#27
Post
by Dennis La Varenne » Sat May 03, 2008 12:55 pm
This thread seems not to have advanced at all from the question which Coach posed in his opening.
My comments hereafter are not directed at anyone in particular, but a request that all of us have a serious look at the ethical reasons why we do what we do whilst hunting.
Most importantly from my perspective, the question posited is a question of morality.
Here I use the word deliberately. It is not restricted to the narrower religious take, but a broader one of correct and decent behaviour in the way we treat and regard the animals we hunt and the ecological impacts of what we do.
Like Sparra, I read Coach’s post as using deer as illustrative of his underlying point that, how can it be moral behaviour to kill game purely for the sake of personal aggrandizement and leave the carcasses to rot. In reply, he has received generally counter argument completely avoiding the real issue.
Why are we so uncomfortable and reluctant to discuss morality in hunting?
I have raised this matter with other bowhunters, and the common reply is that hunting morals/ethics are a personal matter. Well, the news is, they are not. How we conduct ourselves in hunting is a very public matter and arouses public interest. We live in a society, and our actions in that society have societal implications. In the end, it is that society in which we live which decides whether our tradition survives.
To make the argument that one can do pretty much as one likes because of privately held ethics for which one does not have to account is a recipe for inevitable disaster. Essentially it is telling society that it can go to blazes – I will do whatever I want without regard to the common values which society and our peers have on such matters.
As I have said on other posts, I worked for ABA as its Victorian Bowhunting Defence co-ordinator for 15 years as well as being the submissions research officer and later Secretary of the Shooting Sports Council of Victoria. I had plenty of occasions to have to counter our adversaries from the animal rights movement as well as antipathetic government officials.
Excepting the animal rights people who believe that no human involvement with animals is morally acceptable unless it is for the direct benefit of that animal, the rest of society is pretty much accepting of hunting where its principal intention is largely subsistence. It does not accept as moral any form of trophy hunting and largely regards it as immoral. All of you can test this for yourselves among your non-hunting acquaintances. Don't tell them you hunt if possible. That knowledge will colour their responses.
Ask these fairly open-ended questions –
1. Is it morally right to hunt and kill an animal?
2. Is it morally right to hunt and kill animals if that animal is used for food?
3. Is it morally right to hunt and kill an only for a trophy of the hunt and the meat is not used for food?
4. On what occasion would it be morally justifiable to hunt and kill and animal?
Don’t censor their replies. Just let them have their say and see what the responses are.
It is these people who will at worst lobby to have hunting banned or at least will stand by and not support us unless we can convince them that we have serious moral principles guiding our behaviour.
Where once, as late as the 1950s to the 1970s, hunting was socially regarded as fairly normal, it is now regarded as leprous.
I am quite aware that there is an industry built up around trophy hunting in this country (and elsewhere) which contributes perhaps several millions of dollars to the Australian economy. However, the money which it contributes is so small that I doubt its loss would not be noticed except among a few locally employed staff. The economic inputs from this industry bear hardly any kind of serious economic comparison which is not bested far and away by ecotourism. So far as the economy of Australia is concerned, it is largely irrelevant. Economically, Australia can easily afford to lose it.
The economic argument is far from our best one in defence of our tradition and certainly does not wash morally with the general public. I am not convinced that it holds much water in these days when ecological concerns regarding the possible extinction of many wildlife species is common. To the average member of society, it is asking that considerations of money should subsume ethical considerations about the treatment of animals.
Certainly, we have a very valid argument that we as hunters can and should be part of the methodology which employs hunters to control pest animal numbers. There are very valid moral and ecologically justifiable arguments for this.
I believe that society is quite prepared to tolerate hunting done under this imperative if we care to make our case on proper moral grounds showing that there is a measurable environmental benefit.
The other argument based upon auxiliary subsistence hunting is another morally justifiable argument. It is the same one which society is prepared to accept by aboriginals in justification of the preservation of their traditional culture and quite properly so. The same arguments are valid for us too. The counter argument that we have modern shops and supermarkets at our disposal is a poor one. They are also available to a very large proportion of aboriginal people, who still choose to preserve their hunting skills.
It is a very fine line of distinction that it is morally justifiable for the one and not the other when the reason for preserving an ancient tradition is largely the same. It is an argument which causes difficulty for the animal rights people as well. They have not resolved it either, for to accept the validity of the aboriginal justification over that of traditional European hunting presents an obvious contradiction where unjustifiable value judgements must be applied on the relative worth of one against that of the other.
Moving further to the part of trophy hunting in this debate, I have put my views in my first post. If anyone here considers that there is a morally valid argument supporting trophy hunting, they may consider letting this forum know.
I keep stressing the word ‘moral’ because the future of our tradition will stand or fall on how society views the morality of what we do in terms of what IT finds morally acceptable and how our beliefs in this regard compare to the common morality which informs our lawmakers.
All law is based principally on morality, but all morality is not necessarily religious. There is an emerging and very strong ecological morality gaining much ground today, and that is where we must make our case.
Not to do so will mean our inevitable end.
Immediately to the issue of Coach’s opening post is the moral question of whether or not it is ethically justifiable, outside of pest eradication, to kill more animals than we can reasonably consume. Our ancestors did not. The few remaining subsistence hunters do not. Why is it then that modern hunters seem to see no need to justify killing game to excess?
Furthermore, what is the moral justification supporting trophy hunting? I particularly would like to be persuaded by it if there is one.
I would also be interested in how Mick (Trophy Bowhunts) would justify his stance on moral grounds if, for instance, I were the relevant minister who considered that hunting was a morally reprehensible thing and had decided to abolish it. His reply reads like – it’s none of your business what I do and how I do it and furthermore, what gives you the right to even have an opinion on what I do.
That is characteristic of the moral avoidance I spoke of earlier.
Society DOES care what you/WE do, how and why you/WE do it and whether you (or I) like it or not, we are accountable for our actions to the society in which we live. The burden of proof is upon us to show that we have valid and morally justifiable reasons to kill animals.
If, for instance, you disagree with Coach, what are your moral arguments for disagreeing to his essentially moral question? If you disagree with me for instance, what are your reasons? What better moral standard are you prepared to offer instead? How should you/we actually treat animals we hunt and WHY? If it is acceptable to shoot more animals than we can consume, why is it acceptable?
I do not believe that any of us posting on this topic is a bad or immoral person per se. All of us have probably done something in our hunting lives of which we are not proud, but made a decision from that experience that we would never do it again. That decision was a moral one whether or not we care to name it as such. But how many of us actually ask ourselves why we made that decision?
As a group within society, we do not give the proper deliberation to what we do and why, or the guiding principles (morals) we impose upon ourselves which limit and control our behaviour. I believe that it is precisely this lack of a cogent, coherent commonly accepted code of ethics which may well be the cause of our downfall. It must be public and it must be one to which all of us are prepared to subscribe publicly so we can show society that we are prepared to be judged by our own standards.
The ‘codes of ethics’ of the various hunting organizations are little more than qualifications for registering a trophy claim. They are largely bereft of any fundamental moral basis.
In my career on the Bowhunting Defence Committee, I never once heard an argument from our adversaries which was not a moral one. The whole fight for our continued existence is overwhelmingly a moral one dictated to us by those adversaries because we wouldn’t give it the time of day or retreated into arguments of moral relativism.
I implore everybody on Ozbow to please consider.
Dennis La Varenne
Dennis La Varénne
Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.
QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8
What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?
HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.
Lets kill things to show the others we have a bigger head . 
