What do you consider an acceptable 40yard group to feel confident on an animal.

[Plebe]

I need nutrients inside of animals to survive and be healthy. You can argue whether that’s true or not, or if it will always be. But for my math, I believe it to currently be true, at least within reason.

I want to live.

My personal ethos is to do my best to reduce suffering of sentient beings within reason.

I look at all the ways that I induce suffering on sentient beings. I do my best, in the most abstract sense, to reduce that. I take a long view of it.

If you told me that you had a magic pill that would give me all the nutrition I need, and would never have to cut down another rain forest or shoot another animal to get it, and you could show me the externalities of generating that pill did not outweigh the suffering reduction of all those critters, I’d stop huntjng on the spot.

Not that I don’t enjoy it and my heritage and what not. But that’s me being intellectually honest. I might not like it, but the trade off would be worth it to me.


I’m not a “you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet” subscriber. I just take a realistic approach to our current reality. The universe is chaos and destruction and suffering. If I didn’t pay attention to my actions and their consequences, I would increase that destruction. Likely.

Some people believe a white haired fella in the sky is gonna whoop em with a belt for eternity if they don’t behave. That’s not so different from me thinking the universe will be whipping everything to a worse degree if I’m not doing my part to reduce the total scope of misery while I’m here.

Math that supports being lazy and not wanting to track poorly shot deer, and math that supports generally reducing suffering within the bounds of reasonableness, are not mutually exclusive.

Not sure where we’re crossing wires…

I think sustenance is a strong argument to justify killing animals. I'm no vegetarian.

I deer hunt primarily for sport and recreation. I love it. I don't need it to live. I don't need to do any mental gymnastics weighing the number of farmed animals that I'll eat against the number from the wild. I love to hunt, I can hunt, I'm going to hunt.

At the same time, I'm very careful with my shots to minimize wounding. I doubt you are different.

But you did a "math" justifying 50yd archery shots, in that the number wounded would be far smaller than the number of total animals you eat.

We're crossing wires there. Principally, it's about the logic, not the ethics.

a=farmed animals eaten
b=hunted animals eaten
c=hunted animals wounded

your logic says a+b>c, and by a significant magnitude, so don't worry about that longshot.

But "a" is a ringer.

even when c>b by a significant magnitude, a+b>c for the average hunter.

 

[kyler1945]

I think sustenance is a strong argument to justify killing animals. I'm no vegetarian.

I deer hunt primarily for sport and recreation. I love it. I don't need it to live. I don't need to do any mental gymnastics weighing the number of farmed animals that I'll eat against the number from the wild. I love to hunt, I can hunt, I'm going to hunt.

At the same time, I'm very careful with my shots to minimize wounding. I doubt you are different.

But you did a "math" justifying 50yd archery shots, in that the number wounded would be far smaller than the number of total animals you eat.

We're crossing wires there. Principally, it's about the logic, not the ethics.

a=farmed animals eaten
b=hunted animals eaten
c=hunted animals wounded

your logic says a+b>c, and by a significant magnitude, so don't worry about that longshot.

But "a" is a ringer.

even when c>b by a significant magnitude, a+b>c for the average hunter.

Not the total number of animals I’ll eat.

Total days of suffering by sentient beings, induced by all of my actions or inactions.

Essentially, I have way more efficient ways to plug the leaky ship of well being for all things conscious, than can be gained by not shooting deer past a certain distance.

It’s not that it isn’t useful to think about. Or that I just have total disregard for the unlucky deer that catches me on the day I’m willing to fling em. Or that I don’t feel crappy when I wound one.

It’s that it’s a rounding error on the destruction I cause otherwise. It doesn’t factor into my decision making to any large degree, if at all.

My opinion is that there’s a certain hubris in shouting ethics! When deciding what shot you’ll take. It completely ignores the magnitude of the consequences of the rest of one’s life. That’s my beef with that particular signal. It’s not a big beef. But feel like maybe it’s worth clarifying here.

I guess we probably agree more on what to do, and we probably do the same things. We may just arrive at the why part for different reasons.

 

[Nutterbuster]

My opinion is that there’s a certain hubris in shouting ethics! When deciding what shot you’ll take. It completely ignores the magnitude of the consequences of the rest of one’s life. That’s my beef with that particular signal. It’s not a big beef. But feel like maybe it’s worth clarifying here.

I had that epiphany a couple of years ago while talking with a good buddy who was genuinely upset at the spotted fawn on my hitch rack after a hunt we went on. We were discussing the ethics of bebby-murder at a Burger King in Small-town, AL. Eating our 3rd or so burger combo that weekend....

 

[kyler1945]

I had that epiphany a couple of years ago while talking with a good buddy who was genuinely upset at the spotted fawn on my hitch rack after a hunt we went on. We were discussing the ethics of bebby-murder at a Burger King in Small-town, AL. Eating our 3rd or so burger combo that weekend....

That’s to say nothing of the feller who will give you grief for shooting a fawn, while he shoots mature does! You know the ones that have fawns in the bushes who will wander around motherless, bleating their heads off until they get hamstrung by coyotes and bears.

Again, it’s turtles all the way down.

 

[Plebe]

Not the total number of animals I’ll eat.

Total days of suffering by sentient beings, induced by all of my actions or inactions.

Essentially, I have way more efficient ways to plug the leaky ship of well being for all things conscious, than can be gained by not shooting deer past a certain distance.

It’s not that it isn’t useful to think about. Or that I just have total disregard for the unlucky deer that catches me on the day I’m willing to fling em. Or that I don’t feel crappy when I wound one.

It’s that it’s a rounding error on the destruction I cause otherwise. It doesn’t factor into my decision making to any large degree, if at all.

My opinion is that there’s a certain hubris in shouting ethics! When deciding what shot you’ll take. It completely ignores the magnitude of the consequences of the rest of one’s life. That’s my beef with that particular signal. It’s not a big beef. But feel like maybe it’s worth clarifying here.

I guess we probably agree more on what to do, and we probably do the same things. We may just arrive at the why part for different reasons.

I don’t know, I guess you do the math in your head differently than I see it. When I read...

“ “Minimize suffering of sentient beings” is a marathon, covering a lot of moral landscapes.

I try to think about this with the right abstraction. I’m going to kill tens of thousands of animals and eat them in my lifetime. Directly or indirectly. If I shot at every deer that came within 50 yards for my entire hunting career, I might be able to wound 20.”

....I come up with what I’ve come up with on the math, and I guess I just don’t follow any further.

I don’t think either of us is out to fling arrows at deer for the hell of it.

I probably disagree with you about ethics in that I don’t think it’s the dirty word it’s often made to seem.

We have laws and we have culture and I think culture is something we shouldn’t poo poo. Discussing ethics or rather what is ethical can lead to good. I get that people don’t want to be told what they should believe is ethical. But I’m not sure it’s a good thing to toss the whole thing out because it isn’t trendy.

Ps we all know you’re not lazy and that you are more than just success driven.

To OPs question, I think 40 yd shots are risky, no matter what your groups are, primarily because the animal can move a lot. Now that doesn’t mean the animal will, but it is a significant variable in that a perfect point of aim shot may be wildly off in point of impact due to target movement.

There was a bow noise deer reaction test by Deer and Deer Hunting I think, that demonstrated how bad that can look at 30yds.

I’d consider that possibility when making your decision on shot selection.

But, shooting nice groups at 40 is fun and it helps identify errors by amplifying them. I used to shoot one at 20, one at 30 and then practice at 40, sometimes further for fun. I could hit the mark with those first couple shots regularly and learned a lot more at 40 about issues I needed to work out.

 

[raisins]

Not the total number of animals I’ll eat.



Essentially, I have way more efficient ways to plug the leaky ship of well being for all things conscious, than can be gained by not shooting deer past a certain distance.

You can minimize the suffering of one animal by not doing something (taking a bad shot). I can't see any way around that.

It's no different, to me, than someone NOT swerving in the road to run over a squirrels back leg, but allowing the squirrel to run off while maintaining your same path.

Unless you really are malnourished or the choice is something like "take a bad shot or be forced to eat a cow from a factory farm" (which would be uncommon for most of us here), then there's no reason to take a low probability shot.

 

[Lucky13]

Killing isn't pretty but it's a part of our history and every day life.
Hunting is a personal sport... Don't let what others do legally rule your mind.

 

[Plebe]

I had that epiphany a couple of years ago while talking with a good buddy who was genuinely upset at the spotted fawn on my hitch rack after a hunt we went on. We were discussing the ethics of bebby-murder at a Burger King in Small-town, AL. Eating our 3rd or so burger combo that weekend....

How old was the beef?

 

[Nutterbuster]

How old was the beef?

Threshold for veal vs beef is 8 months in the US I believe. I doubt any of the cows that made our patties were more than 2 years old, and likely no more than a year.

Cornish crosses are usually nuggetized at a month to 45 days.

 

[Plebe]

Threshold for veal vs beef is 8 months in the US I believe. I doubt any of the cows that made our patties were more than 2 years old, and likely no more than a year.

Cornish crosses are usually nuggetized at a month to 45 days.

Veal, lol. This is BK.

 

[raisins]

I had that epiphany a couple of years ago while talking with a good buddy who was genuinely upset at the spotted fawn on my hitch rack after a hunt we went on. We were discussing the ethics of bebby-murder at a Burger King in Small-town, AL. Eating our 3rd or so burger combo that weekend....

Killing a fawn is more ethical than killing a doe with fawns, from a minimizing suffering viewpoint. The doe will be over it in a day. The fawns without a mother have a much harder time.

Ethics are somewhat personal, but bad ethical arguments are often pretty obvious.

In the case of being against taking a fawn, I think it is mostly an emotional reaction tied to their cuteness/seeming innocence and some projection based upon the urge to protect young humans.

 

[Nutterbuster]

Veal, lol. This is BK.

Right. I'm saying the beef was almost certainly no less than 8 months and no more than 24. 9-12 most likely.

We all eat babies or preteens daily. Most of them are raised in their own filth in an environment as close to hell as I can imagine. Pumped full of antibiotics and supplements because they're living too close to each other and eating a diet that won't sustain life. Incapable of fulfilling natural instincts. And there are substantially more chickens, cows, pigs, etc than there are lions and tigers and bears and deers. Us farming them does WAY more damage to the global ecosystem than anything you or I can do or not do as hunters. And it's arguably bad for us as well. Animal husbandry has cooked up a host of species-crossing microbes that mess us up, to say nothing of environmental pollution.

I think @kyler1945's point is that if you want to reduce suffering, there are bigger fish to fry than a deer. From a utilitarian perspective, you could swear off chicken and gut shoot every deer you ever saw, and probably still tip the balance of your life from "more suffering caused" to "less suffering caused."

I'm overstating for impact, but if you want to be an ethical hunter or eater or whatever then I think there's a lot of thinking to be done outside the fence of our culture.

 

[Plebe]

Right. I'm saying the beef was almost certainly no less than 8 months and no more than 24. 9-12 most likely.

We all eat babies or preteens daily. Most of them are raised in their own filth in an environment as close to hell as I can imagine. Pumped full of antibiotics and supplements because they're living too close to each other and eating a diet that won't sustain life. Incapable of fulfilling natural instincts. And there are substantially more chickens, cows, pigs, etc than there are lions and tigers and bears and deers. Us farming them does WAY more damage to the global ecosystem than anything you or I can do or not do as hunters. And it's arguably bad for us as well. Animal husbandry has cooked up a host of species-crossing microbes that mess us up, to say nothing of environmental pollution.

I think @kyler1945's point is that if you want to reduce suffering, there are bigger fish to fry than a deer. From a utilitarian perspective, you could swear off chicken and gut shoot every deer you ever saw, and probably still tip the balance of your life from "more suffering caused" to "less suffering caused."

I'm overstating for impact, but if you want to be an ethical hunter or eater or whatever then I think there's a lot of thinking to be done outside the fence of our culture.

Look, I like Veal. Truthfully.

It just made me chuckle, wondering how that conversation about eating baby animals went...over a "Whopper" or two.

McDonalds beef probably sits in a freezer longer than your fawn or BK's cows lived. Who cares.

If it's what you want to shoot and you tag it and kill cleanly, recover it, don't let it go to waste (I know you don't) that's good hunting to me. I'm not going to root for seasoned folk to chase bambis, but I don't have ethical doubts if it's a good kill.

Hunting culture, imo, has two important topics that should be considerations. 1. Conservation. 2. Respect for the resource(s).

BK doesn't really weigh into that. What's farmed and killed, I don't control. I control my actions, and when I loose an arrow I feel a responsibility to 1. conservation and 2. respect for the animal.

 

[Nutterbuster]

What's farmed and killed, I don't control.

I guess if you want to kill the sacred cow of the capitalistic dollar vote and profane the altar of supply and demand, ok.


But what you eat is in your control. Why draw the line between animals you kill and animals killed for you? Why do the 2-5 deer most people kill a year matter more than the dozens or hundreds of other species?

Lawdy, we've jumped the 40 yard shot shark!!

 

[Plebe]

I guess if you want to kill the sacred cow of the capitalistic dollar vote and profane the altar of supply and demand, ok.


But what you eat is in your control. Why draw the line between animals you kill and animals killed for you? Why do the 2-5 deer most people kill a year matter more than the dozens or hundreds of other species?

Lawdy, we've jumped the 40 yard shot shark!!

As I pointed out, deer killed not eaten is different than deer killed and eaten and/or cows killed and eaten.

 

[weekender21]

This thread took an interesting turn.

95%+ of the red meat our family consumes annually is venison. We still buy chicken, pork products, and maybe 1/2 the fish we consume.

Consider yourself (all hunters) lucky that you fully understand where meat comes from. It takes protein to live a healthy life and it doesn’t magically appear on the grocery store shelf.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Nutterbuster]

As I pointed out, deer killed not eaten is different than deer killed and eaten and/or cows killed and eaten.

Food waste reduction is definitely a laudable goal, given that we throw away something like a third of what's produced each year.

 

[kyler1945]

Food waste reduction is definitely a laudable goal, given that we throw away something like a third of what's produced each year.

 

[Plebe]

Food waste reduction is definitely a laudable goal, given that we throw away something like a third of what's produced each year.

Back to the Future

Gotcha. It's an opportunity based math.

.........

Food waste is probably a better moral or ethical comparison to wounded and unrecovered.

 

[Plebe]

This thread took an interesting turn.

95%+ of the red meat our family consumes annually is venison. We still buy chicken, pork products, and maybe 1/2 the fish we consume.

Consider yourself (all hunters) lucky that you fully understand where meat comes from. It takes protein to live a healthy life and it doesn’t magically appear on the grocery store shelf.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

x2. I think we're quite lucky to hunt.

It's not like it is here all over the world. And it won't be like this if we don't do well to represent hunting, probably.