Social Justification for Hunting

What’s the justification?

  • It’s a right

  • It’s ethical according to the land ethic

  • It’s something we enjoy

  • It’s natural

Where do animal rights come from?

  • Peters Singer’s marginal human argument (utilitarian)

    • Capcity for enjoyment/happiness and suffering

  • Tom Regan’s (NCSU alum: rights)

    • Subject-of-a-life (that matters to us)

    • Rationality

    • Intelligence

    • ??

Regan vs Davis/Choone vs Lamey

  • Regan: veganism

    • Animal rights

  • Davis/Cahoone: beef/venison diet

    • Animal rights (versus farming)

    • Animal welfare (versus farming and life in the wild)

    • Ecological footprint

  • Lamey

    • Animal rights (numbers are wrong)

    • Beef workers (numbers are wrong)

    • Deliverate versus accidental killing

Is it a right in practice?

  • Lost ballot measures

  • Won constitutional guarantees

    • 14…11 since 2000

    • AZ first rejection in 2010 (57% no)

    • NC in 2018

When is the land ethic justification?

  • When you need hunting to preserve ecological integrity, stability, and beauty

When is enjoyment justification?

  • Trophy

  • Sport

  • Recreation

  • Family

  • Food

  • Culture

Culture

Words can never describe how badly I miss him. Hunting season is coming up and I really don’t know if I can stand it without him. I do know I cherish the memories. I am so thankful I joined ‘his sport’ back in 1997… And the friendships made from our sport are equally as important. In closing I want to thank these friends for being there for me and our family through this difficult time.

There’s several Relay for Life cancer hunts and benefit hunts… somebody gets in a car wreck… they throw a field trial for it. And it’s a quick way—a quick, easy way to raise a couple of three thousands dollars or so.

When is naturalness justification?

  • Not when natural means “the way it was” or the “right way”

    • “Natural” changes

    • Ethically speaking, natural is often wrong

  • Maybe when the practice counters human isolation from nature

Connection to Nature

Yeah, I’d sit right there. If they would run right there in that block, around and around, I’d sit there all day long.

It’s Natural: Hunting to counter human alienation from nature

Why we need to see connections with nature

Alienation from nature

  • Urbanization

  • Technology

  • Capitalism

Capitalism and Commodity Fetishism

  • Commodities imbued with social meaning

    • Human-nature relationships hidden

    • Human-human relationships hidden

Efforts to roll back commodity fetishism

  • No child left inside, worker rights, animal welfare, hunting?

  • “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”- Aldo Leopold

  • “If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.”

How hunting counters commodity fetishism

  • Symbolic meaning of food rooted in pre-modern materiality instead of post-modern (fair trade, slow food, local food)

  • Faces the same threat of neo-liberal cooptation

Searching

  • Puts people in nature for extended periods of time

    • Producing food isn’t easy

  • Promotes ecological knowledge

  • Demonstrates the role of stochasticity in nature

Threats from modernity

  • Technology

  • Commodification

  • We have 5 classes of Bull Elk with hunts ranging from $2500.00 to $8000.00 depending on Boone and Crockett and/or SCI score, limited quantities available

Killing

  • Facing your food

  • Humans kill things to eat

  • Humans compete for food with other species

Threats from modernity

  • Technoogy

  • Commodificatoin

  • Hunting bans

Processing and Consuming

  • Food comes from nature

  • Wild food comes with a story

    • Wild game supper, Orion Windsor, supper etc

Threats from modernity

  • Technology

  • Commodification

Discussion

  • Ideally hunting highlights linkages between humans and nature

    • No hidden laborers

    • No hiding nature

    • No hiding death

Balancing between pre-modern and commodified

  • Local free range food, contribution to sustainability, linking modern society with nature

  • Or:

Questions?

  • Chitwood M.C., Peterson M.N., Deperno C.S. (2011) Assessing Dog Hunter Identity in Coastal North Carolina. Human Dimensions of Wildlife: An International Journal 16, 128 - 141.

  • Peterson M.N. (2004) An approach for demonstrating the social legitimacy of hunting. Wildl Soc Bull 32, 310-321.

  • Peterson M.N., Hansen H.P., Peterson M.J., Peterson T.R. (2011) How hunting strengthens social awareness of coupled human-natural systems. Wildlife Biology in Practice 6, 127- 143.