How do you feel about safari?

[gejohnston]

If Palmer violated the game laws that Zimbabwe, he should pay just like he did in Wisconsin.

I don't know anything about the value of trophy hunting in scientific wildlife management in Africa, so I am ambivalent on the subject. However, the guy, or gal, who puts a deer or elk in the freezer is more ethical, IMO, than going to the store and buying a cow or pig that met its demise at the hands of the factory farm system. It is more honest and more humane. Paying someone else to do your killing for you doesn't make you civilized. Does that mean if one of my furry family members needs to be euthanize, am I going to take it out back and shoot it? No, I'll comfort it at the vet's office until he or she is gone. However, that doesn't remove my role and responsibility in the death.

[hollysmom]

1. I like safari's with cameras

was bidding on one in an auction once.

[gejohnston]

5. I always wondered

If you use the same stalking and tracking skills, but use a camera, is it still hunting?

[hollysmom]

6. yes it is, you are hunting for pictures.

It actually takes better skills, you have to get them out in open areas for a good picture.

[ManiacJoe]

7. Hunting, no. Stalking, yes.

Hunting is done with weapons; photography is done with cameras.

[Eleanors38]

8. The question Ortega y Gasset dealt with.

One kills in order to have hunted; otherwise, it is not hunting as we are discussing it. Of course this doesn't mean that killing is pro forma hunting (see chicken/beef slaughter houses), and it doesn't mean that "camera hunting" does not have elements of hunting in the activity.

Without trying to be circular, hunting from the beginning of humans was about finding other animals, killing them, and eating them. So it seems any hunting must involve killing.

There is more argument as to what constitutes hunting with regards to its actual practice, not the killing. I have stomped through fields for miles hoping to "kick up" dove which I must then (try to) shoot. That is hunting. But in another field, the birds may be flooding into a field to eat waste grain, and my activity is primarily shooting. Perhaps I "found" the field which had the birds, but really this is shooting under hunting regulations.

[murielm99]

2. My browser is Safari.

That is all the safari I am willing to feel good about.

[Hoppy]

3. A difference is that the animal in the factory farm did not suffer for 40 hours before dying.

Then we can also get into leg traps and bad shooting which leads an animal to be tracked until killed or tracked until the brave hunter loses the trail and the animal wanders off to die.

The factory farm system has its own abuses but the search for economic efficiency leads to a speedier, less painful death in most cases.

[gejohnston]

4. When knocking the factory farm

I was thinking of ethical hunters, which the vast majority are. I don't know of any place where leg traps are legal for hunting other than invasive species like boars. Palmer is the poster child of unethical hunting with not waiting for a lethal shot, canned hunt, and his poaching convictions in the US, one being a felony.
Fur trapping is a different issue.

[Eleanors38]

9. Concerning "bravery."

Somewhere between newsreels of someone shooting a cape buffalo (highly dangerous to both shooter and animal) and Hollywood, some in the general public have gotten hold of the notion that most hunting requires bravery and courage. Most does not. Unless the animal you are hunting is a dangerous creature, the only real danger is falling out of a tree stand or heart attack; even being shot is increasingly rare.

Hunting for most people is hard work (esp for deer and ducks) but not some act of bravado, unless you make it so. I respect those who go after a feral hog with a knife; but even here, the use of dogs is required, and the pig is bayed before one moves in with a knife. Still dangerous, but contrived when a powerful revolver would do the deed.

There is a disconnect with some anti-hunting folks who see no "bravery" when shooting a deer with a modern rifle (I don't either), then try to slap on some requirement that a knife or atlatl be used. What is the objective, here? A hunter proving his gutsy bonafidas, or getting a clean and recovered kill?