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I am a hunter in Canada, and in the province I'm in it's also illegal to hunt within 48 hours of flying in a plane in the same hunting zone. Sporting ethics is

I am a hunter in Canada, and in the province I'm in it's also illegal to hunt within 48 hours of flying in a plane in the same hunting zone. Sporting ethics is something important to consider; retrieving an animal is part of the hunting process and the lines between hunting and tracking a shot animal can blur (e.g. if someone were to spot another animal while attempting to retrieve their game or are hunting in a group where someone else has a tag). I'm definitely pro-technology in general, but I think analogies from other sports such as rock climbing are useful, where nowadays the ideal is to lean towards cams, nuts, and other temporary removable gear that you bring with you instead of over-bolting areas or hammering in pitons everywhere. Or like how swimming restricts certain types of swimsuits that are deemed too efficient. Just because a given technology is more efficient doesn't necessarily mean it will make the sport of hunting better. I think this sting was valid and until the laws change, drone operators should be held to the same standard as other pilots when it comes to hunting regulations.

frognumber 3y ago
It's not always a sport. It can be a sport if you do it for sport, but plenty of people hunt to: - Have healthy food to eat - Keep predators away from farms - Control population booms of some species which would otherwise starve to death ... and so on. Sports have rules to make them fair. Jobs and hobbies are about making them efficient, fun, and ethical. There is context in this thread which suggests why this specific sting made sense, but if you're not in a competition setting, if there is a way to make hunting more humane and efficient, we should take it every time. Sport regulations make sense for teams, not as laws everyone follows. If I'm playing soccer in a field, I can follow official rules, or I can play Calvinball. Laws, here, should be set for things like gun safety and sanitation, not to enforce some sort of sporting regulations.
- lukeinator42 3y ago
  It's true that hunting is a great way to have healthy food to eat, and is important for population control, but ethics in hunting goes way beyond just being a sporting regulation. Lots of people in hunting use phrases such as sportsmanship and the concept of fair chase has traditionally been built into the culture of hunting. I think laws such as daylight-hunting hours, hunting seasons, limits on atv use, etc. are enforcing these ethics rather than merely being about safety, and that's important for conservation and how we relate to nature as a culture. All that to say I agree with making hunting more humane, but not necessarily more efficient.
  - frognumber 3y ago
    I think a lot of that fits into "ethical." Efficient and humane line up not 100%, but more often than not. Bad things: 1) You don't have a clean kill. Worst-case outcome is a wounded animal surviving. Better is where hunting is right now: Clean shot to the lungs, and the animal dies in minutes or tens of minutes. Best would be one shot leads to an almost instant kill. 2) You have a clean-ish kill, but lose the animal You hit the lungs. Animal wanders off before dying, and you never find the animal. It rots away drifting down a river somewhere, polluting the river and spreading disease. ... and so on. If we can get a shaped charge in a drone to kill an animal instantly, cleanly, and comparatively painlessly, it 100% takes away from the sport, but might be 100% more ethical than a 0.22 shot to the lungs. If we track it with thermal optics on an MQ-1 Predator Drone circling overhead, again, less sporting, more ethical. (And yes, I can come up with examples of more efficient / less ethical too; as I started, things don't line up 100% of the time

frognumber 3y ago

It's not always a sport. It can be a sport if you do it for sport, but plenty of people hunt to: - Have healthy food to eat - Keep predators away from farms - Control population booms of some species which would otherwise starve to death ... and so on. Sports have rules to make them fair. Jobs and hobbies are about making them efficient, fun, and ethical. There is context in this thread which suggests why this specific sting made sense, but if you're not in a competition setting, if there is a way to make hunting more humane and efficient, we should take it every time. Sport regulations make sense for teams, not as laws everyone follows. If I'm playing soccer in a field, I can follow official rules, or I can play Calvinball. Laws, here, should be set for things like gun safety and sanitation, not to enforce some sort of sporting regulations.

lukeinator42 3y ago
It's true that hunting is a great way to have healthy food to eat, and is important for population control, but ethics in hunting goes way beyond just being a sporting regulation. Lots of people in hunting use phrases such as sportsmanship and the concept of fair chase has traditionally been built into the culture of hunting. I think laws such as daylight-hunting hours, hunting seasons, limits on atv use, etc. are enforcing these ethics rather than merely being about safety, and that's important for conservation and how we relate to nature as a culture. All that to say I agree with making hunting more humane, but not necessarily more efficient.
- frognumber 3y ago
  I think a lot of that fits into "ethical." Efficient and humane line up not 100%, but more often than not. Bad things: 1) You don't have a clean kill. Worst-case outcome is a wounded animal surviving. Better is where hunting is right now: Clean shot to the lungs, and the animal dies in minutes or tens of minutes. Best would be one shot leads to an almost instant kill. 2) You have a clean-ish kill, but lose the animal You hit the lungs. Animal wanders off before dying, and you never find the animal. It rots away drifting down a river somewhere, polluting the river and spreading disease. ... and so on. If we can get a shaped charge in a drone to kill an animal instantly, cleanly, and comparatively painlessly, it 100% takes away from the sport, but might be 100% more ethical than a 0.22 shot to the lungs. If we track it with thermal optics on an MQ-1 Predator Drone circling overhead, again, less sporting, more ethical. (And yes, I can come up with examples of more efficient / less ethical too; as I started, things don't line up 100% of the time