Last modified on March 20th, 2020 at 11:05 am

Should we hunt more or less?

Humans have been hunting for thousands of years. When we first hunted, we aimed to seek for food, but nowadays, when most of us do not need to hunt animals for food, many people consider hunting as a hobby. The article will point out the negative effects of this activity.

Nowadays, hunting is not only for food, and most hunters admit that they kill animals for the thrill of it, rather than the need of food. Many times, hunting animals is even perceived as a sport that people use to compete with each other. Long range shooting is common these days. Here are some main reasons why hunting animals should not be supported.

Animals have to suffer extreme pain before the death

Hunting brings a painful death to animals. Source: YouTube

Considering hunting animals as a form of entertainment is no doubt an awful concept. Like us, these animals also belong in a family. This violence will rip the animal families apart. The situation becomes worse when the parent animals get killed, because the baby will die because of lack of food or thread from other animals.

Check more: Best Hunting Blinds

The other thing is, hunters often miss their targets, though quality rifle scopes can help minimize misses, which lead to serious injuries for the animals. The number of animals dying immediately is low. Most of them have to endure the pain from shooting for a long time before ending up with a painful death. Not similar to human beings, animals are unable of curing their injuries, thus the injuries become more terrible and cause them to die.

Scientists have carried out a research on 80 radio-collared white-tailed deers to find out the negative impacts of hunting. According to the research, amongst many, 22 deer have already had severe injuries obtained from traditional arches, and only half of them were recovered by the hunters.  The others were left with the wound until they died. Many animals which are living in close family units, such as wolves and geese, will be in the threat of community devastation if the hunting situation would keep on happening.

Animal population control is just sophistication

Many people may claim that animal hunting is for population control. However, this is a white lie; this just to take advantage of animals. Population control is only applicable to humans and not to animals. This important task belongs to nature and human beings should not and doesn’t have the right to do the task of population control.

Have you ever read Charles Darwin’s theory about the natural balance? We all know that it is not human but natural predators are the ones who kill the weakest animals to carry out natural selection. Hunters, with their huge interest in killing the strongest animals, seem to disrupt this natural balance. Starvation and disease are terrible, but they ensure that the strong animals will be kept alive to pass their genes on.

There are several ways to reduce breeding to control the animal population. For instance, scientists have kept deer away from easy food sources. As food sources become scarcer, it will reduce breeding and the number of baby deer.

It leads to the decrease of animals in the wilderness

It is obvious that hunting will reduce the amount of animals. When every animal play a particular role in the ecosystem, or in other words, every animal is a link to the natural food chain. The lack of any link can lead to serious consequences that others have to face with.

Let’s imagine that one day, a link in that food chain is broken, for example, all the snakes in the world will be on the edge of extinction, what will happen? We do not need to think about the complicated issues. The first thing we will notice is the number of mice which will increase uncontrollably. Since mice are part of the main food for the snake, if they become extinct, of course, there will be more mice.

And when that scenario happens, we will face a huge and serious problem. According to a representative from Center for Disease Control, mice are the animals which spread many diseases. There are some diseases that people can contract directly from a mouse such as Hantavirus, salmonella, lymphocytic choriomeningitis,… Mice also can transmit some other types of diseases indirectly via insects (ticks, fleas,…) including Lyme disease, Colorado tick fever, Babesiosis, Rickettsialpox,…

What if you are attacked by other animals

Hunters sometimes are attacked by other animals. https://archerytopic.com

When going outside for hunting, especially in a forest, people may put their lives in danger. Not only they can be attacked by other animals but they also can be shot by other hunters. When people bring their guns to a forest to go hunting, they become a threat to the animals there and, of course, to protect themselves, they have to attack the hunters.

According to the statistics from National Shooting Sports Foundation, every year, in the United States, there are thousands of people whose injuries are associated with animal hunting.  Do you know about Camille Bomboy, an 18-year-old girl was attacked by a bear while she was hunting for a deer?

Camille Bomboy was a student at the University of Lock Haven in Pennsylvania. She hunted with her family in 2013. While hunting a deer, she stepped between a black bear and its baby. In order to protect its cub, the mother bear attacked the girl. When her stepfather fired a shot in the air, the mother bear got scared and ran away. Camille Bomboy had to endure several bite wounds on her body and her ear was nearly severed. And from that, the family has never hunted.

Hunting possibly lead to violence against humans

Scientists have carried out several researches on the impacts of hunting and animal abuse on people’s psychology and criminology. And the result was surprising. People who committed violence against animals do not just stop there, they seem to turn their target to other people later on. Some researchers from the University of Northeastern and Massachusetts SPCA also pointed out that people who abuse animals are more likely to act violently on their fellow humans.

After practicing their crimes on animals, they seem to find other targets. And other people will become perfect targets. Do you remember the Thurston High School shooting on May 21, 1998? Kip Kinkel’s parents, the students and staff at his school were his target. The thing is that, he has a history of abusing animals and had interest on killing animals.

It seemed that his interest on killing animals affected his psychology greatly. He shot his father once in the back of his head at 3:00pm in their home. Then at 6:30pm, his mother came home, he met her in the garage and shot her six times, once in her heart, two times in the back of her head and three times in her face. He described his mental state on the note, saying that his head doesn’t work right and he has to kill people. He then went to his school with a gun, killing 2 students and wounded 25 people.

People may list many reasons why they hunt animals. However, they just do it for their own benefit but not considering the serious drawbacks of their acts. More and more animals are on the edge of extinction. If we do not act, we, the human being, will face a serious problem soon.