First, let’s define sport hunters. These are hunters that take game for no conceivable reason except that it makes them feel good. But isn’t that the reason we do most everything we choose to do in our recreational time? When we go the range it makes us feel good on many levels from the guttural sensations of controlling recoil amidst the flash and muzzle blast to being a little better than the guy next to you, to being a bit better prepared to defend ourselves against threats . . .
Yes, I’ve hunted, and I love to eat meat. I understand that it’s fun to track game, shoot it and bring it home. It’s part of the primal hunter gatherer that is programmed in our DNA. It makes us feel good. And it feels good, at least to me, to have a PURPOSE behind my hunt. Pheasants are skinned, cubed and made into stew. Deer are gutted and sent to a butcher to fill the freezer. Overpopulated vermin like hogs and prairie dogs have their numbers reduced.
I’m sure no hunter would disagree that the first time they saw a Lion, Rhino, Elephant or Buffalo they were amazed by the size and magnificence of these beasts. To go their home habitat and witness how they survive and reproduce for the short time they are here in the hot and cold, dry and wet, feast and famine is truly a wondrous event. What my question seeks answered is how does one get from that point, “A” to point “B”. Point “B” being, “I would like to shoot and kill that just to watch it die.”
Does it follow from the primal desire to kill? Do hunters eat the lions and rhinos they kill? I really don’t know. And why the need to travel so far to find the biggest, most magnificent specimens to dispatch. When you reverse the process it sounds ridiculous. Imagine a group of lions organizing a trip across continents to kill Donald Trump or Warren Buffet (Substitute some idea of a big, magnificent specimen of successful humanity) in each of their own homes. And then just leave them lying there dead. I mean doesn’t that sound ludicrous?
As I said, I eat meat. I’ve been to dairy farms to purchase raw milk and visited slaughter houses. They are not humanity’s proudest accomplishments, but they have the purpose of feeding our overpopulated, fat asses.
So my question is, lacking any obvious motivations of food or pestilence, how does one get from, “Wow, that’s a magnificent instance of evolution and survival” to “I want to destroy it”. And what part of that makes one feel good. Some on here might want to ask themselves “why” it makes them feel good, too.