THE HUNTERS' EGO

“The anti-hunter is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. His is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. 

Yes, I have paraphrased one of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquies [Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5] just a tad, but each time I hear it I cannot help but think it sums up the invariably emotive and ill-considered ‘arguments’ put forth by hunting’s detractors and opponents.

Sadly – very sadly – the pro-hunting side of the ‘debate’ is just as inclined to spit abuse and ineloquent, unconvincing defences in reply, as though that somehow wins us ground. It doesn’t!

The debate is not going away and it is essential that we get better at putting our case. Not with trite responses about our ‘rights’ or unconvincing claims about painless deaths, but with sound intelligent public deconstructions of the anti-hunters’ case for various emotive animal 'rights'.

So what are ‘rights’? 

Rights come in many forms, but most fit into one of two categories. In the simplest terms they are: 

1) the moral or legal entitlement to have or do something. Such rights may be bestowed, as in the right to drive a car, which could be termed a permissive right, or right under licence, and

2) rights according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied, or transferred, or so-called unalienable rights.

In Australia at least, hunters enjoy the right to hunt under category 1. The hunter requires consent to go about his business, and not simply a hunting licence. The hunter is permitted to hunt in some places and not others, while some techniques are legal and others not. One may, generally speaking, hunt on private property, but one cannot use steel-jawed traps even on private property.

One may hunt rabbits with a gun, a bow or even ferrets on private property and no hunting licence is required, but if the property is not the hunter’s, written permission may be required and this acts as one’s right under licence of the property owner. 

But to hunt deer in NSW, whether on private property or crown lands, one needs a game licence, which is issued by the State. 

The rights anti-hunters claim for all God’s creatures, fall into the second category, unalienable rights, or rights that are automatic, complete and cannot be taken away e.g. the right to live a long and happy life, free from fear, pursuit, cruelty or murder etc.

While these rights may be considered unalienable by some and thus unable to be deprived, they are not so and in fact when it comes to non-humans they simply don’t even exist. 

For a right to have any integrity at all, it must be deliverable generally, not dolled-out ad hoc, capriciously or cynically.  If a right cannot be realised, it is a cynical right and no right at all e.g. the right to backstroke to the moon without fear of intervention. One could make it a right, but if no one can exercise it, it is really no right at all. 

This is the nature of the rights anti-hunters would bestow upon the quarry. They are not unalienable, but rather cynical because they run contrary to “natural law” and in fact natural law dictates they can be and will be “denied” in almost every case. 

While humans may bestow upon a rabbit, the right to a long life, free from hunger, homelessness, victimisation, assault etc., unless said rabbit has been abducted from its natural environment and imprisoned in a cage, no such rights are afforded or due the rabbit.

Natural law dictates the rabbit will live day-by-day not knowing if he will see tomorrow. He will have no right to safe and secure shelter; only the shelter he can create in the moment and every moment of his life will be filled with the threat of home invasion. 

He will be stalked and pursued, often and mercilessly, and unless sheer good fortune intervenes, he will be murdered horribly by an assailant who will extend absolutely no mercy. 

Nor will our bunny or his family know the consolation of ‘justice’. The fox will not be pursued and penalised for killing Mr. Bunny and no one will rally ‘round to make sure Mrs. Bunny and the kids are looked after. 

These are all human concepts of ‘rights’ and common decencies applied to creatures that have neither use for them nor expectation of them. 

The rights many so eagerly bestow upon Cecil the lion carry weight only for nature’s apex hunters and even then the weight they carry is not great. 

We can claim Cecil had a right to live and that those who denied him that right are brutal tyrants, but surely in the great scheme of things Cecil enjoyed a pretty privileged position as something of a tyrant himself? 

As a lion, Cecil was in a position to – and in fact did – deny a veritable cornucopia of rights to just about every creature on the plains.  

Cecil pursued creatures mercilessly, every day of his life. He struck fear into the hearts of all living things and he did so with no consideration to what we recognise as ethics. He killed the weak, the aged, the disabled, the marginalised and the newborn. 

He was not concerned with killing quickly and many of his victims, having evaded Cecil’s brutal attacks, will have limped away carrying mortal wounds, only to die in terrible agony some days later. That agony was likely compounded by being torn apart by other opportunistic predators that will not have waited patiently ‘til Cecil’s victims expired quietly in their sleep.

Cecil killed creatures a fraction of his strength, using weapons of tooth and claw they could not possibly hope to match. Most of his victims had few teeth, little muscle and just one defence, to run. 

In fact if one was intent on anthropomorphising as the anti-hunter does, it would be fair to contend he hunted unethically, because his victims did not have his arsenal with which to defend themselves. 

This brings me to the corollary of this exercise.   

If it is wicked to kill “another sentient being” in order to eat its flesh, why is it not equally wicked for Cecil or perhaps a fox to do it?

If it is cowardly to kill a creature with superior weaponry, why is Cecil not cowardly for using teeth the size of ice-picks and claws like reaping sickles to kill baby gazelle?   

If causing another ‘sentient being’ pain is evil, why is it not universally evil, especially given that the human hunter will at least take life with some regard to minimising suffering, whereas other predators won’t give it a second’s thought?

The answer is simple – ego – the very vice the anti-hunter says is the trophy hunters’ driving force. 

Humans have wonderfully developed egos. They tell us we are better than mere animals, regardless of what the likes of PETA may claim about respecting non-human animal equality and the like. 

We consider ourselves smarter, wiser, cleverer, more responsible, more evolved and with all that comes a responsibility to act in ways that are infinitely superior to all other species. To be gods! 

We reserve for ourselves the right to dictate that behaviour common to a vast number of other species, which fit into the natural balance in ways we long-since ceased to do, is wrong in the human species.  

We are not opposed to hunting because hunting is cruel. We oppose it because to do otherwise robs us of the sense of superiority we crave, that we have bestowed upon ourselves as stewards of all creation.

The hunter, in particular the subsistence hunter, is happy to accept he is part of the great scheme of things, rather than master of it. He does not seek to be more virtuous than the lion or more entitled than the dingo. He doesn’t see himself as a minor deity that must shine with superior enlightenment. 

The hunter is content to respect the natural balance of hunter-prey that has been established over uncounted eons. This balance works in systems across the planet and only fails when man interferes, because his ego assures him he knows a better way.

I am perfectly content to be condemned for taking life to nourish myself and my family, exactly as nature intended and as humanity has done for at least 200,000 years. Perhaps when a better model has stood the test of time....? 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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