Is hunting wrong?
As an an animal lover and outdoorsman, I am often plagued by guilt after a successful hunt, and I often ask myself whether it's time to give it up. A discussion on hunting and morality.
This is an adapted version of an essay first published in NZ Outdoor magazine.
I’m a bit of a softy. I always have been. And I’m an animal lover, the kind of guy who smooches his cat way too much. As a kid, I would rescue the juvenile birds blown from their nests in spring, and for weeks I would hand-feed them jelly-meat cat food until they could fly. So, it’s no surprise that I have always struggled to process how I feel about my hunting practices.
I feel pretty terrible after I shoot an animal (at least after the initial elation of a successful hunt has worn off). I often feel so bad that I think it might be time to hang ‘em up and stop hunting. For the weeks after a hunt, I often think about my kill and wonder if what I’m doing is wrong. As I said, I love animals, and this includes the game animals. So, I often lay awake thinking about the animal, going around and around in my head thinking, as the old man from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea thought of the great fish: “You loved him when he was alive, and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
So, I decided to read some of the philosophical literature and to clarify a simple argument on the ethics of hunting, both to ease my mind and to better make my case to non-hunters who challenge me about the ethics of hunting.
Man as Hunter
The first point to establish is that, from an evolutionary and ecological standpoint, human beings are predators, albeit omnivorous ones. It is widely accepted by paleoanthropologists that early humans were hunters. A wealth of research shows that ancient tribal populations relied on hunting to satisfy a large portion of their caloric requirements. This is also true of most modern tribal populations today. Hunting and meat eating are fundamental to almost all tribal societies’ diets, and eating meat is the only way for those people to acquire a range of essential nutrients. Hence meat is usually the most prized food in tribal cultures.
When it comes to morphology and anatomy, there are many indicators that humans are predators and meat eaters. A short list of our adaptations for hunting and meat-eating are our forward-facing eyes, the shape of our teeth and their lack of a thick enamel layer, and our digestive enzymes and our bile are very different from those of herbivores and are specifically designed to break down animal fats and protein. Also, the length of our large and small intestines and our colon also suggests omnivory.
Even many of our social instincts developed through hunting; our ultra-sociality likely developed out of the need to cooperate to successfully hunt, and the excess generated by large-game hunting may have encouraged the development of reciprocal altruism, which marked the beginning of the more modern human societies. This is the reason why human sociality is often compared to the intelligent and social pack-hunting animals, such as wolves, rather than our closer primate ancestors.
However, I won’t rely too much on this argument because it is well known in philosophy and ethics that you can’t necessarily take an ought from an is. Just because humans are omnivorous predators in a natural sense, doesn’t necessarily mean that modern humans should still hunt.
Ecological Ethics
Most modern criticisms of hunting rely on the ethics of animal welfare and animal rights. These perspectives emphasize the rights and moral weight of each animal as nearly equal, or fully equal, to that of humans. They ascribe to animals, as individuals, full moral rights and welfare concerns, which means that any human activity which harms an animal requires a full moral defense to be justified. This takes you way down the rabbit hole of moral philosophy, and into some essentially unsolvable moral conundrums.
However, these dual ethics of animal rights and animal welfare, as practiced, are based on an often simplistic and unrealistic view of the natural world, as well as a false view of the benevolence of alternative food sources (more on this below).
In contrast and, in my opinion, more realistically, ecological ethics emphasizes the primacy of the ecosystem and the realities of terrestrial life in general, rather than the specific experiences and weight of each individual animal. Under ecological ethics, the ecosystem as a whole is the target of welfare concern, rather than individual animals (though they are still given their own moral weight). It acknowledges that in a natural ecosystem, organisms of every kind live at each other’s expense, either directly (through predation and competition) or indirectly (by monopolizing resources). An act that is “good” for one individual animal of a species is often “bad” for the individual of another species, while actually being good for the ecosystem overall.
Ecological ethics recognizes the larger interplay of species dynamics and shows that it is the cumulation of various births, deaths, goods, and ills, which comprise a healthy ecosystem. So instead of focusing on what is good or bad for individual animals, its emphasis is the good of the ecosystem, for it is the welfare of the ecosystem that also dictates the welfare of all the organisms within it. If the ecosystem is not healthy, then most of the individuals within it will also be unhealthy. This means that ecological ethics trumps individual animal rights and welfare ethics.
This perspective still also emphasizes the minimizing of animal suffering as much as possible, such that hunters are obligated to conduct themselves in an ethical manner, but it doesn’t condemn hunting outright.
Under ecological ethics, in situations where hunting contributes to the welfare and maintenance of an ecosystem, hunting is morally acceptable. As we all know, hunting—especially here in New Zealand where our game species have no natural predators—is an important part of ecological management.
Animal Rights and Welfare – The Least Harm Principle
Perhaps surprisingly, hunting is also compatible with the animal welfare based ethical concern I mentioned above. No one could reasonably deny that natural human activity inevitably results in animal harm and death—it is an unavoidable fact of human life. Animal rights and welfare advocates, therefore, must admit to a certain level of suffering, and thus they emphasize the least-harm principle rather than a strict no-harm principle. This dictates that we should seek to minimize harm as much as possible, and when faced with a decision, choose the option which results in the least harm and suffering.
Contrary to what one may believe, a natural wild death is neither painless nor pleasant. Most animals do not pass of old age, unharmed, in their sleep. Almost always, wild animals die of things like predation, disease, ailing health in a harsh winter, falling, being wounded in a fight, infection, getting trapped or tangled, exhaustion, or starvation. This means that when considering the harm inflicted by a hunter, it must be weighed against the amount of suffering reasonably expected by ‘natural’ death.
Therefore, in cases where a hunter is intent on a quick, clean kill, the pain of which is usually masked by shock, then death via human predation can be thought of as resulting in no more suffering than would otherwise occur by natural death. Likewise, without hunting, if animal numbers were to increase such that their food became scarce, then the widespread suffering from starvation and disease which would follow among the population would greatly outweigh the suffering of any animals killed in the process of healthy population management. Thus, hunting very often actually constitutes the least harm. It is just that the confronting nature of a kill, shocking to our civilized sensibilities, makes us think otherwise.
Facing our Food
Another assertion made by hunting opponents, usually in response to a hunter claiming that they hunt primarily for meat, is that the hunter could instead get their food from agriculture. However, this rests upon the obviously questionable assumption that agriculture itself harms no (or less) animals.
Firstly, under the ecological principle, agriculture does not compare favorably to hunting. Farming requires the wholesale appropriation of large swathes of natural ecosystems, and the suppression or killing of virtually all those species which are not being actively farmed. It also has some downstream negative consequences on ecosystems and waterways surrounding the farmed land.
Second, under the least harm principle, farming again does not succeed over hunting. No one would assert that farmed and commercially slaughtered animals suffer less than a wild animal which lives freely and is interfered with only in its final moments.
Likewise, even if one was to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet, the kind of agriculture required to produce the amount of calories and nutrients found in meat would still require large-scale intensive farming, widespread pesticide and fertiliser use, pest control (which very often requires killing mammals, birds, and insects), accidental animal death during harvest, damage to waterways and aquatic life, and so on. Thus, even a vegetarian diet fails compared to hunting, under both the ecological and least harm welfare principles.
As Lawrence Cahoone put it in his article Hunting as a Moral Good: “Remember that the … animal rights/welfare views, which is compatible with ecological ethics, holds that humanly caused animal death and suffering should be reduced as much as possible, hence allowed only if necessary. Eating is a necessity. Consequently, in those cases where ethical hunts [result in less suffering] for the same nutrition than do farming and vegetarianism, eating hunted meat would be not only morally justified but morally preferred.”
The Virtues of Hunting
Not only is hunting not ethically prohibited under those principles described above but hunting actually results in the cultivation and maintenance of a range of positive outcomes, valuable virtues, and skills. The ability to navigate in the wild, to subsist without many of the comforts of modernity, and to develop the skills required to find, hunt, butcher, and prepare one’s food, represents an uncommon level of self-sufficiency in our post-modern society. Hunting preserves traditional skills which tie one to the past, develops one’s character and skill in the present, and insures against future hardships.
Hunting also represents a kind of trophic responsibility: the ability to “face your food”. Modern industrial society has removed and hidden from most people the realities of the food they consume and the fact that for us to live, many organisms perish. Most people can hide from this fact and think of their food as an inert substance that they acquire from the store. This results in a certain level of alienation from the reality of being a human, alienation from one’s food, and alienation from nature itself.
The modern alienation from food, and the resulting blindness to the interconnectedness of man and nature, contributes to the degradation of the environment, and overconsumption. By hiding the reality of our food, post-modern society incorrectly deludes people that humanity and nature are two separate systems when in reality they are coupled systems. Some psychologists have come to assert that the alienation from the realities of food production impedes our ability to think environmentally. Hunting necessitates an engagement with nature, and an awareness of those coupled human and natural systems, which discourages flippant and unrealistic attitudes toward production and consumption.
The Intangibles
Hunting, at least for me, is the singles biggest factor contributing to my mental wellbeing. It is the only time I ever have alone with friends and brothers, away from phones, politics, life. We go out for days on end into the wilderness, away from light pollution and sound pollution. Away from the abstract tasks and overly socialized life of post-modernity. We sit out in the mountains and stare at the stars at night, and at the endless mountain ranges during the day. We talk about time and life and health and anxieties. In a world increasingly suspicious about male single-sex spaces (and female ones too), a world intolerant of masculinity and standard modes of male socialization, and in a world where we increasingly don’t know how to form and maintain friendships, hunting represents the best opportunity I have to truly connect with male friends and family in a deeper way.
Research has shown that men prefer to socialize side by side rather than face to face, focusing on some distractor task, and we also bond through stress and suffering together. This is exactly what hunting does, it provides me with an opportunity to bond with my male friends and family in a the exact way in which men evolved bonding together. Learning to hunt as a young man with my brother and my dad taught me positive masculinity—how to suffer constructively for some productive goal: to suffer from the cold, exhaustion, sprains, falls, stings, frustration, dehydration, hunger, fear (getting truly lost in the mountains is terrifying), and so on—lessons which I use daily in ordinary “civilized” suffering in life. The self-efficacy and confidence which comes with such experiences is invaluable. It is the single activity which has contributed most to the development of my friendships and my character.
My Conclusion
After completing my investigation into the philosophical literature on hunting, I quickly came to realize that my issues with hunting are not necessarily logical or philosophical—they are purely emotional. As an animal lover, I know I will always feel regret and sadness when I kill an animal, no matter how I frame it.
But logically I know that humans are hunters and meat-eaters. And that hunting for my meat results in less animal suffering and loss of life than both animal and plant agriculture, that it connects me to the land, keeps me healthy and fit, develops personal virtues and skills, and requires the responsibility and accountability to face my food. This all means that, to my mind, the practical, ethical, and natural arguments for hunting are stronger than the arguments against it.
So I will continue to hunt, but I won’t try to numb my regret at a kill or ignore the seriousness of it. The blood, sweat, and tears you put in hunting, and the emotion you feel at a kill, is the price you pay for the privilege of taking an animal’s life to fuel your own. It’s a healthy response to a heavy moment, and it shows that you still respect the animals that you hunt, and that you feel the reality of what it means to be able to eat and to live.
It largely depends on your local hunting culture. In the 1940's a minister of agriculture from Hungary visited a large dairy farm in the US and was appalled. He was used to a tradition that judged peasants by how well they treated their animals, and he was appaled by the suffering at the factory farm.
Similarly to very traditional, very old animal welfare concerns in farming, there is also a huge tradition all over Central Europe that hunters must absolutely kill painlessly and instantly, wounding animals without killing or killing them slowly is the greatest shame ever and can lead to the loss of license, no one ever is allowed to shoot animals before they demonstrate their skill at shooting at paper, hunting must be largely trophy and not for the pot, so female and kid deer are not to be shot (adult males are simply more expendable, most of them will not reproduce anyway, but they are not good to eat) and forresters assign quotas and seasons and manage the whole thing so that it does not destroy the ecological balances. It is mostly group hunting because it is sort of an aristocratic social event (game is rare here, hence the whole thang super expensive), and there are lots of safety rules, basically guns stay loaded for the shortest possible amount of time and pointed up unless there is a valid target right in front of the hunter.
What are your local rules and traditions? It really depends on that. Was a duck ever winged and escaped wounded without serious social consequences for the hunter?
Great article.