Trying to Ban Trophy Hunting is Foolish

It's virtue signaling by people eating hamburgers

America is loaded down with animal rights wackos – and “wackos” is the right word here. We’re not talking about people who are against dog fighting or believe that animals should be treated humanely, we’re talking about people who generally don’t seem to understand the difference between humans and animals. This is the mentality that led to a serious attempt to get Happy the Elephant declared a person in New York:

A yearslong legal attempt to get Happy, an elephant residing at the Bronx Zoo, transferred to an elephant sanctuary failed Tuesday when New York's highest court rejected a petition from the Nonhuman Rights Project.

The group filed a writ of habeas corpus on Happy's behalf, suggesting a legal instrument that has safeguarded the liberty of humans, by providing a means to secure release from illegal custody, should also apply to an elephant.

The New York Court of Appeals disagreed, though it said Happy was entitled to proper care.

It seems a bit odd to see a perfectly reasonable and sane ruling from a court in New York these days, but there you go.

We can appreciate animals, we can love animals, and we can want to make sure they’re not mistreated, but they’re definitely not on the same level as people. Someone needs to tell the people on my local NextDoor app that (not me, I try to avoid arguing with idiots), because there are quite a few of them, probably transplanted Yankees, that eternally seem to bemoan the fact that we’re encroaching on the territory of coyotes. As if coyotes aren’t opportunistic predators that wouldn’t happily eat your pets. Recently, I was visiting a friend in rural Idaho. As we drove around on a hill and looked at the piles of bones packs of coyotes had left every few feet, it was easy to understand why coyotes are shot on sight there.

Incidentally, some of those bones could have been her cats. She believes the coyotes have killed a couple of them. So, don’t weep for the coyotes that get shot.

Similarly, there are vegans who take their dietary preferences to an extreme. They push the idea that if you really care about animals like they do, you have to be vegan, just like them! If they want to just eat plants, that’s their prerogative. However, everyone should be aware that there is a raging debate about whether more animals die during the process of planting and harvesting crops than are outright killed for food. How can that be? Well, here’s diehard hunter Ted Nugent to explain:

"If you wanna be responsible for the most death possible, become a vegan. Because behind that tractor and that plough and that disc, unless you hide and deny it, are crows and seagulls following that tractor growing your tofu because the plough and the disc dismember and mutilate everything in those gazillion acres — every squirrel, every ground-nesting gopher, every ground-nesting bird, every snake, every turtle, every animal in that field that's turned into tofu is slaughtered by the gazillion."

He continued: "I'll never forget, this guy said, "Well, we're going to a vineyard to protest hunting.' And I go, 'Wait a second. Do you know the vineyard operator? Because I do. And you know what the vineyard operator does to protect those grapes? He kills everything — everything that sneaks in, everything that walks in, everything that flies in. The vineyard operator, to grow your wine, to protest hunting, kills everything that threatens those grapes, you jerk.'”

"My son's a vegan, my buddy Michael Lutz [of] BROWNSVILLE STATION, my co-producer, he's a vegan for health considerations, for digestive considerations," Nugent added. "That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not knocking veganism. But don't think for a minute that there's a reduction in animal deaths because you have a tofu salad. Just the opposite takes place. And denial is such a convenient lie. So, all you vegans, just keep eating your vegan salad because I love when you dismember all those animals and the crows, and the seagulls pick up on them as they're writhing in horror and being tortured so you can have a nice 'blood-free' salad."

Which side of the debate is right and which side is wrong? Which side has a bigger animal body count? I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that if you’re eating commercially grown plant products, a lot of animals died to get that food on your plate.

Of course, it’s also worth noting that we use animals for a lot more than just food.

Do you have pets? Some animal rights activists don’t think you should be allowed to have them. The same goes for zoos and aquariums. Leather? It’s EVERYWHERE. Sofas, car seats, shoes, clothes, belts, purses, gloves, wallets, boots, you name it. However, leather is just one product out of many. When I went to Tijuana in May, I brought my mother back a little statue made of bones. I also took a picture of this:

Want to know some other products that are often derived in some way, shape, or form from fish, animals, or animal products? Shampoo, paintbrushes, condoms, perfume, laundry detergent, nail polish, orange juice, crayons, products made of wool, toothpaste, gummies, tires, hand soap, chewing gum, razors, and lipstick among many, many others.

As to eating animals for food, human beings have been doing that for our entire existence. If you were guessing what the first tools were that humans used, rocks and clubs that we used to help hunt and kill animals would be good bets. When our species started settling in fixed locations and embraced agriculture, we used animals as helpers and food sources. My neighbor across the street has his own chickens that he uses for eggs. My friend in Idaho that I went to visit has cows. She had one of them butchered. It produced an enormous amount of meat and she told me when you figured up the cost to feed the cow and have it processed, it came out to about a dollar per pound.

Just as a side note, that’s some of the best steak that I’ve ever eaten. Similarly, I have deer meat in my freezer that tastes fantastic. My brother hunted that deer, killed it, had it dressed, and dropped some off for me.

Whether you get your meat from someone that hunted it or raised it for that purpose, it doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s the way of the world. Have you ever seen that old Simpsons’ video that had the line, “If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about?”

Well, a cow wouldn’t, but the animal kingdom is full of creatures that describes. Crocodiles alone eat a thousand people per year and mosquitoes kill a million-plus humans per year gulping down our blood. Many animals also eat each other at every opportunity. We don’t even have to talk about the big, scary animals like grizzlies, lions, and great white sharks. For example, remember the coyotes from earlier in this piece? How about my neighbor’s chickens? A raccoon killed some of them. When humans hunt and kill animals, we’re playing the same game as the rest of the animal kingdom. Granted, other animals can’t take the heads of their kills to a taxidermist or proudly pose in front of their kills.

I always imagine these animal rights wackos sitting in a leather chair, munching on a burger while they tweet about how awful it is that people hunt animals and demand that the practice be banned, as they’re discussing in Britain:

Trophy hunters are slaughtering an animal every three minutes – with UK marksmen among the world’s most prolific killers, the Daily Mail can reveal.

British hunters have won prizes for shooting more than a hundred different species, including endangered ones such as lions and polar bears, says a report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on banning trophy hunting.

The exhaustive six-month inquiry – the findings of which will be published today – has found that firms founded in the UK are selling trophy-hunting holidays for tens of thousands of pounds. Among them are ‘canned’ lion hunts, where the animals are bred in captivity and shot in enclosures.

...It comes after a private member’s bill that aims to ban the import of hunting trophies into Britain was finally presented to Parliament earlier this month.

If it becomes law, the bill – tabled by Tory MP Henry Smith – would stop hunters bringing animal skins, severed heads, and carcasses back to the UK after shoots abroad. The government has spent years promising a ban but failed to offer a timetable.

But British trophy hunters have defended their involvement, saying it pours money back into the economy of the countries where they hunt.

...Kenny Jr. told the Mail that hunting was ‘a way of life’ in Africa and compared it to deer hunting in the UK. He added: ‘The companies employed a ton of local people, workers, and all the meat of the animals was getting eaten and shared at night.

‘It isn’t a cheap thing to do either, so all that money is going to go back into their economy.’

Granted, canned hunts seem fake and lame, but welcome to 2022. The world is full of people being fake to try to get attention. At the end of the day, if people want to go to a foreign country and hunt animals, who cares? They enjoy it. A lot of the places they go to hunt are poor and the money they pour into those communities (often along with the meat) is a big positive. It also helps with conservation efforts there and in our country. Those hunting licenses cost money and they often end up being the backbone of funding for state fish and wildlife agencies.

Hunting is one of the oldest human pastimes and it’s healthier and more productive than 95% of the activities people engage in these days. It’s more active than video games. It ultimately does far more to help animals in the real world than the butchers at PETA. It also does more to help put money into the pockets of poor people in other countries than any hashtag campaign on Twitter. It does a lot more in the real world to help with conservation efforts than people talking endlessly about how much they care about global warming.  If you’re not into it, great. Nobody is going to make you hunt, so the impact on you will be zero. Please just don’t end up as one more wacko talking about how no one needs hunting because people can get their meat from the supermarket.  

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