Hunting

when i consume the quarry of others i have faith that the act of hunting or slaughter, which i have been distanced from, was carried out in an ethical and responsible manner

i hope i'm not pitching this too provocatively, because i don't think this is The Most Important Thing which you Must Be Disabused Of immediately, but this seems kinda askew to me - without even being a super=literate animal rights guy i feel like incorporating expectations of humane treatment is really such a stretch (maybe outside of fish?, where it seems like there's a little more of a credible network vouching for provenance?) that it's easier to have a moral framework incorporating 'i can deal with the associated suffering' than 'i am assuming there was no associated suffering'. i feel like unless you bought something expensive that was plastered with like ... detailed images of a guy in an abattoir holding yesterday's new york times & chloroforming a pig, it probably wasn't neat & tidy.

nb hey this probably was not the most suitable thread, it might be about foxes rather than vegetarianism, i just grabbed one

But yeah, being against hunting and ok with eating meat seems like inexcusable moral stupidity to me. "But hunting is for sport, that's so CRUEL...OM NOM NOM BACOOOOOON!"

I don't know many omnivores who are "against hunting" without exception - by and large they're against trophy hunting. It's assumed that taking pleasure in killing a creature says something about the person doing the killing and that's what is ultimately distasteful.

Being an omnivore and decrying big game or trophy hunts (particularly canned hunts and the like) is no more absurd or illogical than drawing a distinction between cows and cats/dogs. One has evolved into a companion animal for the vast majority of the western population, the other hasn't. You can play a game where you say "it's all the same," and that's fine - but you can't say that one can't reasonably draw a boundary.

Morally, the other problem with the lion hunt was that it was a bad hunt - the goal in hunting is a quick, clean kill (either for moral reasons or for reasons related to the taste of meat) and this schmoe shot a big cat with a bow and arrow (because that's how he derives pleasure from his hunt - more primitive and generally less humane) and it took 40 hours of pain and misery before they could find it and put it down.

not gonna lie to u tho that dead lion did look fuckin delicious tho

it is an incoherent faith, of course, but it isn't impossible to imagine an instant, painless kill with no prior suffering. and if you can imagine it, you can begin to presume it…

i was raised on meat and the taste of flesh. it is a compulsion that pre-dates my development of a conscience. it has made me omnivorous by habit, and habit is often more powerful than choice. aesthetically it is probably a failing of mine. eating the flesh of farm-reared livestock is pure indulgence - a sort of fin-de-siecle hedonism - and does not even confer the earth-worshipping associations of sacrifice, connection to the beast itself, all the guff that some hunters probably tell themselves but which probably only subsistence free-range farmers or certain tribespeople genuinely experience

the issue then becomes whether you can live with being purely indulgent

milo otm!

I've come to think that news stories like this fill the same human need as a ritual sacrifice -- the killer of cecil takes the burden of all of our sins and is burned.

i would perhaps be more open to pity for this guy if he didn't pose with his guide who almost certainly set up the majority of the hunt for him
whether you eat it or not, killing something with someone else's help for the primary purpose of proving that you killed it is psychopathic behavior

people are seriously using #LionLivesMatter I fucking despair

This is hilarious however. Why not #JeSuisCecil though?

it's pointless to tell people they're wrong for empathising with some animals more than others

#allanimallivesmatter

#notallhunters

I've wanted to start hunting for a while, but I haven't felt like dishing out the start-up costs yet. Buying a gun, buying a gun cabinet, taking hunter's safety courses, learning how to properly use and care for a gun (probably through an NRA course, which I have qualms about), learning how to field dress and butcher meat. All barriers to entry.

I've read this book though, http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Hunting-Deer-Storey/dp/1603427287 , which was a good start.

I thought the preferred hashtag was #catlivesmatter

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/07/30/11/2AF34A5700000578-3178821-image-a-25_1438251862458.jpg

http://thecount.com/wp-content/uploads/petition-for-cecil-the-lion.jpg

http://d2rg8jfniu44sp.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Romney_Cecil_The_Hill.jpg

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9/11822424_1033392730034021_6138720438158633543_n.png?oh=f8e267bc135855f3b9fe3a93f8e487d7&oe=564B87B5

the way I see it

The weirdest thing I have learned in all of this is that the lion was named after Cecil Rhodes.

Not that weird given that he was older than independent Zimbabwe.

The dentist killed an old lion?

death to imperialist lions

lion dead

Cecil the stingray

http://topfamousquotes.com/images/author/201505/cecil-rhodes-quotes-1.jpg

The lion was only 13.

You're right, I must have misread.

He would have to have been over 35 to be older than independent Zimbabwe, i.e. some six years older than the oldest lion ever recorded.

Now that would have been a story.

SOME LION

lol

I gather that a key part of the lion story was that they lured the lion out of the park, no?

When my daughter was about 6, she asked me to take her fishing. I hadn't done it since my own Pleistocene childhood. but it seemed like a reasonable enough request. Overtones of Mayberry wholesomeness, low-key outdoor togetherness, possible teachable moments (Hard Lessons about nature, Circle of Life, yadda y yadda).

Like a lot of people, we eat meat and fish, but we try to talk and think about where it came from. Many years ago I did some work relating to animal welfare issues, particularly living conditions and slaughter. I'm not morally opposed to eating meat/fish, but I do take it seriously as a question. And I can kind of understand the thoughtful, quasi-spiritual view of hunting described above - the idea that confronting and killing the living thing you want to eat is more... more _something_ than buying a shrink-wrapped processed bit of foodoplasm from Safeway (more what? honest? direct? courageous? respectful?). It's not my thing, but I can see the appeal of the argument.

Anyway. Fishing. I think maybe on some level, I hoped we wouldn't catch anything, and she'd get bored after an hour and go back to her iPad. As it happens, we did catch two fish, which I did cook and serve in a solemn way. But I found myself being unexpectedly mournful about the whole thing, and I ended up wishing we'd released them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/30/us-zimbabwe-wildlife-lion-idUSKCN0Q41VB20150730

fwiw, it's the second news story in the Africa section of the Mail & Guardian - the South African newspaper Macdonald Dzirutwe writes for - and has had extensive coverage outside of Europe and the US. This comment from the writer / academic Priyamvada Gopal on Facebook goes some way towards explaining why it's not just about a lion:

I didn't want to write about Cecil because I am one of those lily-livered softies who finds the whole story very upsetting. But I do want to respond to the leftwing sneering about people being upset about a bloody lion when thousands are dying etc. It's true that it would be wonderful if this kind of outrage were channeled in other directions more regularly: the world could change overnight. But the Cecil story is not an aside: it IS precisely about everything that is wrong with the world right now: wealth for squandering and arrogant privilege, white Western entitlement, masculinity-as-violence, rampant weaponising, routine cowardly bullying and murder of the weaker on a playing field that is not level through cajoling and cheating, postcolonial black and brown leaders who will sell their people and national resources for a song, land grabbing, privatising of the commons, collusion between elites, utter contempt for ecology, wildlife and environment. I could go on. Rather than dismiss and sneer at the anger Cecil's death has generated, it's a question of inviting people to see the connections and to expand their anger, not replace it with something else deemed more politically worthy.

All of those things have about zero to do with why this story has become a viral outrage

ok not all of them, but a lot of them

People have different reasons for being outraged about it. The last line of the comment suggests that getting people who are simply angry because some moron shot a lion to see the connections between the act and the wider context is more useful than trying to shame them out of it. There have been plenty of African writers, and writers from developing countries, on Twitter who have been making these connections from the start.

Zimbabwe to apparently request extradition:

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:ee241000812f45e0a16f57c337291bb9

gonna guess that ain't happening

re: "The last line of the comment suggests that getting people who are simply angry because some moron shot a lion to see the connections between the act and the wider context is more useful than trying to shame them out of it."

Indeed - people can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can be exercised about income inequality AND climate change AND police brutality AND bloodthirsty dentists. It's not a zero-sum game.

Adding to the bounty of head-scratching oddities in re the Cecil coverage: One of the dramatis personae is apparently named Honest Trymore Ndlovu.

"Honest Trymore" is totally straight out of like Nathaniel Hawthorne or Thomas Nast or something. A part of me wants to write quasi-fanfic in which Honest Trymore is somehow transported into the James Bond universe in which the women are named Pussy Galore, Ivana Fukalot, C. Mai Cleavage, Plenty O'Toole. Honest Trymore meets Holly Goodhead; hijinx ensue.

But the outrage about this "bloodthirsty dentist" seems somewhat out of proportion to the death of a single wild animal. I guess I just don't care about lions all that much and maybe that's blinding me to something here. But it seems like human domination over animals is 100x more
potently expressed every time we eat and crow about steak.

people can be vexed about more than one thing at once which is why exactly the same number of people get outraged about animal cruelty and human cruelty

Millions of animals suffer and die for our frivolous consumption but it's ok as long as we don't have to see pictures of it. This guy broke the rules, he took a picture of the carcass. Also something about imperialism.

It's not a zero-sum game.

People are entitled to view the killing of one of maybe 1000 lions in Zimbabwe for fun, with the animal taking 40 hours to die, as different to industrialised meat production - not that the latter is particularly justifiable either.

Mob justice actually is a zero sum game.

oh, burying your dog I see, strange that you didn't seem so upset about the thousands of termites that died when you fumigated your garage

People aren't getting mad at the folks who were angry about the high-profile deaths that have been discussed over the past several years being upset about the lion. People are getting mad at the folks who have consistently argued that all of those people must have done something that contributed to or excused their deaths but are baying for this dentist's blood.

It's really disingenuous and frankly shitty to pretend otherwise, IMO

but there is literally nobody like that! all animal lovers are total social justice warriors

you aren't seeing my Facebook wall, then

or i am really sarcastic

there is that

one of the takeaways here for me is that if I ever become a meme, i am taking a one month vacation and not checking the internet

http://i57.tinypic.com/v8mq1l.jpg

thanks, you old bag

Well, I'll take a stab at it, but I'm biased as a lion lover.

Per the BBC:

• A major tourist attraction in Hwange National Park - Zimbabwe's largest game reserve

• The 13-year-old animal was renowned for being friendly towards visitors

• Recognisable because of his large size and distinctive black mane

• Led two prides containing six lionesses and 12 cubs along with another lion, Jericho

• Was being monitored as part of an Oxford University study into lion conservation

Plus there are problems when an alpha male lion gets killed. His entire pride is vulnerable now to predation.

absolutely otm post.

I heard a wildlife expert on R4 saying the chance of predation is quite high as well.

oh ok, fine. I'll get off my grumpbox now.

who's gonna prey on them? more fucking lions probably, these creatures are amoral killers

The African megafauna are the sort of the lucky ones because they evolved with + learned to stay the fuck away from dangerous little apes, as we spread to the other continents their extinct Eurasion/American cousins didn't stand much of a chance.

a weird artifact of a pre-cecil time way back in july 14; I imagine now they'd be run off the web for different reasons:
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/hacking-google-maps

WASHINGTON DC-AREA RESIDENTS with a hankering for lion meat lost a valuable source of the (yes, legal) delicacy last year when a restaurant called the Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location. The northern Virginia eatery served French and Russian cuisine in a richly appointed dining room thick with old world charm. It was best known for its selection of exotic meats—one of the few places in the U.S. where an adventurous diner could order up a plate of horse or kangaroo.

For his part, Bertangna says he hopes to reopen his restaurant some day and begin serving lion again. “It’s like a veal. We served it with a white mushroom, sauce and vegetables.”

Someone on my wall over the weekend saying we should make shooting animals in Africa a capital offence like "kiddy fiddling".

He's a keen fisherman btw.

The African megafauna are the sort of the lucky ones because they evolved with + learned to stay the fuck away from dangerous little apes,

i'm pretty sure lions were doing pretty well for themselves for most of the timeline here

I was just quoting the African megafauna = evolved with humans + risk assessed them as dangerous, extinct Eurasion/American megafauna = didn't learn quickly enough how dangerous humans are hypothesis that was in Kolbert's 6th Extinction, it works for me. It applies more to the larger megafauna than lions I guess, but don't lions mostly flee when they see humans? Unless they are famished or in protection mode or at least that was what someone told me once, I wouldn't put it to the test.

eurasian lions didn't do so well with humans. I think it depends on which megafauna yr talking about but a lot of the giant ice age creatures' demises were as much climate-related as due to hunting

I'd guess that climate change would also have made humans completely reliant on hunting and in such extreme conditions probably more formidable hunters than they would be in easier conditions with more dietary options.

I imagine the ice age was peak hunting time, we know they tracked the mammoth migrations across eurasia but the total number of humans would still have been tiny. when the ice started to thaw you had a big increase in precipitation which was bad news for woolly rhinos and such who were used to tundra rather than snow. humans then followed the trees north & something resembling agriculture started kick in but i think by that point humans are just another part of the changing climate. bears/lions/wolves/boars get gradually squeezed out rather than wiped out entirely

there is something in Guns Germs and Steel about this but I don't remember it well enough to recount it exactly correctly. But basically when people finally came across the landbridge they went buckwild on unsuspecting north American landbeasts.

Ok I just read this and I am pretty grossed out now. Sorry for being a dick about this, (although I will still shit on the face of anyone who uses the hashtag #lionlivesmatter):

https://www.facebook.com/captpaulwatson/posts/10153393430140932

This story makes me feel depressed and misanthropic, maybe for reasons that aren't ethically consistent. The lion was so beautiful, I feel sick contemplating the mindset of someone who would take pleasure in hurting it.

Also the fact that he deliberately went after a celebrity lion, a lion with a name -- according at least to the link man alive posted -- makes what he did seem akin to murder. A sentimental distinction sure but it's hard to wring sentimentality out of morality and I'm not so sure we should want to (kant to the thread)

he kant

all this sentimentality is just so much kant

anyway everything about this story is basically an emile cioran quote in narrative form imo

This provides interesting context:

http://www.ianscoones.net/Blog.html

In brief, the large hunting estates were usually in the hands of white landowners prior to the major programme of 'land reforms' Mugabe introduced. Unlike much of the farming land, which for the most part went to the poor, the hunting reserves were given to a handful of well-connected Zanu-PF / military figures who are subject to less scrutiny. While there's a case for saying that game hunting can contribute to local communities, it tends not to be the case in these situations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?smid=tw-share

MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me.

So sorry about Cecil.

Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?

Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.

My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.