as long as it occurs at sustainable levels and every effort is made to minimise suffering of the prey.
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I am coming at this through the lens of iNat’s mission: increasing engagement with nature (link below). I won’t talk about the sustainability of hunting, or the morality of hunting, or anything else like that.
I agree with Barbara; hunting is one form of engagement with nature, which is iNat’s 1st point (out of 3 points in total) in its Mission Statement: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it
But let’s run the numbers on the 3 main forms of engaging with wildlife, that Barbara mentioned: hunting, fishing, and birdwatching.
“The 2022 Survey, which . . . was conducted by the NORC at the University of Chicago, finds that . . . 57% of Americans 16 years of age or older participated in wildlife watching, 15% fished, and 6% hunted last year.”
- “Wildlife watching” mostly = birdwatching
- NORC = National Opinion Research Center — A “social research” organization at the University of Chicago
- Quoted article here
My conclusion: I used to hunt, and I only stopped because it takes a lot of time. I have nothing against hunting. But if your goal is to increase engagement with nature (which IS iNat’s goal), then hunting is pretty inconsequential. Your time and money would be better spent by focusing on birdwatching, and expanding participation in that pastime. Which is, in fact, where the largest number of conservation dollars go, AFAIK.
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I don’t disagree with your conclusion – but I disagree that this naturalistic argument is a good way to determine what’s right and what isn’t. We’ve always done it this way isn’t enough. For example, for most of our history, we lived in small groups that were tied together in larger tribal networks and outside that, we were terribly xenophobic – with good reason, as the other groups were xenophobic too and were likely to kill us if they could. That’s natural. We still tend to be like that, opposing and fearing members of other countries, races, religions, castes, societies, political parties, etc. Now we living in big, variable groups and need to reject that natural tendency to reject the different. Or at least a lot of us think we need to.
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“The nature of man” is a pretty interesting discussion IMO, but it should be started in a new thread
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Well, as a vegetarian, I don’t do either. It should be pointed out that the reason
is because we have viewed them as rivals – competitors. We didn’t kill off wolves because we think that wolves are cruel; we killed off wolves because we consider the sheep to be ours. Just look at the arguments used by opponents of wolf reintroductions. It comes mostly from livestock growers and it’s the same thing: they might compete with us for prey that we consider ours.
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Hunting and fishing ethically is great, and better for people and the environment than factory farmed meats, when done right. Hunters are also one of the biggest contributors to the conservation of gamebirds, and organizations like Pheasents Forever and Quail Forever have made hundreds of acres of land into grasslands habitats for these birds.
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As someone who has volunteered at a wildlife clinic for more than three years, the amount of lead poisoning in birds that ingested lead from bullets/fishing accessories was disturbing.
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I aggree with you on this- as much fun as I think it would be to hunt mountain lion, there is no good reason to do so. And you make a good point on pollution, something I admit I never thought much about. I had been thinking of switching to exclusively bowhunting, and that is a good reason to do so.
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This is why I don’t hunt on public land, although part of this is also that I don’t trust that some portion of the public wouldn’t just ignore that it’s now a hunting area.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a former friend where we were discussing albino deer- he said he would take even a little one for the trophy, despite albino deer being illegal to shoot in many places. If it’s rare, shoot it with a camera.
Venison just tastes better than beef lol
Makes better jerkey too!
The only times I support trophy hunting are for an out of control population, including invasive species, for example the pythons in Florida. I myself plan to hunt the biggest ones I can find. But big game hunting of lions in Africa? that’s just a status symbol at this point.
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For Alaskans like me, meat from hunted animals is close to a necessity for some families.
I like hunting mostly to just get out and enjoy nature. I don’t like any part of actually killing the animal.
Bowhunting sounds like a great alternative to shooting.
I don’t know a lot about it but I doubt it would be very useful at long range.
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Between your 2 comments - a good recipe for lead poisoning of birds that had avoided being shot dead.
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I go fishing sometimes. I don’t hunt anything. All local animals are protected by local laws. Many years ago people may trap monitor lizards. We don’t do that now. There are many youtube vids on hunting. There are some Coyote hunters. just saw a baboon related vid maybe 2 weeks ago. These people use rifles with scopes. They look like snipers. I don’t own a gun, except for a time when I was a soldier. Wild boars, rats, crows, pigeons sometimes may have overpopulation. Many creatures are on the decline. Some creatures surprisingly are still present. I kept birds when I was a kid. Bird trapping was common in the past. Not all birds, just some species. At one point in time, bird flu was in the news, and that was a serious zoonotic illness. People were mysteriously dead after contacting dead birds. The authorities monitor wild migratory birds sometimes. They do the trapping and draw blood samples. There are animals that are forbidden. Some cultures are scared of pigs. Monkey hunting is not right. Most are scared of seeing dogs and cat being hunted. Humans have an instinct to hunt. Like we are hunting with cameras and we feel it is a great day to go out and have some activity.
Lastly something on religion. I don’t consider myself deeply religious. My religious doctrines said that taking animals cause suffering or something and the karma part. so it is about minimising sins.
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