You’ll never catch me making compromises by condoning the lesser of two evils or playing one type of wildlife killer off another.  I used to fish, but I don’t go around defending fishing while attacking hunting.

At the same time, I don’t hate myself for having gone along with a locally popular activity before finally seeing that fishing is not a victimless sport. “Hate” is not a word I use lightly; I reserve my hatred for those who get off on the killing and will never see the light or change their ways.

Farley Mowat used to be a hunter, I don’t “hate” him. My uncle and my wife’s father were hunters, but I didn’t hate them. I live where the vast majority of my neighbors and coworkers are hunters, but not all of them are rabid, Ted Nugent-types with lifetime subscriptions to wildlife snuff magazines. They just do it for the same stupid reasons I used to fish and eat meat–because that’s what’s popular; that’s what their fathers did; they grew up doing it; it’s “what’s for dinner,” etc.

Because I think there is a chance that some of them will someday lay down their weapons, there’s no point spending all my energies hating them in the meantime–especially if we want to sway public opinion away from the evils of hunting, trapping and fishing. If there’s one thing I keep hearing from people it’s that they are put off by hatespeach of any kind (even if it seems justified to some of us).

That’s part of the reason I have a policy on this blog not to approve any threatening comments toward anyone from either side.

And just so hunters or hunting apologists don’t spend a lot of fruitless time writing comments that don’t get approved here, this is not a forum for debating hunting–it’s a platform for venting disgust, disrelish and even hatred* towards hunting. (*that’s hatred towards hunting, not necessarily hunters). To those people who write comments which never get posted, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find another place to extol the “virtues” of hunting besides this blog’s comments section.

I’ve spent a lot of time ruminating over this issue (even going so far as to writing a book about it) and I didn’t start this blog to give people a venue for arbitrary speculations on whether hunting is just or evil. As far as I’m concerned, the case is closed.