HUNTING AND THE MARQUESS OF QUEENSBERRY RULES

I was wading through the comments on a Kiwi blog today, when I came across a comment that caught my eye. Not for any new insight it offered - heaven forfend - but for an old and tired argument we’ve all heard before; 

“There is no such thing as fair chase in hunting. If hunters were really ‘fair’ they wouldn’t pursue defenceless animals with guns! They would run them down and strangle them with their own two hands, like other animals.” 

This view is based on a syndrome known as ‘anthropomorphism’ (the attribution of human form, emotions or behaviour to a deity or animal), which the vast majority of anti-hunters suffer from in its most acute form.

While anti-hunters will invariably assert that the only ‘fair’ way to kill an animal is as nature intended - club in hand, au naturale - this view overlooks a universal tenet of nature – there are no rules of fair-play – not one, none, zip!

The Cheetah is not obligated to pursue only such game as can match its top speed. The Grizzly is not obligated to pick on prey its own size....let’s face it, there’s not all that much to choose from in the 2.5-metre tall, 350kg class. Nature does not prosecute the Lion for taking prey that has no jaws to compare, and the snake is not restricted to a diet of venomous rats. In fact the opposite rule applies.

All creatures in the natural state, prey exclusively on the comparatively poorly equipped and the vulnerable. This is the ‘edge’ that the predator relies upon for its survival, and this bent for the exploitation of a power-imbalance is evident up and down the food chain. Why, then, should hunting’s critics seek to impose different rules on human predators?

The average anti-hunter will contend that we are more highly evolved, we know the difference between right and wrong, we are better than the sum-total of our primitive instincts etc, and these are propositions worthy of exploration in their own right. Not least because they represent the only admissions you’re ever likely to extract from an animal rights activist, to suggest that humans know better than nature. In all other matters we are Grasshopper, but when it comes to setting a moral example for nature’s predatory species, we are Master!

Of course we do have an edge. We have big brains, wired in such a way as to afford us a rare capacity in the natural order – the capacity to make tools. We are not completely alone in this. There are other species that have developed the capacity to make tools that extend their reach and power. How do those species use their super-powers? Why to give themselves the edge over the mere mortals of their ilk of course.

This is nature’s, not man’s, theme. It is part of the concept Darwin called natural selection, and the only measure of its appropriate application should lie in whether this ‘edge’ results in evolutionary progress or a dead-end. If my greater skill in the fashioning and application of tools results in the utter decimation of my primary food-source, then clearly my edge was counterproductive. But that would not make the development of the tool wrong or its application cruel or unfair. It would speak only to the issues of indiscriminate use and waste.

To claim that the use of guns and bows to harvest nature’s bounty results in a form of cruelty peculiar to man, is beyond ridiculous. Man as a species – even in the case of the most creative individuals – cannot hold a candle to nature’s ‘cruelty’. The fact is, among all species on earth, only man has a concept of, or cares about, cruelty.

Here, as an individual, I will give some quarter to the views of the anti-hunters, but just a little...

I believe that because hunters today have the capacity to ensure that their tools are very efficient, they have a moral – not a natural – obligation to strive for an efficient kill. This does not mean that we should agonise too much over the odd poor shot, but rather that we should not strive to make all shots poor.

This is more consideration than any other species will ever give to the welfare of its prey, and there is no doubt that when it comes to inflicting slow cruel deaths, humans are rank amateurs!

There are giant lizards that without any intention whatsoever to bring their prey down quickly will bite it with a mouth so rancid and septic that its victim will wander off to die an agonising death from septicaemia. Then and only then, will the lizard pursue its prey following the scent of its rotting carcass.

Not Happy Barry!
Sack the sub-human Komodo Dragon!

There are species of insect that paralyse their prey to lay their eggs inside it, so that their young will have a yummy, fresh, meaty meal to tuck into when they hatch. And there are all manner of creatures that enter the body cavities of other creatures, slowly consuming them from the inside before moving on to the next hapless host…the list goes on.

Planet Earth is replete with creatures that kill other creatures to eat, each of them capitalising on the edge they have developed over their prey. Man is not the worst of them, nor should those of us who choose to engage in the natural hunter-prey process be maligned, ridiculed, accused or vilified simply because the greater intellectual capacity given to us by nature itself, has better equipped us for the struggle.

No other creature on earth would bow to pressure to abandon its tools or its edge, for to do so may mean extinction.

So here’s to the hunter – tho shunned, maligned and vilified, he is no less the last vestige of our species’ proper place in the natural order of things. 

Anyway, I’ll get outa ya way now….