8 ms·

Trophy hunting has to be one of the most bizarre "fun" activities. How is ending a life fun?

• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Especially with modern weapons. Even before modern guns, you read about hunting parties - which would be dozens, even hundreds of men - ganging up on a solitary animal and wonder how was that ever equated with bravery.
• dangwhy 4y ago
  > How is ending a life fun? Couldn't the same said about eating meat with every meal in the west or going to a steakhouse for 'fun'.
  • mplewis 4y ago
    Generally, people go to a steakhouse to eat meat, not to hunt it.
    • whydoyoucare 4y ago
      Ah, see that's how we indulge in "planet destroying" activities - by associating that guilt with someone else. :)
  • jdjsiansian 4y ago
    Or ending a life for trivial reasons e.g. swatting a musquito or fly because you find it annoying, killing a roach just because it happens to wander into your house. Uprooting weeds and killing them because you don't like the look of weeds in your flower garden etc etc. When is it justified, everyone draws their own line I suppose.
• swalling 4y ago
  It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history. The evolutionary function of play is the practice of adult skills. What's actually bizarre is that the billions of modern humans who would find it sickening to kill any animal personally have no issue thoughtlessly living a lifestyle whose need for ever-expanding consumption of living space, energy, and other resources is directly contributing to a human-caused mass extinction.
  • chimeracoder 4y ago
    > It should not be surprising that humans find it fun to do something that we did for survival for most of our evolutionary history. People did not hunt tigers for "most of our evolutionary history". In fact, it's quite recent that people have hunted tigers at all, and even then it's more of an outlier than a standard practice. Tigers are difficult and dangerous to hunt, and they're not healthy to eat regularly, nor is their meat particularly attractive (despite the named "tiger meat", which is actually raw beef). Furthermore, contrary to mass media depictions, tigers rarely attack humans unless provoked, and they avoid human settlements as well. So even as a matter of safety and defense, hunting tigers is a rarity. Until, of course, you start destroying large swaths of their habitat by mass-clearing old-growth rainforest in order to produce enough food to keep up with the usurious demands of a colonial occupier. At that point, yes, you do start to combat tigers more directly.
    • swalling 4y ago
      There are larger predators like lions featured heavily in cave paintings and other forms of the earliest human art for a reason. We have never hunted predators like bears and big cats as a primary food source, but a willingness to defend humans and our food with hand weapons is actually a skillset actively practiced until very recently in societies like the Maasai. The Human Planet docuseries has a pretty incredible scene where hunter gatherers coordinate to steal a kill from an entire pride of lions. It makes you see why people on the other side of the world in highly industrialized societies would find it to be an adrenaline rush to hunt the biggest, baddest looking animal they can find (not that I do this personally). You're completely right that the desire to hunt a tiger isn't really logical or necessary, I'm just pointing out that it is not psychologically aberrant that some people (mostly men) would find it satisfying to do things like that as a thrill-seeking activity.
      • z3phyr 4y ago
        Tigers are much larger and stronger than Lions in general.
  • wittycardio 4y ago
• karaterobot 4y ago
  I think you could probably say the same thing about a lot of activities: how is jumping out of a plane fun? How is sitting in a field waiting to take a picture of a bird fun? How is blindly manipulating symbols in a computer fun? You can play that game for anything. But for every activity someone enjoys, you can bet that it's not the reductio ad absurdum restatement of that activity they find fun, it's something else about it. It's odd to be in the position of defending trophy hunters, so that's not what I'll do. There are many defensible types of hunting, but hunting rare or endangered animals for nothing else but a trophy is ethically indefensible. However, for people who do that, I imagine it's not the ending of the life that's fun, it's the challenge, and especially the bragging rights it gives them afterwards. Just a guess though.
  • hiyer 4y ago
    > I imagine it's not the ending of the life that's fun, it's the challenge, While I agree with this, I find it hard to digest that some people find even the challenge "fun" when it necessarily involves ending a life.
• robofanatic 4y ago
  I guess you haven't heard about "helicopter hog hunting trips in Texas" https://www.helibacon.com/texas-helicopter-hog-hunting/ https://www.helibacon.com/texas-helicopter-hog-hunting/
• onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Serial killers find killing people fun. Everyone's different. Luckily, a very small percentage of the population is big game hunters...
  • NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    A very small percentage of the modern Western population. There are still populations on earth where basically every adult man hunts.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      There's a distinction between killing for food and killing for fun. The vast majority of westerners aren't vegetarian.
• stronglikedan 4y ago
  People enjoy things for different reasons, but sometimes it's for the good of the ecosystem. People pay big money to hunt big game, which is exhilarating in itself for some, but that money goes towards conservation efforts, of which the necessary culling they participated in is just a small part. Plus, if things need culling for the ecosystem to thrive, it's likely the conservationists themselves wouldn't enjoy the culling part, so it allows them to outsource it to someone that would think it's fun and exhilarating. But poachers can go to hell in a handbasket.
  • toss1 4y ago
    If you have an actual sound ecosystem, in a sufficiently large habitat area (not encroached by humans, roads, etc.), culling is rarely necessary. While some areas that allow trophy hunting charge steep fees that help conservation, I can't see that I've ever seen an accounting of it being at sustainable levels. And the proof is in the pudding, where in Africa, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, and many more are declining rapidly. I'd say that if someone really wants to hunt, they should not be selling licenses to hunt game, but to hunt poachers, something that can fight back (policies are already shoot on sight in many areas). Donate, get deputized, go hunting. We only have a few years before many key species are gone forever.
    • NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
      > If you have an actual sound ecosystem, in a sufficiently large habitat area (not encroached by humans, roads, etc.), culling is rarely necessary. It's really a question of the extent to which humans get bothered when prey populations get too big and then they leave the preserve and start getting hit by cars. Or too many wolves and they start killing farmers' sheep. Culling helps avoid the wild swings in population. I'd also point out that even with populations that are not in good shape (threatened or declining), selling super expensive hunting licenses can still make sense. If $50,000 = +3 rhinos, let the hunter kill the rhino. Of course there are perverse incentives and all sorts of practical difficulties, but I just want to make the point that it's possible for that sort of thing to be in the best interests of the species being conserved.
• david422 4y ago
  I like the idea of taking the camera and calling that the "hunt". Same experience, except the animal survives for the next hunter. I dunno, not a hunter.
• mmcdermott 4y ago
  I'm not a hunter, but I imagine the challenge grabs people. If you've ever been riveted to a screen trying to find and fix a bug, it seems like you have experienced the essential draw of hunting.
  • beebeepka 4y ago
    It's not the challenge. It's the act of killing and the bragging rights that come with it.
    • mmcdermott 4y ago
      There are undoubtedly some who enjoy killing, but where do bragging rights come from without challenge?