From: "E.J. Totty", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>If hunting is not cruel, why then am I prosecuted if I set a pack of large
>dogs onto a smaller, solitary dog? All that the Hunting Bill really can be
>said to be doing is simply extending to wild mammals the protection that
>domestic mammals have enjoyed since before the Kaiser's War.
>I also believe that yes, hawking is also cruel, as is the practice of ritual
>slaughter and the live feeding of reptiles with mice, rats and birds. But,
>as Abraham Lincoln said :"One war at a time".
>I shall also not be going to the march in March. Why? Because I am not one
>of those who wish to see my sport - live quarry shooting - hijacked as
>"marching fodder" by the houndsports lobby, whilst almost every day I am
>subject to hearing or reading letters from the red coated fraternity in the
>local media in my local press justifying their method of "fox control"
>because "shooting is cruel"!
--snip--
Steve, & Richard,
Richard: As one human to another, I respect your beliefs, your
sensibilities, and your rights to either pursue or decline an interest that
in itself harms no other human.
It seems that where you find umbrage, is in the manner which
another person seeks to pursue an interest which you find less than
humane.
In essence, what you state has been expressed numerous
times throughout the history of humanity: that needless suffering is
at times inflicted upon prey, by both the animal and human predator.
That is the <perception>. I highlight the word 'perception' for a
good reason.
I would ask only one thing: at what level would you constrain
humanity, relative to the same act conducted by a wild animal upon another
wild animal?
The essence of the question is: if a wild predatory animal inflicts
a certain level of misery upon its prey -- in the process of subduing it, what
would you deem to be onerous when a human is conducting the same act?
Care to entertain another question?
The question arises, when we consider that modern natural
predators are finely adapted hunters, that have all of the traits necessary to
seek, track, stalk, and capture its selected prey -- the better part of the time.
Now, it these predatory animals are more adapted to their tasks
than humans (we are relegated to making tools for the same purpose which
aren't nearly as good as we'd care to confess), how can we lessors to the art
of hunting be constrained to a degree of humaneness, when it is totally
beyond the pale to even consider such thinking when observing the natural
predator? Merely that we are human?
We humans who have partaken in the hunt, with primitive tools
that have no keen edges, no projectiles as arrows, bullets and the like, and
have pursued the prey in the most barbaric way, know of the savagery that
the human psyche is capable of.
It frightens me to consider that we are possessed of such a naturally
violent nature. To think that we could, and are fully capable of attacking
another human in the same totally primitive manner as we might attack an
animal, is thought provoking. Periodically we read of such attacks, and are
astounded by them, and by their sheer brutality.
But it is our essential nature. We deprive it for various reasons,
mostly I think, because we do not wish to be attacked in that way, and
are therefore inclined to associate in a 'civil' way, in order that our own
kind will persevere against the elements.
But I digress. If it is our natural modus operandi to behave as
we do on a hunt, then I would ask: At what point do we constrain ourselves
to, at what point do we not proceed, at what point do we refuse to mimic
the natural predator?
And, by what measure, by what prescribed limit are we to presume
that the animals we have bred for a purpose are no longer suitable, when it
is within their natural capabilities -- and proclivities -- otherwise?
And, lastly, if one human perceives of certain misery inflicted
upon another creature, perhaps undeservedly so by the measure we
apply when humans are the comparison, do we err when we apply that
measure to the hunt, and apply it psychologically as though the animal
were domesticated?
--
In Liberty,
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"Whenever we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember
that virtue is not hereditary." --Thomas Paine
By way of the The Federalist http://www.Federalist.com/
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ET
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
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