flehto said:
After having read all the replies, I've concluded that most of the responses "made sense" and could persuade me to just shoot for sport, to control "pests", to shoot animals for economic reasons and for some other reasons w/o utilizing the carcasses. Two replies from the "freedom fighters" {patriotism, a good quality}, although off topic, proffered reasons that seemed a bit "odd" to me. Their reason for hunting is to hone their "hunting" skills in the event of an invasion of the US by a foreign country or an insurgency from within. To each his own, but I've never in 65 years of hunting once thought of that reason to hunt. The replies were interesting, thoughtful and above all, courteous....Thanks again....Fred
Well Fred you did ask the question and apparently wanted our responses!
If you are referring to me being a Freedom Fighter, thanks I appreciate that remark.
You asked for a reason:I doubt that as a young lad out scouring the country side for a woodchuck we are secretly thinking we need to learn how to do this so that when we are invaded etc. (nonsense). I did say that the reason we do this perhaps is so that we can improve our marksmanship and hunting, yes at the cost of some varmints life I suppose.
Then you asked for the motivation:I said "the motivation would be the fact that these hunting prowess learned as a young boy (girl) would some day have to be put to use.
Perhaps we don't know what would motivate someone of such a young age to take a life that they were not prepaired to eat or stuff. Maybe it's just what everyone else around us in the country did the same thing so that is why we did it too! The kids that didn't kill stuff probably went to take dancing lessons, heck I don't know. I for one do not consider killing a varmit like a woodchuck, the taking of a life, that's just not the way I look at it. If I were to kill a person then yes of course, that would be the taking of a life. However the taking of a varmit or the like, I don't feel that way.
The justification: Would be in my opinion is that if these lessons learned by shooting and hunting were ever to be needed to be pressed into service for defense of our own freedom, then thank God we had hunted and killed stuff back then so we would already know how.
Off topic, perhaps if you think it is, however I was merely giving you MY thoughts on the question as you requested. Glad you have refrained from killing stuff as you got older, I havne't!
Have a goodn :thumbsup:
rabbit03 (the freedom fighter)