Is Modern Hunting 'Fair?'

One of the most common arguments against hunting that I as a part-time subsistence hunter encounter is the notion that the hunt is 'unfair.' Other hunters reading this have surely heard the same thing.

The position usually goes something like this: It is so easy to kill a deer, bear or other animal with a firearm or archery equipment that no real challenge is presented. This is unfair to the prey and in the interest of fairness, the hunter should use only his bare hands or perhaps a knife. To use a rifle or other modern technology is 'cheating.'

Ok, lets take this apart and see what really makes it tick.

First of all, let us review the concept of 'fairness' versus 'cheating' in hunting. I think that the use of these terms stems from the popular idea of hunting being a 'sport.' Hunting is not a sport. The definition of 'sport' when used in the relevant context is:

sport (spôrt, sprt)n.

1.

a. Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.

b. A particular form of this activity.

2. An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.

A sport is a physical competition between parties who mutually agree to a set of rules by which their relative success will be determined. I missed the part where the deer signed up for this shit. They are trying to survive and I am trying to kill and eat them. The prey is not deliberately constrained by any set of rules. This is not a game.

Complaining that another hunter is using a bolt action rifle rather than a single-shot or a recurve bow or a rock or his pinky finger is absurd. You might as well complain about how someone is dealing out the cards wrong in a game of solitaire. So long as the prey is killed as humanely as is practical, and the hunter is hunting in a manner that is safe to other people in the woods and is observing the bag limits necessary to ensure that the species will continue to thrive, what is the problem? Whether it dies of a bullet wound or a spear through the chest is, as far as the deer is concerned, purely academic.

Like nearly everyone else, the critic will often attempt to use history as a defense of his or her position. This usually consists of something like; 'hunting for food is fine, but what you are doing is different from hunting for food in the past, because Native Americans and cave men and other predators in nature used low-tech methods that gave the prey an even or better chance of victory.'

Yeah, about that. Lets talk about how paleolithic and neolithic humans in North America hunted. Specifically, lets talk bison because there is so very much evidence for how those hunts were conducted.

Before the arrival of the domesticated horse in the 16th century, bison hunts on the great plains were usually conducted through the use of impoundments of one type or another. People would spend days constructing a very large corral out of logs, sod, stone, or whatever was available. Radiating from the narrow entrance to the impoundment would be a pair of low fences that extended more or less at right angles to one another for hundreds of yards.

Then they would scout for a great herd of bison. It was the big herds that really counted for a village of several hundred people. When a herd was sighted, a carefully orchestrated process began in which members of the tribe would work around the herd and start them moving towards the impoundment. The herd would pass in between the broad pinchers of the radiating walls without realizing what they were in for and by the time the ones in front saw that they would be trapped in the corral, it was too late with the herd thundering behind them.

All of the bison within could be slaughtered far more easily and with less personal risk to the people involved than if they had attacked individual bison in the open. Other variations on this technique included driving entire herds off of cliffs, spooking them onto iced-over lakes or rivers where they would slip and break bones, or driving them into the water where waiting members of the tribe could swim or float beside the bison and execute them with no danger of being charged or out-run.

There is ample physical evidence of these methods being used for thousands of years in North America.

Was any of this 'fair?' Most of those animals never even had a chance at defending themselves. The humans were using technology, intelligence and cooperation to reduce risk and increase their odds and total yield. Just like modern hunters. If anything, North American hunters 1,000 years ago were probably more successful by most standards than modern hunters with cartridge rifles and the latest camouflage.

We could similarly review hunting methods used in ancient Europe, Asia and Africa, finding that technology and cooperation has always been used to reduce risk and increase harvest. Basally, we can observe the hunting practices of chimpanzees, baboons, bonobos and other primates and see that risk is avoided and odds of success are frequently improved by group behavior, which suggests that human ancestors have probably been 'cheating' at hunting going all the way back to our days in the trees. But this is a blog entry rather than a text book so I'm going to spare you a full description of those methods and their histories.

Every hunting method or technology was, at some point, an astounding new innovation. It is worth noting that I cannot think of any hunting society in the past that specialized in hunting whitetail deer or a species of similar size and behavior. As recently as 100 years ago, whitetails were considered too difficult a prey to bother making a specialty of. They spend most of their time hiding either alone or in small groups. In every part of the whitetail's pre-colonial range, there were larger quadrupeds that were easier to hunt. Not to say that whitetails were not killed when the opportunity presented its self. But even right here in Virginia we had bison up until around 1800 and elk until 1900. There is a reason why both of those species were extirpated from the east by white colonists and farmers; they are a lot of meat that is easier to kill than deer are.

When a group of hunters decides to specialize in a new type of prey, new methods and technology are usually required. That has been the case with whitetail deer over the past 40 years or so since American hunters began to specialize in them. Elk could be bugled in during the rut or spotted in the open from far away and bison could be manipulated into traps through their herd behavior. But deer generally need to be studied locally and then ambushed. Tree stands were invented, scent control became more important, etc. As always, the technology needed to be matched to the prey.

The criticism of modern hunting as being unfaithful to tradition or a form of cheating is absolute nonsense. The typical critic of American deer hunters, who often use the best technology available, is comparing them to a past that never existed.

If anything, a critic should favor the approach of modern American hunters over that of our paleolithic ancestors. That is, if one must go applying modern standards to the past at all. Modern hunters of 'game' animals are legally require to take home all of the edible meat from their kill. They usually have a personal concern for the experience of the animal, striving for the single shot kill and as little suffering as possible. They are also very much aware of the fact that a species can be hunted or otherwise driven to extinction, and they regulate their conduct and help preserve habitat accordingly.

We are not saints, hunters. We kill to eat. Perhaps the Jains are on to something and in the next life we'll all come back as lizards or ants and they'll be off the wheel. But we're at least no worse than any of our ancestors and perhaps a little better. I remain convinced that hunting is, ethically, the next best thing to being a vegetarian. One thing for certain is that what we do is not a sport, not a game, and not anything in which it is possible to cheat at in some grand universal sense.

[Image courtesy of the Smithsonian]