Manhood is not proven by killing animals from hundreds of yards away with a scope rifle.

I have never understood the logic behind hunting for sport. The only time that I have ever considered it excusable to kill an animal is if you are starving and are left with no other option. Killing them so that you can have a new wall decoration is by far the most disgusting thing that I can think of.

Hunters love to say that if they did not kill these animals, the population would explode to an uncontrollable level and would either starve, kill each other or invade designated human territories.

My counterpoint to that is simply this: It’s nature! In nature animals do mate, and they do give birth, and they do kill each other and they do roam wherever they please. Do humans somehow have the right over all other living things simply because they have better ways to destroy themselves? The human population is already out of control; does that somehow justify some alien force to start killing us off?

The one thing above all else that has earned American Indians my lifelong respect is their reverence for every animal that they ever kill. They refused to do it for any reason but for food, and if they did they made sure to use every part of the animal.

Their hides would be used as blankets, bones for tools, the meat for food and so on. In addition, they made a point of performing rituals in which they showed their respect for the dead animal and in their own way apologized for their actions.

Because man and nature are one, they did not consider themselves to be somehow above the animal. They also worked to stretch the use of their kill for as long as possible so that they wouldn’t need to do it over and over again.

On top of the previous argument, hunters like to use the experience to confirm their manhood or because they feel that it is somehow a tradition. Traditions change, people. Slavery was once a pretty accepted fact of life; now it’s illegal. Does that tell you something?

Just because people did something for hundreds of years does not mean that they need to keep doing it. In the United States especially, no one who hunts is starving.

Considering the ridiculous amounts of money that people spend for permits, guns and ammo, I simply don’t see how survival could be a concern for the people who go out with the hopes of killing a deer.

Finally, we come to the best argument of all: If the animals don’t die, they’ll overrun the human population. First, if you need to drive three hours to kill these animals, then that is not a concern.

Second, who are we to say that animals have no right to go where they please? Most animals which people hunt are peaceful by nature, especially deer, and do not attack unless they are provoked. If a deer is in your yard and you leave it alone, it is not going to attack you.

Manhood is not proven by killing animals from hundreds of yards away with a scope rifle. If it is, then there are a lot of people out there holding onto archaic ideas of what a man really is.

It’s cowardly, and it’s demeaning both to the people who do the killing as well as to the animal itself. Was this doe born just so that it could end up as a nice decoration above the fireplace?

Don’t get me wrong, I am capable of acknowledging that humans need to eat meat. I may not like how slaughterhouses operate, but I know that people cannot survive on only one of two options: vegetables or meat. Animals are killed so that people don’t starve, just as other animals are killed in nature so that they don’t starve.

However, until I see a deer with a muskrat’s head on the tree behind it, neatly mounted, then I will stand by my belief that hunting for sport is barbaric, disgusting and a horrible example of human nature at its worst.

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