Re: Big Game Hunting on an Even Footing (Was Re: Effects of Magic)

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:12:05 -0700, Alma Hromic Deckert
<anghara@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:d66kb41e1u64jpe7vmdpp4fe2qiaj12k19@xxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

On 31 Aug 2008 02:28:55 GMT, "John F. Eldredge" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:18:38 -0700, Alma Hromic Deckert wrote:

[...]

Terrif. We're prey. But unless we really ARE talking Og
the caveman here we are not really in the path of a
sabretooth tiger or even an African lion here. We PUT
ourselves there. Okay - onwards -

Innocent bystanders are still killed by the occasional
predatory animal that decides to move into
human-occupied territory, not only in places like
Africa but also in places like the USA. Admittedly, it
is not particularly common, but you still have people
attacked, and sometimes killed, by animals such as
mountain lions and bears that have decided that humans
make easy prey. Someone then has to decide to put
themselves in harm's way to track down and eliminate
the predator before it decides to attack more humans.
They aren't hunting for sport, but for necessity.

No. And you're still moving the goalposts quite a bit.

No, he's not. That case is well within the topic under
discussion.

If a wild animal is dangerous (and frequently, you know,
these attacks take place because we kind of stole THEIR
territory and not because they're encroaching on ours)

That's what animals do, humans included, when their
population expands. It's simple-minded to blame either us
or them in such cases.

then that's one thing.

But the one thing that I have said that you keep dancing
around is the trophy hunting aspect of it (which you
would like to equalise by adding in "fairness" like an
AK47).

That was, I believe, John's first post on the subject, and
he said nothing about AK-47s; are you confusing him with
Kevin?

Hunting for food - okay. It's been done throughout
history. When you need to eat you kill meat - that's the
way the hunter society has been wired. Okay.

Killing in defense of another or self-defense, okay. [...]

But come back to what I keep on saying is repugnant.

Hunting an animal for its trophy value, and that alone.
Because you CAN. Because the only way you can outpredator
a predator as a human being is not to make things EQUAL
but to give yourself the sort of advantage that no animal
can hope to stand against.

That really doesn't say much: the only way species A can
outpredator species B is to by definition to have an
advantage over species B, whether species A is humanity or
something else. And it obviously is possible to hunt bears,
or lions, or what have you under conditions that make the
odds more or less even, but it's hardly surprising (or in my
view reprehensible) if even those hunters who are out for
sport and enjoy a real challenge prefer to keep *some*
advantage.

Just so that a "hunter" can spread a lion skin on his
floor.

You're conflating very different things. Bowhunting for a
trophy stag, for instance, is *not* the same thing as going
after lions with high-powered weaponry and expert backup
that does most of the work for you, even if you don't happen
to like venison. You're writing as if all trophy-hunters
were like that lion-'hunter', when in fact he's at one
extreme.

By the way, I don't hunt, and I do spend a fair bit on
animal conservation efforts.

Brian
.

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