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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."
PETA likes this legislature. They pulled for it. They proclaim victory on their front page.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
WTF. They're food. Mind your own damn business. There's no law requiring you to hunt them, so what're you even complaining about?
One state has 1.5 million deer. You have to kill half of those every year or the population will increase. If it increases enough, people won't be able to keep them out of their gardens and disease will spread, tossing the wildlife into a dangerous spot. What the fuck do you propose? Are you honestly suggesting that people stop hunting them? Are you suggesting that taxpayer money be used to kill 750,000 deer per year, then just throw away the meat because ``meat is murder''? You'd probably ban guns, too, so that the only recourse is to poison the animals, which is imprecise and ultimately far more damaging. When all the Earth is soaked in Roundup and animal poison, what do you think you're going to eat?
In short, you are a moron. You don't know enough about the situation to speak intelligently about it, and the ``situation'' here is nature and the food supply. I suggest shutting the hell up unless you want to risk undermining your credibility on every subject.
Of course most likely you'd not be really killing real animals, any more than you're talking to an innocent teen when you dial 0900-VIRGIINS. Instead you'd pay your $50 or whatever and the whole shooting would be mocked up, probably from Discovery channel footage. That way a few thousand cyberhunters get to "shoot" the same bambi and nobody really gets hurt except a few credit cards.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I dont see a difference between killing an animal for food or sport, even if the sport is done on the web.
This sounds like passing a law for PR, nothing else. We dont need feel good, nanny laws created. This is law is purely about ones feeling about hunting, nothing more.
People need to stop passing more laws for behavior and freedoms of the people, and deal with voilent crimes, polution or robbery. They need to stay out of peoples lives and hobbies.
If they said "No Church Online" you bet there would be more people talking about this law.
Serriously, do you need to be told what you can watch, what you can eat, who you can marry, whats proper in your own home? Damn if you people dont see this is a fluff law you are a sheep.
What would be useful here is a new term that would permit the distinction between "hunters" and "dickwads with big guns." Currently we lump the two groups together and heap derision upon both for the sins of the latter (and some don't like the former, either).
... and thought myself lucky to have had an interesting day.
... the hunters, of course. It may be shallow to lump hunters together with dickwads with guns ... but the hunters would not suffer so much abuse if the dickwads with guns went away forever.
In my case, I *have* been deer hunting and goose hunting --- myself armed with a camera, and my companions with guns. I've had a bleeding deer carcase in my lap for 45 miles bouncing along in an open jeep in 25F weather,
I don't think I could pull the trigger, and there is that little issue that I'm a vegetarian. But I don't hate "hunters."
I do, however, hate dickwads with guns. In my day job, I put up scientific apparatus in remote places, and dickwads with guns use my antennas for target practice, chop up my coax, steal the guy lines, and generally remind us that the gene pool has a shallow end.
But if there is one group of people who should *really* loathe dickwads with guns, it is
I'm sure I'm not the only one asking this question, but what exactly IS internet hunting?
No doubt from one that has never been hunting and frozen his balls off or gone one-on-one with a wild pig.
Still, I guess there could be some useful things to do with internet hunting. In many places there are various pest species. iHunters could help shoot 'em up and also help pay for pest elimination. For instance, here in New Zealand we have possums introduced from Australia http://www.invasive-animals.org.nz/possum/ I kill about 50 of these a year and still they come... I would not mind a couple of ihunters setting up camp at my place so long as they don't shoot the kids and sheep.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
But the public in most areas is largely unaware of what sort of damage the burgeoning deer population can do to the woods. They just graze and graze and cause automobile accidents. And interestingly enough, they are involved by far in more fatal attacks on people than any other North American wild mammal. Yet people fear the quite miniscule numbers of wolves and cougars...
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Agreed, there was nothing insightful about his comment. There is no "human infestation". Humans in the midwest aren't putting themselves in a position where other humans in the midwest are starving as a result of their overpopulation. In fact, the Midwest is pretty well thriving these days (minus Ohio), and has a much more managable population level than the coasts.
Wouldn't eatting insects make sense, though? Could we design beef flavored roaches? Assumed, since most everything tastes like chicken, that chicken flavor would be too easy.
A friend who lives in Ontario cottage country fell asleep on the back deck after a particularly good summer party. He woke in the early morning hours to the click-click sound of a family of wolves checking out the remanants in the BBQ. The meeting scared them more than they scared him, all three instantly bolted.
I'm a web developer in Seattle but my family is from the Cascade Mountains just a couple hours northeast of here. When I was young my mom took up hunting as a way to provide food for her family and be able to make ends meet. It's been a tradition in my family for generations so it seemed like a natural solution to high grocery bills.
It provided my single mother and my sister and I with organic, all-natural meat for a year every time she went elk hunting. Though it was part of the experience, she never hunted purely for sport. When we kids graduated and moved out she stopped hunting because she didn't financially have to.
This is a form of hunting that has ancient traditions. It's respectful to the animals because we hunt with gratitude for the well-being of prey and take measures to make sure they are sustained and protected by legislation. When they are threatened, those who depend on them are threatened.
Internet hunting is a sport for those who have made no investment in the animals they hunt. It sickens me that hunters who do it for the rush of the kill would associate themselves with the human tradition of depending on animals for our food. There's nothing in common between the two.
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No, the amoraility in hunting is killing another living animal for fun, and claiming it's a "sport".
Except, you call it a "sport" and I call it "putting lean, healthy meat in my freezer, and helping to manage wildly out of balance deer populations."
I know a lot of hunters, and I don't know a single one - at all - that takes pleasure, per se, in the act of killing the animal they're taking. The nearest thing to it would be the pride they take in being good at it - which results (by way of a well placed shot) in a humane kill, and less wasted meat.
Now, I do know people that take great joy in swatting mosquitos, or killing rats in their house, etc. Those are people that kill a creature just for their own convenience/happiness. But those are as likely to be non-hunters as hunters.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You make a very good argument, and I agree with you on most points but, I might disagree on some details.
Although I agree with you on the role of evolution, I disagree with using it as justification. Primitive man also killed his competition for a better chance of propagation. As for our biological requirements, you are completely right.
As for having someone else (butcher) kill an animal vs killing it yourself, I believe that killing the animal yourself is more ethical. Look at how much meat is thrown away in this country. People who kill their own animals tend to have much more respect for the creature and do not waste them. Where I disagree with you is in the making a sport out of killing the creature. I have butcherd a few animals (goats, sheep, and pig) for BBQ's. However, I try to make it quick, simple, and as painless as possible.
Now, I do understand the desire for the sport, hell, we've got millions of years of evolution that make it desireable. There's the inrush of all kinds of hormones and nuerochemicals to make it a desireable activity. But, as a thinking being I find it distasteful to make sport out of killing.
Just my $0.02
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
That was 20 years ago and the deer population still hasn't fully recovered to normal levels, though it's getting there through nice, sustainable, controlled growth, encouraged by more aggressive wildlife management policies (more hunting).
Don't you see some error in your way of thinking? How is KILLING more deer to allow RECOVER the original population? Or you mean the population is STILL TOO HIGH (despite the mass dying because of the harsh winter) and you intend to help recover its original, lower number?
Truth is, the population WOULD have regulated itself. 75% of the population - the weakest would die. Next year the "boom" would be smaller. Then possibly there would be more food over winter, and so, in some time the population would ballance itself, equal number dying over winter as being born as "surplus" over normal population.
But no, hunters couldn't stand seeing so much good meat, so much game going to waste. Feed them now, shot them later, the preferred way. Of course let the weak survive so we could shot the best ones and still have the numbers matching.
The problem with hunters is that they justify their actions by short-term problems ("if we don't kill enough deers, they will destroy trees this winter") while their long-term tactics is directed at maximizing their own interest - first kill off all the predators (remove the competition) then maximize the population, while maximizing hunting - more born, more killed, more meat. The ballance could be kept - some predators, some herbivores and just several shots a year to keep the ballance wherever it gets out of hand. But no, you prefer to turn forests into game factory, where you MUST kill A LOT of wild animals to keep the area from ecological disaster. It's not "population control". It's "meat harvest."
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