Hunting Definition

[roy reali]

What do you all consider hunting to be? I mean in a pure sense.

Do you consider shooting at planted birds hunting?

Do you consider shooting a bear over bait from a tree hunting?

Do you consider shooting rodents in an alfalfa field from a portable bench hunting?

Do you consider shooting at thousands of doves in a South American country hunting?

I don't want this thread to get into a fight about what is right or what is wrong. If someone else pursues a shooting sport that I might not like I will not fault that person. As long as laws and safety regulations are followed. Heck, I have done the bird club shooting thing.

So, what do you consider hunting to be?

[Yithian]

I consider it a sport.
The hunter can fail, succeed, or bring home the bacon.

'Fail' by wounding the animal, and not harvest it.
'Succeed' by getting away from everyday numbness and enjoy nature.
'Bring home the bacon' by succeeding in the hunt and harvesting meat for the table.

Each hunt is different.
The means and methods to hunt deer are completely different than these vermin- feral hogs.

There are only two reasons I can think up, at the moment, as to why there are laws governing hunting.
The first is population control.
The second is ethics.
If the state doesn't say it's illegal, it must be ethical.
(I may not agree with some hunters ethics, but if it's legal...)

The hunter gets to choose his or her methods based on the law, as well as their own self-challenges.
None here, except ATTT, has the right to tell me otherwise.

As far as your direct questions....
Yes, I consider all of them "Hunting".
Any time you enter an animals domain, with intent to kill them, is hunting.
That goes for birds in trees in your yard, to ranchers fields with bait.
This is regardless of what tool you use as a weapon, as long as it's legal.

[Scorch]

If the state doesn't say it's illegal, it must be ethical.

Not necessarily. Just because it's legal does not make it ethical. Consider the people who perform repairs on someone's house and ask them to sign a contract ceding their home if they cannot pay. It's legal, and the courts enforce the contracts, but few would argue that putting folks out in the cold because they could not pay a repair bill is ethical. Neither does making it illegal make it unethical. For example, there is nothing inherently unethical about shooting game with a suppressed weapon, but it's illegal. Legality and ethics do not go hand in hand. To be sure, many things that are illegal are also unethical. Ethics has much to do with your core values, and as such is highly variable. What I might consider unethical you might not.

As far as the original question is concerned, yes, all of those are taking of game, but no, I do not believe they are all hunting. I have hunted planted birds to train dogs and considered it hunting. I have shot ground squirrels for hours on end but never considered it hunting. I have never and will never shoot a bear over bait. And I would love to go on a Argentina dove shoot, even though I would have to think hard as to whether or not it is really hunting. Hunting is more than the killing of an animal, otherwise folks who work in slaughterhouses would be called hunters. It has to do with pursuing wild game on their own turf, with them having a chance at evading the hunter. It has to do with the uncertainty of success. It has to do with the atavistic urge to be a predator. It has a lot to do with wanting to be independent.

[Yithian]

"Any time you enter an animals domain, with intent to kill them, is hunting."

So, slaughter house workers are not hunting.
The animals are in our domain. They are not in their own domain.

Think of a cat and a mouse.
At what point would the cat not be considered hunting the mouse?
It doesn't matter to the cat if the mouse-trap has bait or not.
It doesn't matter if the cat and mouse is in the bathroom, or out an a tree.

But if you tie that mouse down, kill it, or just immobilize it?
Even the cat knows when it isn't hunting. It isn't as fun.

[Swampghost]

I enter the 'woods' more like swamp around here and set up for a few days to a week. Camp buddies are all kinds of bugs (our scorpions are about the same as wasp stings) various spiders and snakes. Nothing like waking up at unGodly hour when a Rattlesnake seeks warmth, they wake up late too and ruin your whole morning hunt.

I sit in the rain (a lot) and often contemplate while I shrivel 'why am I here?'. The answer usually comes later.

On the good days, NOTHING is better even if you don't see a thing.

[Kreyzhorse]

I consider any thing that is fair chase hunting. Doesn't matter if its bird hunting, deer hunting or rodent hunting, I consider all of that fair chase. What I dislike is canned hunting where animals are basically shot in a pen. I'll relate a story of a man I met a few years ago.

"I went on a buffalo hunt last winter. There's a rancher up from here that owns a nice herd of them and lets people hunt them on his ranch. On my day to hunt, I showed up, the rancher had a nice bull in a pen and told me that was the one I was after. The rancher asked me if I wanted him to turn him loose so I could go get him. I told the rancher, well, what's easier for you? Rancher said, shoot right in the pen if its all the same. So I raised up my rifle and dropped him right there."

To me, the above story isn't a hunt and its pretty disgusting. If you are killing something for food, I have zero problem with any one shooting something in a pen. That however isn't a hunt. I do have a problem with people killing things for trophys in a pen simply for the trophy aspect of it.

You earn a trophy. Shooting an animal in a pen isn't earning any thing.

[Art Eatman]

Bits & Pieces: Hunting over bait is passive hunting, IMO. Not my style, but if that's what pleases somebody, sobeit.

FWIW, from time to time I've persuaded wild quail that I'm the source of All Goodies and get them to come when I call. I've had them feed from beneath the chair in which I sit. To shoot one would be serious cheating. However: I can go maybe a hundred yards from the house, see the same covey, and they'll spook just as wildly as ever. They are then fair chase kills.

"Pure" hunting? I guess it's going out into the critter's turf and finding him when he doesn't want to be found. It's matching my knowledge of an animal's pattern of behavior so I can find him before he knows he's been found. Using my own abilities to find, shoot&kill and then process the carcass.

Prairie dogging is a sort of mix, IMO. It's not particularly a hunt; you know where they are. The degree of challenge is to you and your own skill as a rifleman--long shots are more difficult than up-close shots. It's really pest control, more than anything else. A positive benefit is the erosion of one's hostilities against the world at large. For all that one's attitude toward politicians parallels one's attitude toward prairie dogs, dealing with them in the same manner is socially unacceptable and politically incorrect.

Shooting doves by the thousands in South America is just as much hunting as shooting them by the tens in North America. Issues such as possible waste or "sporting" are irrelevant to the definition of hunting. Note that for rice farmers in Costa Rica, whitewing doves are in the same category as prairie dogs to a US alfalfa grower: Pests.

Art

[Scorch]

You earn a trophy. Shooting an animal in a pen isn't earning any thing.

A friend of mine, who was/is a taxidermist, told me one time that any mature animal can be a trophy, because the trophy-ness of the animal is more about how you feel about it than how big the animal is.

for rice farmers in Costa Rica, whitewing doves are in the same category as prairie dogs to a US alfalfa grower: Pests.

Good point, Art. Note also that to a wheat farmer in Washington, a barley farmer in Idaho, or an alfalfa farmer in Nevada, big mule deer bucks are also pests. So hunting and the ethics of hunting have little to do with what people consider the quarry to be, it has more to do with the hunter's attitude about the quarry.

Ethics are complex and convoluted, and extremely messy. Taken to an extreme, any method of killing an animal could be considered ethical, as long as you can recover part of it for your use. Remember that hunter-gatherer societies used to routinely corner animals and kill as many as possible, young, old, male, female, healthy or sick. We put limits on how many a hunter can harvest. Native Americans used to run whole herds of buffalo off of cliffs, yet could only use a portion of what was harvested in that manner. We call that "wanton waste".

So, my contention again is that ethics is a function of your core values, and as such is highly subjective and variable. Kind of like the Hindu ascetics who will not walk for fear of stepping on insects and killing them, yet hire children to sit by them to swat biting flies.

To me, the above story isn't a hunt and its pretty disgusting.

I agree, it's not hunting, what was described is a slaughter. I don't know why it should disgust you, though. All of the meat in supermarkets is killed in a pretty similar manner.

[fisherman66]

Hunting is defined by the state. Sporting is defined by the individual.

When I load a game trail up with corn and put my son in a box blind my aim is to give the best possible chance at success. I've been there and done that, and I really prefer something more for myself. That doesn't give me the right to get judgmental. We all start out somewhere on the line between just hunting and pure fair chase. Most of us tend to find the chase the reason to hunt, but I'm not above harvesting a doe for the freezer.

[Kreyzhorse]

the trophy-ness of the animal is more about how you feel about it than how big the animal is.

I'd take my first whitetail (a nice 4 point with a full rack) over a world record whitetail shot in a pen any day. I earned that one and it's a great trophy to me.

[davlandrum]

If the state doesn't say it's illegal, it must be ethical.

Ethics is doing the right thing even when the wrong thing is legal.

[sc928porsche]

For me, hunting is "fair chase". No bait, tree stands, built blinds or dogs. Its the challenge that makes it so rewarding when you succeed. Afterall, I do have a great advantage.....I'ts called a rifle.

[Medicineman]

1. No
2. Yes, but no thanks.
3. No
4. No

But I wouldn't loose sleep over any of them ethics wise.