| I have killed lots of animals.
When I was a student I worked at a chicken farm where my job was to kill chickens by zapping them with an electric shock to the head after they'd been through a stunner. Before being stunned, the chickens were hauled out of the crates in which they had been transported and hung upside down by their feet in metal stirrups that hauled them off down the processing conveyor. Further down the processing line the chickens were plunged into iced water for a few seconds then a machine like a car wash, but with less flexible brushes stripped most of their feathers off. Following that a team of people used to finish the job plucking any feathers that the machine had left by hand. I also used to have to alternate onto this job and I can tell you that about 5% of the damn things were still alive after they'd been stunned, schocked, plunged into iced water, and through a threshing machine. Sometimes the machines had ripped one of their legs off and they were still sqwauking. I used to wring their necks as quickly as I could to put them out of their misery. Things may have improved in terms of animal welfare in the 30 odd years since then, but somehow I doubt it, so be under no illusions - the chicken that turns up in the supermarket today probably went through the same thing.
I have also shot a whole lot of pheasants, partridges, pigeons and rabbits, in the days when I used to shoot, and given the two experiences I know that I would rather be a pheasant that has spent it's time roaming freely (although encouraged to stay in reasonable proximity by the gamekeeper providing easy access to food and favourable conditions) until the moment come when it's flushed out over the guns. It has three chances, it either gets shot and is dead before it hits the ground, the second situation is that it gets wounded in which case people like me were on hand with good gundogs to retrieve any 'runners' and bring them back to their handlers for them to wring their neck (the handler kills them - if a dog killed or mauled a bird it would never be allowed near the shoot again). The third possibility is that the bird sails high over the guns and gets away unhurt. The same applies to most game (including deer), one moment there it is browsing around in it's own natural habitat the next - bang - it's dead. Even if it's wounded the chances are that the dog will track it down and it will be put out of it's misery within a less than a minute.
Compare that to a chicken raised for food which has a miserable (and very short) existence and I know what I would prefer.
So, unless you are a veggie, bear in mind that everybody kills. I have shot, plucked, drawn and cooked birds myself the only difference between that and me picking up a chicken from Tesco's is that someone eles did my killing for me.
So, my point is that hunting is not always bad. All it means is that you are prepared to engage in tasks like gutting a bird which most people nowadays are too squeamish to do for themselves.
Having said all that in defence of hunting, I personally draw the line at killing animals just for the sake of it and I am completely against uneccessary cruelty.
I think trophy hunting is for people with insatiable egos, it's not big, it's not clever and frankly it appalls me.
I don't agree with hunting endangered species either, so a moratorium on whale hunting is a damn good thing in my view. It's totally uneccessary as a staple foodstuff - just a delicacy for those people with the money to show they can afford to eat it.
Finally, I finished shooting a long time ago (just lost interest in it) and despite my chicken farm experience I still eat chicken and meat of all sorts, however I don't eat Veal or Foie Gras because I disagree with the way it is produced.
Contrary ain't I ? |