The Feeblest Rationale Yet

Dear Editor,

As I read the letter, “Not Fair to Hunters,” in last week’s MV News, I experienced a major WTF (ie: what the fuck?) moment at the line, “Even those who do not hunt should respect its place in the human psyche.” Of all the feeble rationalizations for hunting you hear these days, suggesting that it helped shape the human psyche in some respectable way is the feeblest yet!

Homo sapiens hasn’t proven to be a very kind-hearted species in terms of our treatment of others over the ages, and the act of slaying animals has done nothing to cultivate our moral evolution. To quote Sea Shepherd’s Captain Paul Watson from his foreword to my book, Exposing the Big Game, “The cruelty and destruction that humans have inflicted upon each other is surpassed only by the cruelty and destruction humans have inflicted upon the nonhuman citizens of this world.”

I devoted an entire chapter of my book to peering “Inside the Hunter’s Mind” and let me tell ya, it’s a dark and disturbing place down there.  Here are some of the startling things I discovered…

Hunters’ self-interests are consistently placed far above those of their animal victims, whom they depersonalize and view as objects rather than individuals. Reducing living entities to lifeless possessions and taking trophies of their body parts—without the slightest hint of guilt, remorse or other higher sentiment—is standard practice for the sport hunter…and the serial killer.

And like a serial killer, the sportsman keeps his malignant, murderous obsession concealed within the hollow confines of his psyche…until the next hunting season.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson