I’m talking about a whole country being obsessed with owning and firing guns. I don’t observe that in Germany. Also a hunters license comes with mandatory education about responsibility and preserving wildlife.
Not sure if you’re American or not but here’s a question for you. These bald eagles are allegedly dying from lead poisoning from eating creatures shot by lead bullets/pellets. This must mean they are scavenging. Yes, I know bald eagles do that a lot but they also kill their own prey. So why aren’t vultures dying of this lead poisoning. Vultures only scavenge so it should happen much more often.
Here’s another thought. 80% of eagles brought into a clinic may be dying of lead poisoning but that 80% is part of a small number overall. Notice they never say how many eagles are brought in.
Here’s another thought for you: When someone says such and such is the fastest growing demographic for such and such a thing, it could just mean that there were very few such incidences. 2 such incidences occurred when there used to be just one. WOW! Hundred percent increase? Such incidences have DOUBLED!
Don’t let Rita Skeeter twist your thoughts. Get the whole story.
Ingestion of lead ammunition is the primary reason California Condors (obligate carrion eaters) almost became extinct, are still endangered, and aren’t having the greatest success with being reintroduced.
As for bald eagles, they’re lazy smart, if they see takeout just sitting there, they’re not gonna make dinner from scratch.
Secondary reply: I don’t know If I’d call bald eagles smart. When I drive by a road kill that has vultures and a bald eagle feasting at it, the vultures fly away from the road while the stupid eagle flies right in front of my car. I’ve nearly had them smash into my windshield several times. It is now my standard reaction to slow down if I see a bald eagle eating road kill. I don’t worry about the vultures because they know what to do.
BTW, bald eagles were nearly driven extinct by DDT. We quit using that so bald eagles are now numerous enough that I have to brake to keep from hitting while they eat road kill despite the lead poisoning.
Not denying the condor thing. Still didn’t answer the vulture thing. Yes, I know condors are a type of vulture but so are black vultures and turkey vultures which are more common than ever.
A lot of wildlife rehabs don’t deal with the non-endangered or threatened birds. Several years ago a friend of mine found an injured bird of some sort and we called around trying to find help for it but all of the local rehabbers said if it wasn’t a bald eagle they couldn’t help. So because most vultures aren’t endangered afaik, they just die and probably nobody is keeping track.
OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.
From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don’t like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesn’t consume many resources, as they’re just living their lives in nature.
I don’t think there’s any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. That’s fine, and you can just not do it. I’ve never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. It’s not really something I want to do. I can’t construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can’t either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren’t hunted by humans.
Just because something happens on its own in nature doesn’t mean it’s a good thing per se - for instance, I prefer the warmth of my heated house over the “natural” cold temperatures of the winter months. That’s the famous “appeal to nature” fallacy right there.
Also, like others already pointed out, hunting deer is only necessary because we eradicated most of their natural predators. Making the case for hunting today in order to fix a problem hunting created in the past feels oddly circular to me.
I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally weren’t hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat from predators was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.
It’s just those predators were also what kept prey populations under control, so now we have to take over that role in order to prevent their extinction. Left to their own devices, they’ll overgraze and kill the areas ability to support them, and then they all die because the area won’t necessarily bounce back quickly enough as they die of starvation.
An appeal to nature is only wrong if it’s saying something is good because it happens in nature. I don’t believe I did so, except maybe saying it’s ethically better for them to live in nature than in slaughter houses. I’d love to see an argument in favor of horrible large-scale animal raising though. That’d be interesting.
It being evolutionarily necessary isn’t an appeal to nature. It’s just stating a fact. It isn’t a judgment. It’s just a statement that overpopulation causes massive issues, and prey animals evolve to have tons of children because they were hunted (by other animals than humans) . Without hunting of some kind, their populations balloon out of control.
It’s not circular, because it needs to be done. If it isn’t done we have massive problems. It doesn’t depend on any other logic. Sure, the issue was created, in part, by hunting also (a lot just because predators won’t live near population centers though), but the argument that it needs to be done isn’t dependent on you agreeing with killing predators.
A little off subject, but I want to start a movement to have farmers raise a few cows and pigs in the old method, letting them roam around and forage, not treating them horribly, and then selling the meat directly to consumers. Because if you bought an entire cow’s worth of cuts at a grocer, it’s an astronomical sum, even as the rancher is getting barely enough to get by from it, the agriconglomerates hold the gates and are squeezing everyone, and it’s forced these factory style farms to proliferate to stay in business, as the corporates won’t pay enough for the old style of farming to be worth it, but still charge more than enough so that old way would more than be worth it if we cut out the parasitical mega corporations.
It’s kind of baked in though, usda inspections and the like on beef, it’s illegal to go outside of them really, barriers to entry that probably are ruinously expensive for someone doing a handful of cow shares, but affordable for a conglomerate doing a thousand head
But there’s a way around it, doing cow share programs, selling directly to people but it’s grey area.
Anyway it’s a major harm reduction as far as I’m concerned. People aren’t going to stop buying meat. We can give farmers more money, save consumers money, and give the animals better lives, by cutting out these mega corporations from the deal, and in doing it with meat, it’s an in to do all sorts of vegetables and the like as well, we need community sponsored agriculture that is not more expensive than the grocers, and I think that’s more possible now with rising grocery costs.
Crazy ape comment aside (i’d put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but that’s just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don’t really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there’s no lead. What’s really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms. If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don’t see how banning them is the best option in general.
I didn’t make any proposals in my above comment. It’s entirely statements of observations. I don’t know what you mean by saying you don’t see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn’t negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
Have-A-Heart traps are used by animal welfare groups and animal shelters, so I don’t know if it’s so bad to wait in the trap, unless said animal groups are incorrect to use said traps. Admittedly, cats who have never encountered these traps sometimes freak out when first trapped, and cats who have seen them before can outsmart them easily. I’ve never thought they were good for trapping cats, as they are specifically designed NOT to trap cats.
Have-A-Heart traps are intended to trap furbearing animals but allow for the release of cats, dogs or endagered species. You’ve probably seen them before. These staps are box rectangle shaped, chrome colored, and are activated when the animal places their weight on the lever in the back of the trap. These are also called double door traps.
Bolt guns are commonly used in animal slaughter and are often considered ‘humane.’ If you eat red meat, the cow was likely killed with a captive bolt gun.
I’m familiar with all of the technology involved, but I’m not sure about the applications you’re describing.
With a Have-A-Heart, the specific goal is live capture and release. There is no killing involved. The animal might be properly freaked out at the experience of being trapped, but that is specifically so as to permit an animal’s live relocation.
With a bolt gun, it’s meant to be used in a slaughterhouse scenario, which is a whole moral discussion of its own, but at bare minimum one wants the animals to be kept as calm as possible until the bolt gun is applied, because stressed out meat tastes worse than calm and placid up until the moment of death.
With hunting, the goal is to kill the target as cleanly as possible, preferably with a single bullet. That’s the Scenario A I’m describing above.
If one were hunting an animal with the intent of killing it, then a trap, followed by a knife or bolt gun, would maximize the terror felt by the animal to be killed. Sure, one may be putting less lead out in the environment, but at the cost of putting the animal through… almost the most appalling experience of death possible, with the admitted exception of a poorly-aimed bullet or arrow, followed by a wounded flight through the woods and slowly bleeding out.
So… if one’s absolute maximum goal is to reduce environmental lead, yes, that is one way to do it, but the moral implications of that method seem pretty rough.
That works. I’m not saying you can’t hunt with other methods. I’m just saying that I can’t see much of an argument against the use of leadless firearms for hunting, besides a weak gun control one (hunting weapons aren’t a significant portion of the danger from firearms, mostly handguns or rifles like the AR-15). People can hunt however they want, or not at all, as long as it is controlled to healthy levels and doesn’t cause any other issues, and, ideally doesn’t cause unnecessary suffering to the animal.
There isn’t any argument for gun control. Tell the CIA to stop grooming kids on Discord and Telegram to do school shootings, problem solved. Notice this never happens in Iceland. That’s because their version of the CIA isn’t on Discord.
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don’t really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there’s no lead.
In the isolated context of lead poisoning alone, sure, banning lead is an answer.
In the greater context of gun ownership in general, it’s more tricky.
But i wasn’t advocating either , simply pointing out that banning guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
What’s really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever?
There are some , but i wasn’t pushing for any so i’m not sure they are relevant here.
I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms.
Either you haven’t thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don’t see how banning them is the best option in general.
As was said previously, in this isolated context you are probably right, in any kind of wider context, not so much.
I didn’t make any proposals in my above comment. It’s entirely statements of observations. I don’t know what you mean by saying you don’t see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn’t negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
That’s possibly my bad, i meant more that you were making statements without any (written) consideration to the wider context in which they were made.
I don’t necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
Examples:
I will preface this by saying that my perspective on “nature” is that we are part of it, even will all the fucked up self destructive stuff we have going on , so it’s not like we can really do anything “unnatural”, i use the term natural below to mean nature if we didn’t have such an outsized effect on natural processes.
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don’t like to be attacked by wild animals.
That’s only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which I’m sure you’ll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
This magical “naturally healthy” state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
It also doesn’t consume many resources, as they’re just living their lives in nature.
Also requires a natural equilibrium or regulation as a baseline.
I don’t think there’s any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it.
I can’t construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can’t either.
Overhunting and ecosystem collapse, trophy hunting, selective hunting (think ivory), disease control, hunting for “sport” (think fox “hunting”).
Those were just off the top of my head.
and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors
an equilibrium, not the only equilibrium, it also mentions evolution of equilibriums but is presented from a perspective that the equilibrium presented is now fixed (it is not).
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren’t hunted by humans.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because that’s how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
“Damage” is relative and a natural part of the evolution(or collapse) of ecosystems.
Either you haven’t thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
If we’re talking about gun control, fine. I’m all for reasonable gun control. I don’t think targeting hunting rifles/shotguns are the most useful though. Handguns are the issue there. Still, yeah, more good gun control would be nice. Not really part of this discussion though, but that’s the one argument I did consider, but doesn’t really apply to hunting weapons. If we can get it passed for the weapons that actually matter, then I’d agree losing hunting weapons are fine.
That’s only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which I’m sure you’ll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
Yes. That formal enforced regulation needs to exist, and I don’t know anywhere that it doesn’t. In the US, you need a license, and you can only kill a certain number of the animal per season, and that’s all based on how many of the animals need to be culled, and it does need to be done. Equilibrium is maintained through this regulation.
This magical “naturally healthy” state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
I never said “naturally healthy”. I said they evolved to have a certain percentage of losses. If that isn’t maintained by other predators, we need to do it. It’s naturally (in its current state) unhealthy. Hunting is required to keep it healthy.
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Sure. That’d be another solution. If we’re discussing policy, I think we can safely ignore it though. There’s a lot of solutions that are not going to happen. We don’t need to rule out all of them to discuss what we actually can do.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because that’s how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
No. They boom and collapse. This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while. It doesn’t reach an equilibrium state because they evolutionary pressures were different when they evolved. Maybe this isn’t true for all prey animals, but many, such as deer and rabbits, it is. Population booms, they eat all easily available food, they die off from starvation or disease, then they boom back.
A lot of your argument against hunting is that it requires regulation. No one is arguing against that. It is needed, and this is already recognized and enforced. We just need to now enforce participation in a way that doesn’t create negative externalities from lead poisoning.
Yes. That formal enforced regulation needs to exist, and I don’t know anywhere that it doesn’t. In the US, you need a license, and you can only kill a certain number of the animal per season, and that’s all based on how many of the animals need to be culled, and it does need to be done. Equilibrium is maintained through this regulation.
Animals don’t need to be culled, for the maintenance of the current pseudo equilibrium it’s probably a good idea, but it’s not an absolute requirement.
I never said “naturally healthy”
I literally quoted you.
I said they evolved to have a certain percentage of losses. If that isn’t maintained by other predators, we need to do it. It’s naturally (in its current state) unhealthy. Hunting is required to keep it healthy.
Hunting is the one of the current mechanisms we use to (roughly) maintain the status quo, it’s not the only mechanism, nor is it the only option, it’s just one of the ones we are using right now.
Healthy is relative in multiple ways, there would be a new equilibrium on the other side of the shitstorm that would probably arise from us dropping our current efforts with no replacement.
That might be subjectively bad for us, but it would exist.
Sure. That’d be another solution. If we’re discussing policy, I think we can safely ignore it though. There’s a lot of solutions that are not going to happen. We don’t need to rule out all of them to discuss what we actually can do.
Unless there’s some sort of magic book that already has the answers to what is and isn’t viable then we very much do need to rule them out, that’s how decisions and policies are made.
No. They boom and collapse. This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while. It doesn’t reach an equilibrium state because they evolutionary pressures were different when they evolved. Maybe this isn’t true for all prey animals, but many, such as deer and rabbits, it is. Population booms, they eat all easily available food, they die off from starvation or disease, then they boom back.
I’m not sure what the no is about given the following sentences basically say the same thing i did.
If they aren’t fit they die off, a new equilibrium is reached or the ecosystem collapses.
“They boom and collapse.,This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while.” is one way an equilibrium is reached if the species(singular or plural) don’t die off.
A lot of your argument against hunting is that it requires regulation. No one is arguing against that. It is needed, and this is already recognized and enforced. We just need to now enforce participation in a way that doesn’t create negative externalities from lead poisoning.
I’d be interested to see where you’re seeing an argument against hunting from me as, afaik, i haven’t said anything to that effect.
My only argument has been that your statements were omitting what i would consider important context.
Animals don’t need to be culled, for the maintenance of the current pseudo equilibrium it’s probably a good idea, but it’s not an absolute requirement.
Literally nothing is required. What’s your point? Are you just trying to argue about nothing? The Earth can just be destroyed. It isn’t required to exist. So what? We’re talking about solutions to a problem. There is a problem with lead bullets. There’s also a problem with a lack of natural predation. We should try to solve these problems. We don’t have to solve any problem, but what’s the point in starting arguments with people online saying we don’t need to solve anything?
I never said “naturally healthy”
I literally quoted you.
I had to go back to see what was said. I didn’t say anything was special about it being natural, like what you implied by saying it was magical. I said it’s kept naturally healthy by predators, as in nature had a mechanism to keep it healthy. This isn’t an appeal to nature, as you implied. It’s a statement of fact. It isn’t saying natural is better. It’s saying there is a natural thing. Doing it without nature accomplishes the same goal. So you did “quote me” in that you used two words I also used, you didn’t include anything else surrounding it, and made it say something it didn’t.
Healthy is relative in multiple ways, there would be a new equilibrium on the other side of the shitstorm that would probably arise from us dropping our current efforts with no replacement.
As I said. We could wait for evolution to take its course. I don’t think waiting centuries with booming and crashing populations of animals is a particularly smart idea. Maybe you do, but you haven’t said anything other than “we don’t have to do anything.” Again, no shit! Stop writing these long comments saying literally nothing.
Unless there’s some sort of magic book that already has the answers to what is and isn’t viable then we very much do need to rule them out, that’s how decisions and policies are made.
No, we don’t. We don’t need to discuss magical fairies taking care of the problem. We don’t need to discuss finding a magic lamp to solve the problem. Some things can safely be ignored because they’re so unlikely to happen.
I’m not sure what the no is about given the following sentences basically say the same thing i did.
I’d be interested to see where you’re seeing an argument against hunting from me as, afaik, i haven’t said anything to that effect.
Fair enough. You aren’t making any argument besides that we should do everything but discuss how to solve these issues. Someone said hunting needed to stop. I said it’s necessary for the current state of things. You’ve argued against what I said, which implies an argument against hunting, but really it’s just an annoying “… but what about” argument making no claims and no actual arguments.
This is my last reply unless you actually want to have a discussion. If you do, discuss in good faith. We do not have to rule out things that can’t reasonably happen. We should assume that suffering is at least somewhat negative. We should assume that environmental experts saying prey populations need to be culled are correct. If you don’t agree to these, there isn’t a discussion to be had.
My only point has consistently been that your statements lacked important supporting context and are written like they are the only correct option, that weakens them.
Questioning your weak statements seems to have upset you and rather than actually responding to my only actual point you’ve constructed multiple other positions i’ve not taken.
When asked for examples you moved to “you are discussing in bad faith” (still no examples , i might add).
A discussion is impossible with someone unwilling to engage (or unable to understand) the actual position of the other party.
The rest is just a long winded version of this, feel free to skip it.
Literally nothing is required. What’s your point? Are you just trying to argue about nothing? …
My whole point, which i have stated multiple times, is that your statements are weak.
things like “and it does need to be done.” implies that it is the only answer, when it isn’t.
There is a problem with lead bullets. There’s also a problem with a lack of natural predation. We should try to solve these problems. We don’t have to solve any problem, but what’s the point in starting arguments with people online saying we don’t need to solve anything?
Again, point to where anyone said we don’t need to solve anything ?
If your answer to someone questioning the validity of your statements is to say “fuck it, obviously you just mean we shouldn’t solve anything” then i expect there’s nothing further to gain from a conversation.
I had to go back to see what was said. I didn’t say anything was special about it being natural, like what you implied by saying it was magical. I said it’s kept naturally healthy by predators, as in nature had a mechanism to keep it healthy. This isn’t an appeal to nature, as you implied. It’s a statement of fact. It isn’t saying natural is better. It’s saying there is a natural thing. Doing it without nature accomplishes the same goal. So you did “quote me” in that you used two words I also used, you didn’t include anything else surrounding it, and made it say something it didn’t.
I literally quoted the surrounding sentence in that reply, not just the two words, if you didn’t read it , that’s on you.
As i’ve said, multiple times, there are mechanisms in place for balance and/or collapse, healthy is subjective.
As I said. We could wait for evolution to take its course. I don’t think waiting centuries with booming and crashing populations of animals is a particularly smart idea. Maybe you do, but you haven’t said anything other than “we don’t have to do anything.” Again, no shit! Stop writing these long comments saying literally nothing.
In your reply to me, yes, in the original response, not so much, which again i will remind you is the actual issue i’ve been mentioning this whole time.
My original reply was basically , “i don’t agree or disagree with your points but perhaps add context so your arguments aren’t so brittle” everything after that is responding to your questions. Its seems my responses aren’t to your liking but i’m not sure there’s anything i can do about that.
I’ll add a TL;DR; for you so you can skim.
No, we don’t. We don’t need to discuss magical fairies taking care of the problem. We don’t need to discuss finding a magic lamp to solve the problem. Some things can safely be ignored because they’re so unlikely to happen.
I never said discussion was needed, i said that ruling out options is a part of how decisions and policies are made, if you think magical fairies being ruled out requires discussion, that’s on you.
In the actual context on this thread of discussion i think that artificially increased predation could be (and historically has been) a viable solution to overpopulation.
Ceding areas to wildlife has also been used.
I said specifically that a shitstorm would probably be the result of dropping our current measures without a replacement that doesn’t mean other options can’t be discussed.
And that whole reply was again to point out the statement you made was an implied objective fact.
You aren’t making any argument besides that we should do everything but discuss how to solve these issues.
I mean…no , i’ll quote my repeated statements of my only arguments :
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
I don’t necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
My only argument has been that your statements were omitting what i would consider important context.
and then in this response
“i don’t agree or disagree with your points but perhaps add context so your arguments aren’t so brittle”
If you want to attribute some other argument to me (that isn’t a direct response to your questions) I’d appreciate if you could point out where it was made.
This is my last reply unless you actually want to have a discussion. If you do, discuss in good faith. We do not have to rule out things that can’t reasonably happen.
All of my responses were in good faith, if you don’t understand that dismissing something because it is unlikely is literally ruling out an option i can’t help you with that.
We should assume that suffering is at least somewhat negative.
I don’t know what you mean by this but I’m fairly sure i haven’t argued to the contrary.
We should assume that environmental experts saying prey populations need to be culled are correct.
Again, i haven’t argued against this, only that it’s not the only option, as was implied by your statements.
If you don’t agree to these, there isn’t a discussion to be had.
I agree, “If you don’t agree to these things I’ve unilaterally stated to be true with no contextual support or citations then your responses are in bad faith” isn’t a discussion, it’s a personal echo chamber.
I have a half assed argument against hunting, and it’s mostly my being a picky ass. Most of the time, the game around here, you get better meat from the store. So people just let it sit in their freezer and it ends up going to waste. Which reminds me, I have some moose ass in my freezer I gotta eat.
You must be pretty rested, because you didn’t even try to make an argument. What were the leaps in logic? Can you actually explain, or are you just implying there are to sound smart, but can’t actually identify any?
The overwhelming majority of bullets are used against paper or steel targets. Most hunters take the entire carcass for butchering, so the eagles aren’t eating lead from animals shot and left in the wilderness. And given the volume needed, I wouldn’t be surprised that they’re eating fragments fired at steel targets that they mistake for rocks to keep in their stomach to grind up food.
Don’t know what they do over there, but we usually get the lungs and guts out as soon as possible in order to keep the meat from spoiling. Long lived predators that likes to scavenge can develop lead poisoning from those remains if it’s their main source of food.
If confusing with rocks was the main source you’d expect it to be just as common in other birds.
You tend to be generous with what you discard because you don’t want to eat lead.
I could only find one report where they measured Pb in blood. People who self reported eating game meat in Utah had 30% higher lead levels than people who did not.
This is untrue, gastroliths are associated only with birds that eat plants. They grind up food, which isn’t necessary for meat. Eagles eat bullets from animals that have either been shot and abandoned, lost, or had parts of them discarded as zqxwas pointed out.
That’s why I also mentioned to stop shooting guns. If you are shooting in such an unsafe way that fragments fly around and get lost, then you shouldn’t be allowed to shoot in the first place.
Yes, if there are bullets or parts of metal that fly randomly, it is always going to be a hazard. Even without lead poisoning, I don’t believe that chunks of metal in the digestive system would be good for this bird, or any other animal. And what is the point, what good does a stupid outdoors gun range bring? Even if you think that it’s fine for people to learn how to be better at shooting deadly weapons, what does an outdoors setting bring other than risks?
They’re cheaper to build and maintain, they’re more robust, they’re more dispersed, they can accommodate longer ranges, and they’re less restrictive on types of ammunition and types of firearms.
Yes, and you all understand just how controversial it is to do as well, considering that reintroducing predators is something people are trying on both our continents. Reintroducing wolves to the forests of the eastern united states may happen in my lifetime but is unlikely as the people who live where they would be enjoy hunting for meat and don’t like the idea of having to shoot wolves that get too bold. They’re currently controversially being reintroduced in the West like near Yellowstone. Other predators like cougars also need to be allowed to populate more. Even then though, nothing on this continent but humans is taking down boars. They’re giant and massively invasive, an ecological calamity.
But for the time being, hunters should be switching to lead free shot, and they should continue hunting white tail deer. Target shooters should also be using lead free shot, in general if you don’t want particles of it in your bloodstream don’t shoot with it.
The wolves were driven off for a reason. They had a tendency to snack on pets, livestock and small children until they learned to fear us. Those issues all come back if they stop fearing us again.
I think you might have some ontologically incongruous standards. We are crazy apes. You can take the guns away, but the murder will persist for millennia, if not gene edited out. Banning the guns and lead bullets is more likely to work than expecting humanity to spontaneously diverge from its evolutionary roots as a bang bus murder ape
I don’t know, humans are good at diverging from their instincts when it comes to letting sick people die, but when it comes to killing less, they cannot anymore?
I think that low-ass standards are what prevent humans from getting any better, if you start justifying mindless murders as “just instinct” then of course people will be fine with it.
And funnily enough, that’s one of the main arguments that hunters use, saying that they’re just doing something “natural”.
We are killing less. And overwhelmingly so. If you don’t count faceless, recontectualized packaged cow, chicken, and pig meat. We’re also still pretty good about keeping our close group alive, but medicine men, insurance, and numbers over 100 are a strictly cultural practice not cemented within our genetic memory in any helpful way, so society as a whole suffers under the burden of our limited empathy.
You can also get into the economics of governance to get a good look at what it would mean to move the systems in place enough to reach the sort of universal socioeconomic safety that you’d personally find acceptable. I’m a fan of Europe’s deal… up to a point.
I really don’t mean to cut things off, but the scope of this conversation would necessarily reach so incredibly wide that I don’t believe I can keep your attention or mine for a dozen pages of philosophy, biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and economics. In short, I, personally, can only expect people to fit neatly into a groove so long as it isn’t too far removed from the one we dug a hundred thousand years ago. Certain people have done too much to remove themselves, and to some degree us, from personal responsibility in the US to do anything but set fire to what we have.
“Choose lead free ammunition”
No?
Just stop shooting guns and murdering things like a crazy ape?
Let’s try the not poisonous bulltes first. Because something tells me that Americans can’t even do that.
The American mind cannot comprehend this. Probably due to neurological symptoms from lead poisoning or sth
What are you even talking about? There are plenty of people that hunt even here in Germany.
Americans don’t have a monopoly on hunting.
I’m talking about a whole country being obsessed with owning and firing guns. I don’t observe that in Germany. Also a hunters license comes with mandatory education about responsibility and preserving wildlife.
So do hunting licenses in the US. Wildlife enforcement has some of the most authority in the state.
The issue is the states allow inherently unsafe munitions to be used. If they changed hunters in the US would comply
We have a monopoly on hunting 30-50 feral hogs tyvm
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Not sure if you’re American or not but here’s a question for you. These bald eagles are allegedly dying from lead poisoning from eating creatures shot by lead bullets/pellets. This must mean they are scavenging. Yes, I know bald eagles do that a lot but they also kill their own prey. So why aren’t vultures dying of this lead poisoning. Vultures only scavenge so it should happen much more often.
Here’s another thought. 80% of eagles brought into a clinic may be dying of lead poisoning but that 80% is part of a small number overall. Notice they never say how many eagles are brought in.
Here’s another thought for you: When someone says such and such is the fastest growing demographic for such and such a thing, it could just mean that there were very few such incidences. 2 such incidences occurred when there used to be just one. WOW! Hundred percent increase? Such incidences have DOUBLED!
Don’t let Rita Skeeter twist your thoughts. Get the whole story.
Ingestion of lead ammunition is the primary reason California Condors (obligate carrion eaters) almost became extinct, are still endangered, and aren’t having the greatest success with being reintroduced.
As for bald eagles, they’re lazy smart, if they see takeout just sitting there, they’re not gonna make dinner from scratch.
Secondary reply: I don’t know If I’d call bald eagles smart. When I drive by a road kill that has vultures and a bald eagle feasting at it, the vultures fly away from the road while the stupid eagle flies right in front of my car. I’ve nearly had them smash into my windshield several times. It is now my standard reaction to slow down if I see a bald eagle eating road kill. I don’t worry about the vultures because they know what to do.
BTW, bald eagles were nearly driven extinct by DDT. We quit using that so bald eagles are now numerous enough that I have to brake to keep from hitting while they eat road kill despite the lead poisoning.
Not denying the condor thing. Still didn’t answer the vulture thing. Yes, I know condors are a type of vulture but so are black vultures and turkey vultures which are more common than ever.
A lot of wildlife rehabs don’t deal with the non-endangered or threatened birds. Several years ago a friend of mine found an injured bird of some sort and we called around trying to find help for it but all of the local rehabbers said if it wasn’t a bald eagle they couldn’t help. So because most vultures aren’t endangered afaik, they just die and probably nobody is keeping track.
I couldn’t tell you and I don’t really care. Just jumping on the opportunity to mock gun culture
People don’t really change their actions very often. I mean, people are still posting on twitter, for example.
OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.
From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don’t like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesn’t consume many resources, as they’re just living their lives in nature.
I don’t think there’s any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. That’s fine, and you can just not do it. I’ve never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. It’s not really something I want to do. I can’t construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can’t either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren’t hunted by humans.
Just because something happens on its own in nature doesn’t mean it’s a good thing per se - for instance, I prefer the warmth of my heated house over the “natural” cold temperatures of the winter months. That’s the famous “appeal to nature” fallacy right there.
Also, like others already pointed out, hunting deer is only necessary because we eradicated most of their natural predators. Making the case for hunting today in order to fix a problem hunting created in the past feels oddly circular to me.
I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally weren’t hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat from predators was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.
It’s just those predators were also what kept prey populations under control, so now we have to take over that role in order to prevent their extinction. Left to their own devices, they’ll overgraze and kill the areas ability to support them, and then they all die because the area won’t necessarily bounce back quickly enough as they die of starvation.
An appeal to nature is only wrong if it’s saying something is good because it happens in nature. I don’t believe I did so, except maybe saying it’s ethically better for them to live in nature than in slaughter houses. I’d love to see an argument in favor of horrible large-scale animal raising though. That’d be interesting.
It being evolutionarily necessary isn’t an appeal to nature. It’s just stating a fact. It isn’t a judgment. It’s just a statement that overpopulation causes massive issues, and prey animals evolve to have tons of children because they were hunted (by other animals than humans) . Without hunting of some kind, their populations balloon out of control.
It’s not circular, because it needs to be done. If it isn’t done we have massive problems. It doesn’t depend on any other logic. Sure, the issue was created, in part, by hunting also (a lot just because predators won’t live near population centers though), but the argument that it needs to be done isn’t dependent on you agreeing with killing predators.
A little off subject, but I want to start a movement to have farmers raise a few cows and pigs in the old method, letting them roam around and forage, not treating them horribly, and then selling the meat directly to consumers. Because if you bought an entire cow’s worth of cuts at a grocer, it’s an astronomical sum, even as the rancher is getting barely enough to get by from it, the agriconglomerates hold the gates and are squeezing everyone, and it’s forced these factory style farms to proliferate to stay in business, as the corporates won’t pay enough for the old style of farming to be worth it, but still charge more than enough so that old way would more than be worth it if we cut out the parasitical mega corporations.
It’s kind of baked in though, usda inspections and the like on beef, it’s illegal to go outside of them really, barriers to entry that probably are ruinously expensive for someone doing a handful of cow shares, but affordable for a conglomerate doing a thousand head
But there’s a way around it, doing cow share programs, selling directly to people but it’s grey area.
Anyway it’s a major harm reduction as far as I’m concerned. People aren’t going to stop buying meat. We can give farmers more money, save consumers money, and give the animals better lives, by cutting out these mega corporations from the deal, and in doing it with meat, it’s an in to do all sorts of vegetables and the like as well, we need community sponsored agriculture that is not more expensive than the grocers, and I think that’s more possible now with rising grocery costs.
Crazy ape comment aside (i’d put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but that’s just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don’t really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there’s no lead. What’s really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms. If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don’t see how banning them is the best option in general.
I didn’t make any proposals in my above comment. It’s entirely statements of observations. I don’t know what you mean by saying you don’t see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn’t negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
Where I grew up, most people use a Have-a-Heart trap or a snare, then a knife or captive bolt gun (no bulltets).
Scenario A: You’re minding your own business, when a bullet passes through your heart/lungs and you’re dead in seconds.
Scenario B: You get caught in a trap and wait for hours for an ape with a knife or a bolt gun to come along and finish the job.
Honestly, if I were an animal, I’d prefer Scenario A.
Have-A-Heart traps are used by animal welfare groups and animal shelters, so I don’t know if it’s so bad to wait in the trap, unless said animal groups are incorrect to use said traps. Admittedly, cats who have never encountered these traps sometimes freak out when first trapped, and cats who have seen them before can outsmart them easily. I’ve never thought they were good for trapping cats, as they are specifically designed NOT to trap cats.
Have-A-Heart traps are intended to trap furbearing animals but allow for the release of cats, dogs or endagered species. You’ve probably seen them before. These staps are box rectangle shaped, chrome colored, and are activated when the animal places their weight on the lever in the back of the trap. These are also called double door traps.
Bolt guns are commonly used in animal slaughter and are often considered ‘humane.’ If you eat red meat, the cow was likely killed with a captive bolt gun.
I’m familiar with all of the technology involved, but I’m not sure about the applications you’re describing.
With a Have-A-Heart, the specific goal is live capture and release. There is no killing involved. The animal might be properly freaked out at the experience of being trapped, but that is specifically so as to permit an animal’s live relocation.
With a bolt gun, it’s meant to be used in a slaughterhouse scenario, which is a whole moral discussion of its own, but at bare minimum one wants the animals to be kept as calm as possible until the bolt gun is applied, because stressed out meat tastes worse than calm and placid up until the moment of death.
With hunting, the goal is to kill the target as cleanly as possible, preferably with a single bullet. That’s the Scenario A I’m describing above.
If one were hunting an animal with the intent of killing it, then a trap, followed by a knife or bolt gun, would maximize the terror felt by the animal to be killed. Sure, one may be putting less lead out in the environment, but at the cost of putting the animal through… almost the most appalling experience of death possible, with the admitted exception of a poorly-aimed bullet or arrow, followed by a wounded flight through the woods and slowly bleeding out.
So… if one’s absolute maximum goal is to reduce environmental lead, yes, that is one way to do it, but the moral implications of that method seem pretty rough.
That works. I’m not saying you can’t hunt with other methods. I’m just saying that I can’t see much of an argument against the use of leadless firearms for hunting, besides a weak gun control one (hunting weapons aren’t a significant portion of the danger from firearms, mostly handguns or rifles like the AR-15). People can hunt however they want, or not at all, as long as it is controlled to healthy levels and doesn’t cause any other issues, and, ideally doesn’t cause unnecessary suffering to the animal.
There isn’t any argument for gun control. Tell the CIA to stop grooming kids on Discord and Telegram to do school shootings, problem solved. Notice this never happens in Iceland. That’s because their version of the CIA isn’t on Discord.
In the isolated context of lead poisoning alone, sure, banning lead is an answer.
In the greater context of gun ownership in general, it’s more tricky.
But i wasn’t advocating either , simply pointing out that banning guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
There are some , but i wasn’t pushing for any so i’m not sure they are relevant here.
Either you haven’t thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
As was said previously, in this isolated context you are probably right, in any kind of wider context, not so much.
That’s possibly my bad, i meant more that you were making statements without any (written) consideration to the wider context in which they were made.
I don’t necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
Examples:
I will preface this by saying that my perspective on “nature” is that we are part of it, even will all the fucked up self destructive stuff we have going on , so it’s not like we can really do anything “unnatural”, i use the term natural below to mean nature if we didn’t have such an outsized effect on natural processes.
That’s only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which I’m sure you’ll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
This magical “naturally healthy” state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
Also requires a natural equilibrium or regulation as a baseline.
Overhunting and ecosystem collapse, trophy hunting, selective hunting (think ivory), disease control, hunting for “sport” (think fox “hunting”).
Those were just off the top of my head.
an equilibrium, not the only equilibrium, it also mentions evolution of equilibriums but is presented from a perspective that the equilibrium presented is now fixed (it is not).
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because that’s how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
“Damage” is relative and a natural part of the evolution(or collapse) of ecosystems.
If we’re talking about gun control, fine. I’m all for reasonable gun control. I don’t think targeting hunting rifles/shotguns are the most useful though. Handguns are the issue there. Still, yeah, more good gun control would be nice. Not really part of this discussion though, but that’s the one argument I did consider, but doesn’t really apply to hunting weapons. If we can get it passed for the weapons that actually matter, then I’d agree losing hunting weapons are fine.
Yes. That formal enforced regulation needs to exist, and I don’t know anywhere that it doesn’t. In the US, you need a license, and you can only kill a certain number of the animal per season, and that’s all based on how many of the animals need to be culled, and it does need to be done. Equilibrium is maintained through this regulation.
I never said “naturally healthy”. I said they evolved to have a certain percentage of losses. If that isn’t maintained by other predators, we need to do it. It’s naturally (in its current state) unhealthy. Hunting is required to keep it healthy.
Sure. That’d be another solution. If we’re discussing policy, I think we can safely ignore it though. There’s a lot of solutions that are not going to happen. We don’t need to rule out all of them to discuss what we actually can do.
No. They boom and collapse. This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while. It doesn’t reach an equilibrium state because they evolutionary pressures were different when they evolved. Maybe this isn’t true for all prey animals, but many, such as deer and rabbits, it is. Population booms, they eat all easily available food, they die off from starvation or disease, then they boom back.
A lot of your argument against hunting is that it requires regulation. No one is arguing against that. It is needed, and this is already recognized and enforced. We just need to now enforce participation in a way that doesn’t create negative externalities from lead poisoning.
Animals don’t need to be culled, for the maintenance of the current pseudo equilibrium it’s probably a good idea, but it’s not an absolute requirement.
I literally quoted you.
Hunting is the one of the current mechanisms we use to (roughly) maintain the status quo, it’s not the only mechanism, nor is it the only option, it’s just one of the ones we are using right now.
Healthy is relative in multiple ways, there would be a new equilibrium on the other side of the shitstorm that would probably arise from us dropping our current efforts with no replacement.
That might be subjectively bad for us, but it would exist.
Unless there’s some sort of magic book that already has the answers to what is and isn’t viable then we very much do need to rule them out, that’s how decisions and policies are made.
I’m not sure what the no is about given the following sentences basically say the same thing i did.
If they aren’t fit they die off, a new equilibrium is reached or the ecosystem collapses.
“They boom and collapse.,This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while.” is one way an equilibrium is reached if the species(singular or plural) don’t die off.
I’d be interested to see where you’re seeing an argument against hunting from me as, afaik, i haven’t said anything to that effect.
My only argument has been that your statements were omitting what i would consider important context.
Literally nothing is required. What’s your point? Are you just trying to argue about nothing? The Earth can just be destroyed. It isn’t required to exist. So what? We’re talking about solutions to a problem. There is a problem with lead bullets. There’s also a problem with a lack of natural predation. We should try to solve these problems. We don’t have to solve any problem, but what’s the point in starting arguments with people online saying we don’t need to solve anything?
I had to go back to see what was said. I didn’t say anything was special about it being natural, like what you implied by saying it was magical. I said it’s kept naturally healthy by predators, as in nature had a mechanism to keep it healthy. This isn’t an appeal to nature, as you implied. It’s a statement of fact. It isn’t saying natural is better. It’s saying there is a natural thing. Doing it without nature accomplishes the same goal. So you did “quote me” in that you used two words I also used, you didn’t include anything else surrounding it, and made it say something it didn’t.
As I said. We could wait for evolution to take its course. I don’t think waiting centuries with booming and crashing populations of animals is a particularly smart idea. Maybe you do, but you haven’t said anything other than “we don’t have to do anything.” Again, no shit! Stop writing these long comments saying literally nothing.
No, we don’t. We don’t need to discuss magical fairies taking care of the problem. We don’t need to discuss finding a magic lamp to solve the problem. Some things can safely be ignored because they’re so unlikely to happen.
Fair enough. You aren’t making any argument besides that we should do everything but discuss how to solve these issues. Someone said hunting needed to stop. I said it’s necessary for the current state of things. You’ve argued against what I said, which implies an argument against hunting, but really it’s just an annoying “… but what about” argument making no claims and no actual arguments.
This is my last reply unless you actually want to have a discussion. If you do, discuss in good faith. We do not have to rule out things that can’t reasonably happen. We should assume that suffering is at least somewhat negative. We should assume that environmental experts saying prey populations need to be culled are correct. If you don’t agree to these, there isn’t a discussion to be had.
TL;DR;
My only point has consistently been that your statements lacked important supporting context and are written like they are the only correct option, that weakens them.
Questioning your weak statements seems to have upset you and rather than actually responding to my only actual point you’ve constructed multiple other positions i’ve not taken.
When asked for examples you moved to “you are discussing in bad faith” (still no examples , i might add).
A discussion is impossible with someone unwilling to engage (or unable to understand) the actual position of the other party.
The rest is just a long winded version of this, feel free to skip it.
My whole point, which i have stated multiple times, is that your statements are weak.
things like “and it does need to be done.” implies that it is the only answer, when it isn’t.
Again, point to where anyone said we don’t need to solve anything ?
If your answer to someone questioning the validity of your statements is to say “fuck it, obviously you just mean we shouldn’t solve anything” then i expect there’s nothing further to gain from a conversation.
I literally quoted the surrounding sentence in that reply, not just the two words, if you didn’t read it , that’s on you.
As i’ve said, multiple times, there are mechanisms in place for balance and/or collapse, healthy is subjective.
In your reply to me, yes, in the original response, not so much, which again i will remind you is the actual issue i’ve been mentioning this whole time.
My original reply was basically , “i don’t agree or disagree with your points but perhaps add context so your arguments aren’t so brittle” everything after that is responding to your questions. Its seems my responses aren’t to your liking but i’m not sure there’s anything i can do about that.
I’ll add a TL;DR; for you so you can skim.
I never said discussion was needed, i said that ruling out options is a part of how decisions and policies are made, if you think magical fairies being ruled out requires discussion, that’s on you.
In the actual context on this thread of discussion i think that artificially increased predation could be (and historically has been) a viable solution to overpopulation.
Ceding areas to wildlife has also been used.
I said specifically that a shitstorm would probably be the result of dropping our current measures without a replacement that doesn’t mean other options can’t be discussed.
And that whole reply was again to point out the statement you made was an implied objective fact.
I mean…no , i’ll quote my repeated statements of my only arguments :
and then in this response
If you want to attribute some other argument to me (that isn’t a direct response to your questions) I’d appreciate if you could point out where it was made.
All of my responses were in good faith, if you don’t understand that dismissing something because it is unlikely is literally ruling out an option i can’t help you with that.
I don’t know what you mean by this but I’m fairly sure i haven’t argued to the contrary.
Again, i haven’t argued against this, only that it’s not the only option, as was implied by your statements.
I agree, “If you don’t agree to these things I’ve unilaterally stated to be true with no contextual support or citations then your responses are in bad faith” isn’t a discussion, it’s a personal echo chamber.
I have a half assed argument against hunting, and it’s mostly my being a picky ass. Most of the time, the game around here, you get better meat from the store. So people just let it sit in their freezer and it ends up going to waste. Which reminds me, I have some moose ass in my freezer I gotta eat.
You must be exhausted after all those huge jumps in logic and reasoning.
You must be pretty rested, because you didn’t even try to make an argument. What were the leaps in logic? Can you actually explain, or are you just implying there are to sound smart, but can’t actually identify any?
You appealed to pretty much every strawman there is when it comes to animal rights.
You appealed to pretty much every strawman there is when it comes to animal rights.
How so? What was the strawman?
The overwhelming majority of bullets are used against paper or steel targets. Most hunters take the entire carcass for butchering, so the eagles aren’t eating lead from animals shot and left in the wilderness. And given the volume needed, I wouldn’t be surprised that they’re eating fragments fired at steel targets that they mistake for rocks to keep in their stomach to grind up food.
Don’t know what they do over there, but we usually get the lungs and guts out as soon as possible in order to keep the meat from spoiling. Long lived predators that likes to scavenge can develop lead poisoning from those remains if it’s their main source of food.
If confusing with rocks was the main source you’d expect it to be just as common in other birds.
Does that mean hunters also eat lead?
You tend to be generous with what you discard because you don’t want to eat lead.
I could only find one report where they measured Pb in blood. People who self reported eating game meat in Utah had 30% higher lead levels than people who did not.
This is untrue, gastroliths are associated only with birds that eat plants. They grind up food, which isn’t necessary for meat. Eagles eat bullets from animals that have either been shot and abandoned, lost, or had parts of them discarded as zqxwas pointed out.
That’s why I also mentioned to stop shooting guns. If you are shooting in such an unsafe way that fragments fly around and get lost, then you shouldn’t be allowed to shoot in the first place.
You’re not familiar with the concept of an outdoor target range, are you?
Yeah, it is a problem.
Would it be without leaded bullets?
Yes, if there are bullets or parts of metal that fly randomly, it is always going to be a hazard. Even without lead poisoning, I don’t believe that chunks of metal in the digestive system would be good for this bird, or any other animal. And what is the point, what good does a stupid outdoors gun range bring? Even if you think that it’s fine for people to learn how to be better at shooting deadly weapons, what does an outdoors setting bring other than risks?
They’re cheaper to build and maintain, they’re more robust, they’re more dispersed, they can accommodate longer ranges, and they’re less restrictive on types of ammunition and types of firearms.
What about depleted uranium bullets?
We killed the predators on a lot of our continent. Deer hunting is ecologically necessary here. And thats before we get into the boar problem
Not if wolves were reintroduced to native levels.
Yes, and you all understand just how controversial it is to do as well, considering that reintroducing predators is something people are trying on both our continents. Reintroducing wolves to the forests of the eastern united states may happen in my lifetime but is unlikely as the people who live where they would be enjoy hunting for meat and don’t like the idea of having to shoot wolves that get too bold. They’re currently controversially being reintroduced in the West like near Yellowstone. Other predators like cougars also need to be allowed to populate more. Even then though, nothing on this continent but humans is taking down boars. They’re giant and massively invasive, an ecological calamity.
But for the time being, hunters should be switching to lead free shot, and they should continue hunting white tail deer. Target shooters should also be using lead free shot, in general if you don’t want particles of it in your bloodstream don’t shoot with it.
The wolves were driven off for a reason. They had a tendency to snack on pets, livestock and small children until they learned to fear us. Those issues all come back if they stop fearing us again.
Coyotes are also present in many places in the US, and birds of prey can harm pets too.
No excuse for eliminating a healthy and necessary species from the ecology. Human ego trumps all
Cool, latch on the least important reason we did it and ignore the others while acting like you’re somehow superior for doing so I guess.
Plenty of people hunt for food. Lead ammo should be avoided though.
I think you might have some ontologically incongruous standards. We are crazy apes. You can take the guns away, but the murder will persist for millennia, if not gene edited out. Banning the guns and lead bullets is more likely to work than expecting humanity to spontaneously diverge from its evolutionary roots as a bang bus murder ape
I don’t know, humans are good at diverging from their instincts when it comes to letting sick people die, but when it comes to killing less, they cannot anymore?
I think that low-ass standards are what prevent humans from getting any better, if you start justifying mindless murders as “just instinct” then of course people will be fine with it. And funnily enough, that’s one of the main arguments that hunters use, saying that they’re just doing something “natural”.
We are killing less. And overwhelmingly so. If you don’t count faceless, recontectualized packaged cow, chicken, and pig meat. We’re also still pretty good about keeping our close group alive, but medicine men, insurance, and numbers over 100 are a strictly cultural practice not cemented within our genetic memory in any helpful way, so society as a whole suffers under the burden of our limited empathy.
You can also get into the economics of governance to get a good look at what it would mean to move the systems in place enough to reach the sort of universal socioeconomic safety that you’d personally find acceptable. I’m a fan of Europe’s deal… up to a point.
I really don’t mean to cut things off, but the scope of this conversation would necessarily reach so incredibly wide that I don’t believe I can keep your attention or mine for a dozen pages of philosophy, biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and economics. In short, I, personally, can only expect people to fit neatly into a groove so long as it isn’t too far removed from the one we dug a hundred thousand years ago. Certain people have done too much to remove themselves, and to some degree us, from personal responsibility in the US to do anything but set fire to what we have.
Adding that into my book of wonderful phrases.
Just don’t credit me, I’m pretty sure I plagiarized it in part from elsewhere