Whether or not somebody else (especially the mythical "average hunter") is a lousy shot at 200 yards is irrelevant. Yeah, it's brought up every time the discussion of long-range hunting comes up, but it doesn't justify OR disqualify shooting at longer ranges. It's a separate issue, very much like when you went to your parents and said, "Everybody else is doing it."
Exactly. It doesn't matter what everybody else is doing. Everybody has a different set of standards and moral benchmarks in this life. You simply have to ask yourself if the proposed activity is legal, and if you feel good about it. If it's legal and you feel good about it, based on your ethics and moral standards, then who am I or anyone else to tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
Originally Posted by Mule Deer
What does matter is whether or not we're justified in using tools that reduce hunting to shopping: Use the technology and "harvest" an animal.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, if what we want is a dead animal. That's why early humans who absolutely had to hunt to survive used every means of their technology possible, including driving animals over cliffs, or using fire to push them into lakes or canyons where they could be clubbed to death, or into spiked pits. The very desirable end result was food, obtained the most efficient way possible.
If pure survival is the whole point of hunting today, then yes, any method is ethically correct. I freely admit that one of the primary reasons I hunt is the meat, since I hate not only paying for domestic meat, but eating all the stuff usually added. But I also prize the process of hunting, because it's much older and essentially satisfying than pressing a button or writing a check. Both the process and the product are intertwined.
If all I wanted was the product, the difference between killing a wild animal with every advantage today's technology offers and buying domestic meat is so tiny as to be almost indistinguishable.
Good post, MD. I think the answer is different for everyone. To respond to your question about the fail-safe rifle system out to 1000 yards- I personally wouldn't typically use it, but I wouldn't say I would never use it! And if another guy chose to use it all the time for his hunting, I certainly wouldn't try to say he shouldn't!
It comes down to our reasons for hunting. I can tell you that there are days when I'm simply going out to put some meat on the ground and then into my freezer, while other days my objective for going out is simply to be out in the hills, mountains, or forests. Yet other days I'm going out in pursuit of the biggest specimen possible of whatever species I'm hunting, and I'm completely prepared to pass up "meat" than I might have shot on a different day. If it's a meat/grocery day, I'm liable to take whatever the hills offer, using whatever technology I can legally use to bolster my chances. If it's an "out for the experience" day, then I almost don't care what's in my hands, and I might even choose not to shoot a legal animal, so I don't "ruin" the day by making a lot of work. And so on and so forth.
How we feel about the technology and ethics that we embrace really depends on our motivations for going hunting in the first place.
