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Internet Hunting Banned in California
TheSync writes "California has banned Internet hunting. Emergency regulations will be put in place by the California Fish and Game Commission, and legislation (SB 1028) is in the works. West Virginia is considering legislation against it as well. Hunters consider hunting by robot and mouse click 'a digrace to the sport,' whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."
I highly doubt the submitter's genes would be alive today, if not for the hunting of "innocent" animals, whatever the hell that means.
Way to make an unbiased and factual news post, Timothy!
Yeah yeah "but timothy didn't say it thesync did" ever heard of being an editor? Ever heard of a respectable news site?
The funny part is that the first quote *is* a quote (minus the blatant spelling error, of course - congratulations again!) while the second part is complete and total fabrication.
You know what? Stuff like this doesn't help *anyone*. If you need to put words in people's mouths to make your point, your point has failed.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine.
Nice troll. I still continue to be amazed such nonsense makes it into the article summaries. Animals are not "innocent", and in many cases hunting acts as part of the ecosystem, preventing animal overpopulation. It you're going to troll Timothy, try to at least sound intelligent.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Why does there need to be a law for everything? How can the banning of Internet hunting be regulated, anyhow? What is the state going to do; get ISPs to look at the logs of everybody who are signed up at Internet hunting sites? Doesn't California have better and more important things to focus on, such as balancing the budget?
so you're crapping in the bushes and a deer comes along and you shoot it with your high powered rifle, easy right? But on some level you now understand what its like to crap in the bushes like a deer. And for understanding this, the killing process becomes very real.
over the internet it is no longer hunting. Its a video game where things actually die, there is no connect.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."
Wow, that wasn't inflammatory.
How many of you criticising this legislation are actually hunters? As someone who is both a techie and an avid outdoorsman, I don't see any problem with this legislation. High powered rifles do not ensure a perfect hunt. I personally am against confined game farms where a hunters prey is pretty much domesticated, and I have a problem with doing it over a computer. Hunting can and should still be a challenge. I don't see something like internet hunting promoting, for example, an intimate parent/child bond as there's hours or days spent away from other distractions. I mean, seriously, if you're out hunting, you're off in the woods or the field, and there isn't an instant messenger or e-mail to pop up -- hell, damned cell phones are enough of a problem in the outdoors. It comes down to that Jurrasic Park conundrum: just because you can doesn't mean you should. Hunting over the internet is not a right. I can understand the advantage for disabled individuals, but then again, I hunt with people who are "handicapped" under my state's laws, and you know what -- there are already special accomadations for them, such as allowing the use of ATVs while hunting, or allowing the use of crossbows. And yes, fat, lazy Americans should get up off their asses to actually go hunt, if that's what they want to do. Sorry to say it, but every group of Americans could use some Darwinistic thinning -- if you want to go hunt, you should have to figure out how to use a gun, walk through the wilds, etc. Those who can't figure this out, and, say, accidentally shoot themselves, or die in the wilderness... well, go population control. And, I can see where PETA would call this a triumph on their part. I find it kind of odd to agree with PETA on something, because I'm usually against what they have to say. I mean, think about it this way ... what real arguments can anyone make for allowing this? What convincing situations and reasonings can someone present?
"If God's on our side, he'll stop the next war." -- Bob Dylan
Why is 'whereas tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine' appended to the end of this story?
Because an unbelievable number of people think like that. You know, people who wear nice leather shoes, eat some meat with their dinner, and who have a domestic cat that, despite eating three times a day in the kitchen, stalks and kills neighborhood songbirds just because it's fun. People are spectacularly hypocritical and uninformed about this stuff, and know nothing about the monumental amount of work and cash that hunters put into wildlife management programs and wilderness preservation.
On tonight's dinner menu at my house: pheasant that my wife, my dog, and I laboriously hunted in South Dakota last October. During that outing we pumped a couple thousand dollars into the vapor-thin local economy, walked over miles and miles of farmland, always filling in the host farmers on what we saw in their cornrows and pastures. The "innocent animal" bit only makes sense if you also consider mosquitos innocent, the earthworms that get sliced up by farm equipment creating vegan meals to be innocent, and so on. Bah. This topic is so rife with nonsensical, contradictory emotional baggage and anthropomorphized Disney-esque pablum. Yeesh.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What is this innocent animals statement? Is the writer trying cast aspirations about hunters?
My brother-in-law is hunter in SW Ontario. We all enjoy the spoils of his "sport" Not much of the animal is wasted. Let me tell you, fresh Ontario Bambi steak off the charcoal BBQ is to die for. I have vension steaks and gound/minced vension for chilli in my freezer too, and will be a far healthier for me than N. American beef that has been pumped full of anti-biotics and growth hormone, fed things that aren't part of its normal diet and has more chance of giving me nvCJD than anything from the UK. And yes, I am aware that there is an epidemic in parts of N. America where elk and deer are dying of a disease similar to BSE.
For all those meat eaters out there who make anti-hunting comments: are you prepared to kill you own animals, gut them, and prepare them? Or will only accept it in the sterilised format from the supermarket? Think about it. Some people have good reasons, some are just hypocrits.
Finally, I do realise there is some basis for the author's statement. I do realise that there are "hunters" out there who are just in it for the guns and killing. I don't have much respect for them either. Maybe there is a cultural difference between the US and Canada too (somebody please enlighten me) - muzzle-loading season for deer around here lasts one week, the rest of the time my brother-in-law has to hunt with a bow and arrow (crossbow in recent years actually).
What do you mean nobody wants cougars or wolves near their towns? There are a lot of us willing to allow larger predators back where they belong. We may or may not be a minority, but I know we are a far cry from "No one"
I am not against hunting deer. Nor against hunting deer via robot hunters as long as the venison is taken with the intention of consumption.
But the argument that it is either hunting or letting the big bad wolf eat your children is not going to scare all of us. People can exists with cougars and wolfs just fine with the proper precautions.
The results of killing all the wolves has had bad effect in the hundred years since their elimination. As you say biodiversity has been harmed by largely unrestrained deer populations in some areas, but increasing hunting allowances is not the only answer.
That being said, what really pisses me off is hunting wolves from aircraft in Alaska. Where the hell is the sport in that, I want to know.
Wolves and other large predators. Read his comment, please!
Wolves have been driven to near extinction in a great chunk of Asia, Europe and the Americas. Nobody likes living with large predators on their doorstep, and for that reason, they've been trapped and hunted to a shadow of original population levels.
Yes, we caused the problem, but our options right now to fix it are as follows: reintroduce high end predators to areas now contested for use with humans ( I favour this approach, and some places like the Algonquin Park have a blanket ban of wolf hunting, but not all agree ) or manually cull deer, etc, numbers. It's really that simple.
Of course, yes, the ecosystem will eventually rebalance to a new, diversity-poor, deer-heavy state if we do nothing - just as it has for 'so many millions of years' - but I like the ecosystem we have now, and I'd like to see steps to see it preserved.
-- YLFI
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I don't think there needs to be a law for everything, but to me this is a case where hunters are saying that they don't want hunting to become inundated with people who are not hunters.
Hunting isn't just about taking out your high-powered rifle and wasting an animal. You have to be out in the environment. You have to be where the animal is in order to kill it. While the technology for finding and killing animals has become more advanced, there is a connection between the hunter and the prey . I'm not a hunter, but every hunter I've ever talked to takes this seriously.
It seems to me that one of the primary reasons people go out early in the morning and spend long hours in the woods looking for animals to kill, then doing the dirty work of dispatching the animals and hauling their dead bodies is that they want to be closer to the life and death struggle of nature. They want to feel less removed from it, not more removed from it.
In that sense, a ban on Internet hunting is a way of saying that they want to preserve this aspect of hunting, so that it is not overwhelmed by people who have no sense of what hunting is all about, and think of it as merely a video game featuring live animals. While I don't hunt because I don't see the need to kill animals in order to feel closer to nature, or in order to prove my dominance over other creatures, I can understand why hunters would want to keep hunting from becoming an exercise that requires no interaction with the natural world.
As a side note, California does have to focus on balancing the budget, but I hardly think it's a question of balancing the budget or passing a law banning Internet hunting.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I live in BC, in the woods. We have wolves, bears, and cougars. There was a steaming pile of bear shit in my yard 2 days ago. The thought of needing a shotgun to protect myself is ludicrous.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I don't believe in animals rights, and I know god wanted us to eat them otherwise he wouldn't have made them taste so good. However, people who kill animals for entertainment have mental issues. Any psychologist will tell you that children who kill animals for fun are prime candidates to become serial killers.
If you want to go out in the woods playing super predator, tracking and stalking, have fun. When you catch your prey why not shoot it with a paintball gun and call it a day? I don't get the thrill out of killing animals.
So you kill a deer for no other reason that to make yourself feel better and less of a hypocrit? Somehow, I don't think the deer cares about your feelings.
Way to completely miss the point. He wasn't asking for the deer's approval, just like you don't ask the cow. He's merely taking personal responsibility for the killing, which you appear to object to.
There is a school of thought among hunters that personally using the resources provided by an animal you killed provides meaning to the death. Death is a part of life. If taking an animal's life helps to sustain my own and if the animal felt as little pain as possible during that death, I'm not going to feel the slightest bit guilty about my actions.
And that doesn't only mean I'm comfortable buying meat at the supermarket that someone else killed for me. I also include hunting for meat myself, exactly like the poster you replied to.
Regards,
Ross
If anything, I have a lot more respect for someone that hunts his own meat (as long as he/she is a good shot and knows his limitations), than for someone who buys it neatly packaged at a supermarket.
But, people, if you are going to hunt, be responsible and learn to fcking shoot!.
People willing to take a shot at an animal, but not willing to put in the time to be good enough to make a clean kill (or track down a wounded animal whatever it takes) makes me sick.
They're not any better than "internet hunters".
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."