Do you think it is more humane to hunt for food or to buy store bought?

Question

Personally, I believe store bought food is treated with less respect. But my personal opinion aside, I want to hear GOOD reasons that people have for either way. This is in response to someones comment on my last question.

Answer 1

I have personally delivered hogs to Smithfield for proccessing. I will not go into details, but for 3 months afterwards i couldn't eat any kind of ham, pork or bacon. I'd much rather take a wild boar in the field. Chickens have it worse, their entire lives are normally spent in a 1 foot square cage stacked on top of each other, injected with hormones and rarely let out. When we hunters are labeled as cruel by these tree hugger liberal anti hunters, i bring up FACTS about commercial meats. Facts about hunters doing more for conservation than any other group combined. FACTS about culling wild game to prevent over population, does any of it do any good? Of course not, liberals aren't allowed to think for themselves, they get fed rhetoric from womb to tomb and will quote it verbatim at any given chance.
I'd much rather take a wild animal for meat, knowing it doesn't have hormones injected into it, knowing it never received steroids while it was being raised, and knowing it lived naturally like animals are supposed to.
Is it more cruel to hunt or take a pack of meat home from the butchers? I'll take hunting every time.

Answer 2

I don't like it. Too many (maybe only 5%, but still too may) don't respect landowners rights. People park in my driveway, get out and go hunting (1/4 mile driveway). I have no idea who they are and can't get out. When they drive 4 wheelers across my field and trails tearing up the soil, cut down trees to make a clearing and build blinds up in the trees I get really pissed. I've often been shot at while outside my house even when wearing orange. Maybe they saw a deer and I was just in the line of fire... It's THEIR responsibility to know the surroundings and how close they are to houses. For those who ask my permission to hunt on my land and respect that I am the one paying taxes, I have no problem with their hunting there. Natural predation is dirty and barbaric, BUT they take out the old, weak and diseased (plus some of the young). The population gets stronger as a result. Since natural predators have been pretty much eliminated humans have to take over. Human hunters take out the strongest and largest of a species causing the herd/flock/school to get smaller and weaker. An example is fishing around where I live. Nets size is regulated to only get the adult fish, letting the small young ones grow. Problem is, the net size also lets the small full grown ones survive and breed. The average size of full grown fish has gotten smaller. Same is happening with the deer.

Answer 3

Hunting is a good way to prevent over-population, starvation and crop or vehicle damage of animals like deer. In Wisconsin alone, the next generation of hunters is much smaller than the ones retiring from it so the DNR is forecasting an explosion of the deer population in the next several years unless steps are taken. Hunting for your food gives you an appreciation of the outdoors and animals...not so in modern assembly line production of meats and methods used to increase profits by penning animals and adding hormones for them to grow faster and fatter. We do need a balance between the two and more humane treatment of domestic animals for food. Try visiting a poultry shed sometime and you'll see what I mean...it's all about cost efficiency and economics.

Answer 4

I think hunting for food in the wild is much more healthy and humane. If you were an animal would you rather be cooped up in a TINY little pen barely enough to fit your size, or be free to roam in the wild? Not to mention you know where the meat is coming from, and you can be sure it dosent have a crap load of preservatives in it. The meat is also much more fresh.

Answer 5

I think it would depend but I think that the food that is hunted is a better because it was given a fair chance it lived in a natural habitat and meats like veal are treated very harshly, but i do love veal

Answer 6

I believe hunting is more humane and like you said gives the animl more respect. they herd cattle into a building, but a bunch of volts through their head to knock them out, pick them up by their bakc legs, send them on a conveyer and start skinning them while they are knocked out, now whats humane about that? hunters kill animals as quickly and effeciently as possible without doing much damage they can feel.

Answer 7

Hunting for food is hella better cause then you know where it came from and it is fresh... not like store bought food...you never know what kind of perservatives are in it and ****

Answer 8

Yes, food that is been acquired through hunting is healthier than comparable food in stores with all the preservatives added.

But humane?

Cattle kept in pins where they cannot turn around. Hens laying eggs in confined spaces. They do meet untimely deaths at the hands of slaughterers. Some places do not practice humane slaughtering, a bit of an oxy-moron actually. Humane Slaughtering?

Yet inexperienced hunters often only wound their quarry and it ends up escaping to bleed to death elsewhere. Or the hits they do make are not enough, so some hunters approach the wounded animal and club it to death to save ammunition. Also, some hunters do not abide by standard culling practices (killing when the numbers are too great to be sustained by the available food supply).

I see pros and cons to both. Sometimes humans do not get humane treatment either.

So with that said. We all die. It can be painful, but sometimes it's not. But concerning the pain, just remember, "it's only right now."

I do believe in Euthanasia. Where do you think the adults in Asia come from?

Answer 9

i am mostly native american. my ancestors hunted their meat,
and after the kill they would pray for the animals spirit to be free. that is a whole lot more respect than any meat market will ever give a cow, chicken, or a pig.

Answer 10

It is more humane to Hunt and harvest animals if you know the definition of HUMANE.*