Just a rant...I must be getting old.

[the Pollo Loco]

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I wish I had the opportunity to hunt around here instead of having to go to the grocery store and buy the meat they sell there. I like eating my chickens, however i'm open to deer, elk, rabbit whatever taste good...

 

[llrumsey]

I didnt want this to get to be a mad thread, I was just upset and needed to vent. I know what it is like to hardly have any food at all and I do have family that hunt, I was just bothered by what I saw.

I know alot of people eat their kills, I also know that around here alot dont. We started to raise our own animals for food and the only thing that I can stand to have butchered is jumbo cornish chickens, one because they are all the same color and mostly the same size and 2 because they will die is you dont.

I cant be around when they are butchered. Like I said in the beginning I think I am getting old and soft hearted.

Thanks for listening.

 

[hennyannie]

I live in a family of hunters and don't have a problem with the hunting, they are respectful and use the animals they kill.
I do have a problem with the way some folks drive down the road with the animal in plain site tied to the trailer or four wheeler.
I think it is disrespectful to the animal that gave its life to provide food to the hunter.My DH always has his in the truck where it can't
be readily seen by other motorist. I think that is respectful of other peoples feelings too.

 

[sunny & the 5 egg layers]

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[laseterlass]

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I read an article about why they are smaller. In the wild predators pick off the weak and small. Man enters the scene with an advantage and picks off the largest and strongest, leaving weak smaller to breed. Now I am in AK. And with the price of food going up. I bought hens and may buy broilers if I can sneak them past my neighbors. My husband was pushed to hunt this fall to provide for our family. His friends and he brought down 2 caribou and a moose. One caribou was older, his teeth were wasted. The other boo and the moose younger bull animals. These 3 animals provided meat for our families and for two others that had Native Alaskan ways to use ribs and leg bones. One neighbor child took the brain of one to show and tell. These animals died with respect and were well used. I never was a hunter or had interest in the hunt until this year when we needed to supplement our pantry.

 

[Marcymom3]

When I moved here 31 years ago it was very rural, and my street was originally a farm lane. The large farm backed up to our 3 acres. Over the years, the farm was sold off in 5 acre parcels and now there are probably 100 million dollar houses back there. The half of our property that we kept woods is home to a large family of displaced deer. While I enjoy watching them stroll through the woods there are getting to be way too many of them to survive and be healthy. The neighbors' gardens have had to be enclosed in deer fencing. When the closest house to me was built (probably 100 yards away) I gave up my beautiful flowerbeds in the front yard. The deer decimated it...ate it all the way to the ground. Now my gardening is limited to the back which is fenced in and patrolled by my elderly Lab. And, as others have said, there is always one or two dead on the main road. Not really sure of the answer here. But one thing I can tell you is it makes me crazy when I see a big headless deer body on the side of the road. Senseless waste makes me crazy.

 

[CYGChickies]

Wow it really put some things into perspective hearing about families who have to hunt to eat. I have always greatly embraced my "country" heritage and supported hunters, but hearing people come out and say they have to hunt makes me appreciate what I have. Good luck in the upcoming seasons, to you hunters out there.

Also, they just reintroduced elks here and I want to go "hunting" on the land they have set up for it, but I just want to photograph. Maybe taking a gun for protection isn't a bad idea but unless I was in danger I'd probably not have the stones to shoot anything. I just want to see an elk!

CYG

 

[spiritdance]

It's funny, but as I get older I'm going the opposite direction on this as the OP! As a young woman, I was terribly bothered by the concept of hunting, and I even had a vegetarian spell that lasted several years until I developed health issues from protein deficiencies. It is REALLY HARD to incorporate enough complex proteins into a meat-free diet, and I applaud any vegans/vegetarians out there who manage this issue better than I. Anyway, once I made the decision to eat meat again, I did a lot of soul searching about the morality of it all. I came to the conclusion that any immorality lay in a failure to acknowledge my debt to "the circle of life" (okay, yeah, Disney really did warp me as a child!). As a human being, I have a capacity for such moral reminiscences - but at the end of the day I am as much a part of that circle as the elk the op mentions. I cannot escape the constraints of my own mortality. I have to eat, I have to drink, I have to breathe ... every one of these actions costs on some level. Life is hard, and resources are limited. It is human arrogance that allows us to think we can somehow circumvent that circle. It is human arrogance that has so removed us from an honest relationship with our sustenance. We believe that "factory" farming, giant agri-business, whatever you want to call it, somehow relieves us of our debt to the natural world. In contrast, the hunters I know are intimately aware of that debt. I'm sure there are some out there that fit the "evildoer" image I was inculcated with by media representations in my younger years - it is a sad reality that "trophy" hunting still goes on - but I have come to believe that such hunters are a tiny minority. I have also reached a point where, when I see a freshly killed deer in the back of a hunter's truck, I see a deer that was able to BE A DEER until its last moment alive. It wasn't run through the slaughterhouse after hours crammed into miserably close quarters on a truck or rail car. It didn't die in terror caused by seeing its companions die ahead of it and realizing its own fate was at hand. And the hunter that takes that deer home and cleans it will in all likelihood use most if not all of it. Hunters I know process as much meat as possible for their families, use whatever meat is not up to snuff for the humans for their pets, and then very likely process the bones for stock and for compost. What bothers me now is buying meat in the store, knowing the conditions the animal likely lived and died in. That's why I raise my own, and why I now hunt with my husband.

 

[llrumsey]

I am glad that I started this thread it has given me alot to think about, I cant help how I feel, but I can now understand how many other feel also. I dont mind it so much when the animal is used for food and I didnt relize that we still have so many families that rely so much on hunting.

Using the whole animal is different than just trophy hunting. We have even had animals killed just for the sport and left to rot. So if someone actually is going to eat the meat I understand and can now respect that.

When we first started to raise animals I learned that you dont name your food. Like I said before it bothers me to have any of mine butchered. Guess that's why I've given up trying to raise meat animals. Other people have told me that they can pet it in the morning and eat it at supper, sometimes I wish I was that way. But I cry when a chicken dies of old age.

 

[NYboy]

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Do you know of a cure, because none has been mentioned in any of the articles in our local paper.

Funny how here we have the CNY cat coalition that catches strays for spaying and neutering using donated time and money, but when it comes to donating money for deer and all the rest, the bleeding hearts never donate a dime.

I say if folks want to save deer from being culled for food then they should put their money and time where their mouth is as they say. This is not directed at any one here in particular mind you, but in our area where I read plenty, I've yet to hear of anyone organizing a group to save the deer.

Lord have mercy we can't get enough for our animal shelters. However if anyone decides to use tax dollars for such a program I suspect there are others like myself that will have a fit.

I apologize I'm afraid we've gotten off track, though I'm not sure what that track was supposed to be. I doubt anyone is ever persuaded to switch sides on this issue.

Goggle Fireisland Deer birth control vaccines.