Perhaps we are all guilty of occasionally misplacing our energies and efforts into unworthy causes or activities at some time in our lives. However, for any adult of sound mind to be an anti-hunting activist in the freedom-loving bastion of the United States of America is the ultimate insult. Anti-hunters are a symbol of spoiled humanity being in need of perspective.
I have heard all of the old, tired clichés levied against hunting such as the benign and almost harmless ones like; ‘people don’t need to hunt anymore because they can buy meat at the grocery store,’ or ‘hunting for sport is cruel.’
What kind of spoiled human being can willfully accept the luxuries of endless supplies of grocery store food while passing judgment on others who participate in their own killing experience? If you eat any kind of meat from a store, you have officially paid someone else to do your killing for you. Think about that. If you are against hunting, you are saying it is okay for you to have a person kill an animal for you, but it is not okay for me to kill an animal for myself. There is no larger hypocrisy. Furthermore, no grocery store in the country sells succulent lean deer meat like I can shoot in any Midwestern state.
As far as hunting for ‘trophy heads’ goes, that is baloney too. What is a ‘trophy’ animal exactly? Well, hunters have actually defined what the exact definition of a trophy quality animal are and those definitions can be found in various record books that document qualifying animals and where they came from. The truth of the matter is, only a tiny percentage of harvested animals qualify as trophies. For example, the whitetail deer is the most hunted big game animal in North America, but the trophy size required to get into the Boone & Crockett record book only happens to one buck deer out every 1000 harvested. That is a statistical fact. Enough said.
Hunting used to be a political issue and the old school liberals were the ones mostly against hunting. However, with the deteriorating economy and a growing popularity of preserving the 2nd Amendment, people on both sides of the aisle are hunting these days. One such person is no other than the high-profile billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. He has not been shy about letting people know that he is aware and socially engaged when it comes to getting his own food.
“I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email to Fortune soon after creating a ‘meat challenge’ for himself.
Though taking responsibility for the food one eats sounds pretty admirable, not all of his Facebook followers were amused initially. Some commenters were disgusted after he posted, “I just killed a pig and a goat” on Facebook on May 24 of last year. He has also killed a bison as well.
If you are just a salad eater and against hunting, you may or may not be surprised what impact on animals your salad has. In his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan wrote, “A one-pound box of California-produced organic lettuce contains 80 food calories. It requires an estimated 4,600 calories of fossil fuel to process and ship to the East Coast.*
Besides the energy required for transportation, all salad grows on land that was previous wildlife habitat. So, wild animals had to be displaced to grow all salad, not to mention all the water that needs to be unnaturally delivered to a crop of salad. And while you are eating your salad, it is also a fact that whatever home you live in was also once wildlife habitat. The hypocrisy of being an anti-hunter far exceeds any irrational judgment or negative emotion directed against hunting.
There is no more visceral or organic act than to partake in the harvesting of your own food and people who have a problem with hunting are way out of alignment, in my opinion.
