Why do people hunting

Instead of running in straight lines, she quarters back and forth ahead of me, head up to catch the slightest whiff of a game bird. A gun makes a difference. Closely related to the desire to be immersed in nature is the pleasure of getting to know places intimately. Hunters will return to a hallowed place even when it has gone past its prime as habitat for game. The decline, though never welcomed, is nevertheless accepted as an inescapable feature of nature—everything, even the rocks, is cyclical though with our short life spans, rocks seem permanent features.

Becoming intimately familiar with places, from first discovery to decline, is an essential feature of being immersed in nature and a reminder of our own temporality. The decline of a favorite cover is one thing. A number of recent cultural shifts have fueled this interest in hunting: growing discomfort with industrial farming and food safety growth hormones, antibiotics ; the locavore and organic farm movement; and a desire to take a direct hand in putting food on the table. No doubt there are many more consumers who recoil at food that does not come wrapped in plastic film than there are people who prefer to shoot or catch at least a portion of their annual consumption of meat and fish.

But the latter group is not to be ignored, not least because they are bolstering the ranks of hunters. Finally, another personal reason that draws men and women to hunting is the need to acknowledge that we are, after all, also animals with a long history of predation, a history long enough to have been encoded in our genes. To be sure, our capacity to create cultures with rituals, norms, and ethical restraints makes us distinct from the other creatures with whom we share the planet, but to deny that part of us that is wild is, as Florence Shepard insists, to deny what it is to be fully human.

Just as it is important for us to be reminded of the wildness we share with animals, it is also equally important to keep the Wild wild. Until recently, the challenge was to protect wildlife and the habitats it depends upon from unsustainable exploitation. Habitat protection turned out to be the more difficult challenge. The game laws mentioned above have resulted in remarkable recoveries of most game species. But we have been steadily encroaching upon the habitats of wildlife—converting land to crops and pasture and, worse, carving out subdivisions connected by spider webs of highways that have brought humans and wild animals in close proximity.

Jim Sterba suggests that more of us live in close proximity to deer, bear, turkeys, and geese, not to mention moose and mountain lions, than at any other time in history not least because there are many more of us, but also because there are lots more wild animals, and we are sharing steadily shrinking lebensraum.

The problem is that wild animals can quickly become habituated to living in close proximity to humans—and some humans encourage habituation by feeding wildlife deliberately or inadvertently improperly contained household waste, pet food left on the deck, etc.

The result in recent decades has been the semi-domestication of suburban deer, coyotes, geese, turkeys, and black bears. Some especially the active enablers of habituation find this charming, an Edenic lions lying with lambs, but in fact it is not good for either the animals or people.

Living in close proximity to humans exposes animals to all sorts of risks, the worst of which is the automobile. Deer and geese also wreak havoc on the heavily modified habitat of suburban back yards, parks, and natural or man-made ponds.

For our part, we have to contend with the risks of collision, too. Deer have brought tick-borne diseases to even the closely cropped suburban yard.

In some areas with large deer populations, some residents have contracted Lyme disease several times. Parks, playgrounds, and golf courses covered in goose excrement make it all but impossible to enjoy these amenities. Indeed, in a sense it advances domestication. The Black Rhino has made headlines this year after the Dallas Safari Club auctioned off a permit to kill one of the only estimated 5, left in the wild.

Between and , 96 percent of the black rhino population was killed for their horns, leaving them with a critically endangered status. While the rhino horn is a delicacy and a status symbol in Vietnam, the Chinese believe it can help with a multitude of health problems.

Wikimedia Commons. Sport hunting is, at best, a friendly name given to an inhumane act in an attempt to make it seem socially acceptable and fair. What can YOU do? It is our job to be stewards for the future, continue to spread the word and keep advocating for those species in peril.

Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Please support us! You must be logged in to post a comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Get thousands of vegan, allergy-friendly recipes in the palm of your hands today! Yes, hunting is addictive! I could finish the argument here - stating that it is as natural to hunt, and to enjoy it, as it is for a cow to be skittish.

You can tame something and put it in the 'perfect' environment, but hardwired in its head is a million years of evolution that it cannot ignore. I have not yet seen someone involved in hunting who didn't yearn to be involved again. Hunting is a natural thrill. It is something we are built for and something in which every primitive society partakes. In our society of privilege, many choose to get their adrenaline and dopamine fixes in other ways sport, TV, fine wine, holidays , but we all came from the same swamp, and not long ago evolutionarily speaking we were all chasing the same mammoths.

Killing for no other reason than feeding this fix is wrong, however I cannot think of many species that one can hunt where there aren't other ecological, economical or sociological reasons to do so attached. What anti-hunters always seem to forget when saying we are just there for the kill, is how many hunts end with no game, and that actually, the kill, when it happens, accounts for a few seconds of a hunt.

The sport is in the opportunity of potential success after all. Other psychological aspects, other than the basic evolutionary response, can also help to explain our enjoyment in hunting:. Sense of achievement: This requires very little explanation. You went out to complete a task, and you completed it. This feels good, and as such is enjoyable. Animals are neither innocent nor helpless.

It takes great skill and patience to hunt them and to do so successfully is an achievement in itself. To achieve a stable and healthy population of any species provides this same feeling, protecting one's crops or food source gives this feeling and coming home with meat does the same. Sense of affiliation: It has been proven multiple times that humans are social creatures and that a sense of belonging is good for our mental health. A person's need to feel a sense of involvement and 'belonging' within a social group is fed through being a hunter.

Even with more solitary hunting styles, there is a sense of community, and when talking about the more sociable hunting sports, it is most of the reason people do that style of hunting. Sense of appreciation: Appreciation and gratitude feel in short supply sometimes in the modern world; in fact, research suggests that the more practice you give your brain at feeling and expressing these things, the more it adapts your overall mindset.

Both appreciation and gratitude are feelings present in hunting and killing: to the land, to the animal, and to your fellow hunters, so, it is only natural that it feels good. What's more, if you hunt more, it is possible that you will subconsciously act more positively towards others as a result. We are all aware of the other reasons we hunt.

Crop protection, population control, disease control, wildlife management, protein gathering - but the bottom line is that it feels good.

Is it wrong to exercise these base desires? No more so than wanting to sleep in shelter, eat food, have sex or breathe. I know hunting is part of who I am, and to try and deny that would be to deny my soul what it wants.

If that makes me a dinosaur in the eyes of the critics, then so be it. Killing young males also destabilizes their prides, and can result in more lion casualties as rival males compete to take their place, he wrote. But perhaps most importantly, he added, legalized recreational hunting derails conservation efforts by simply devaluing the lives of the hunted animals. Original article on Live Science. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mindy Weisberger is a Live Science senior writer covering a general beat that includes climate change, paleontology, weird animal behavior, and space. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options.

Discover World-Changing Science. Roosevelt shot the beast. Power play The slaughtering of large, dangerous animals as a spectacle dates back thousands of years, with records from the Assyrian empire about 4, years ago to around B.