Yeah it must take incredible skill and unshakeable commeraderie to destroy a creature that is minding its own business in its natural environment.

Quote from Hankstar :

When she's not chasing seagulls or digging gigantic holes, my beagle loves to bay at door-knocking religionists.

I love to let her

When I was a kid I grew up with a springer spaniel that came from a pedigree as long as your arm of show champions. Typically, ours ended up a bit fat and lazy. But she was such a well-tempered dog, put up with three kids messing with it for years (dropping the dog's ears over its eyes while it was sleeping was a favourite), never so much as growled at anybody.

Except Mormon missionaries. Every single time they came to the house, the dog chased them off.

Quote from jayhawk :

A few of my hunting experiences:

OK, well, you grew up shooting defenseless animals with giant guns, so maybe you see nothing wrong with it. I'm English, so guns to me are something the army use. Plus one of my clients at work is the UK's largest gun sport organisation, and I can tell you that - despite their poncy country sports facade - they are clearly a bunch of ****ing maniacs.

They've got a "punt gun" on display at their HQ, giant thing it is (just checked - 4.31m long or 14'). I'd never heard of a punt gun before but this one guy explained it to me: Basically, it was mounted on the front of a boat, and the boat was rowed into an estuary where wading birds might be hanging out. The punt gun was then fired in the general direction of where some birds might happen to be, and a boat-load of shot-to-shit birds was subsequently collected from all over that general area.

illepall

We used to spend ages sitting around (or walking softly) in the scrub with dad, waiting for native animals to cross our path. We were armed with binoculars and cameras though. Call me a hippie, (closer to say science nerd, dad being a science teacher and all) but I think it's a much more pleasant bonding experience to go home with memories and photos and stuff to talk about than with a bunch of mangled carcasses. If you're going to eat them I don't really have a problem with it, but not many people in the developed world need to hunt their own food animals. Hunting for sport, on the other hand, is a complete oxymoron

As far as hunting for food goes, I've only ever gone fishing. That's more about beer and conversation than about fish though, if you do it properly Plus most of what you get down here is European carp, which is a destructive bastard and is really messing with our rivers. The more you pull out the better.

Quote from Gunn :

Yeah it must take incredible skill and unshakeable commeraderie to destroy a creature that is minding its own business in its natural environment.

So long as you're gonna eat what you kill, better to kill an unsuspecting creature that, until that point anyway, had a natural and free live, than to eat the burgers of the cow that spend it's entire life in capativity after generations of selective breeding to make it better as food.

Yelling something to group of mens with shotguns

Rich city boys pretend to be hunters is a problem, those that are real hunters respect way of nature but quite rare to see such one today

With money seem to come ignorance of anything around, life being too easy I presume, at least I prefer being poor and honest if another option is being rich and bastard.

Y'all ought to see the fox hunt club around here. They actually raise foxes in kennels and let a few loose before running them down. I can remember being on my uncles farm when those damn fox hounds decided to to chase my uncles dog. Mind you, the thing was old and half dead at the time.

Quote from Gunn :

Yeah it must take incredible skill and unshakeable commeraderie to destroy a creature that is minding its own business in its natural environment.

1)It is family tradition. I really dont hope that you think that I went out into a field shot a whatever, then left it for dead. Oh, no no no! Depending on what it is (or...was) we took it to get processed for meat, or the women of the family would cook it up that night for consumption. Ever had fresh Pheasant or Turkey?

2)In some parts of the United States, deer hunting controls the population. Not enough food for the winter combined with overpopulation means dying a horrible, diseased death. Also, more deer get hit by cars every year than from hunting. Why no natural predators, you say? Well, urban sprawl decreased the habitat of wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc. If that bothers you, tear down your house, ask your neighbors to do the same, and go live in a hut. There, now the natural predators can flourish again because you gave them back their habitat. The point I am trying to convey is, something has to be at the top of the food chain to control the population of lesser creatures, otherwise the population gets out of control and far worse deaths occur.

3)Here is the rather embarrassing point of hunting: sometimes you would hunt because it is far cheaper, because you didnt grow up so wealthy, in American standards. Partially the reason why people fish...

Yet I do not see any protests or condemnations in regard to that. Is it because fish are not appealing to the eyes? Not pretty or majestic? Hey, people put bait out to hook a fish, catch by yanking it out of its natural habitat, then let it drown in air, or put it into a tank so small it can just barely survive.

Face it. Humans are omnivores, we kill other animals to survive, even if you do not witness its death. If you did, would you continue to eat animals?

Does it take "incredible skill and unshakeable commeraderie" to go to your local market and pick up a pound of ground up cow?"

Fox hunting in the UK has never been about hunting, pest control, or any of those other excuses they use. Its a ritual reminder of who owns who. You should have driven right through the bunch of them, reminded them and their assembled collaborators that the majority of us see their moribund tradition for what it is.