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Morality of Hunting and Sport Fishing


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Fishing differs from hunting in one major respect: Catching fish and, instead of killing and eating them, turning them loose. When animals are caught and released, it's usually for tagging purposes, not just for the fun of it. Hunting, if done properly, kills. To the best of my knowledge, there is no catch and release hunting.

"C & r" fishing allows anglers to keep fishing even after catching a limit. It allows people who don't like to eat fish to have fun catching them without having to take them home and eat them. In most cases, only a small percentage of fish die after being caught and released, so a given fishery will support more c & r fishing than the traditional kind. This makes c & r a useful "management tool" for fisheries managers.

Where I have a problem with c & r fishing is when it becomes the ONLY fishing, when it replaces traditional fishing. In recent years, Alaska's fisheries managers have been using c & r to give more fishing "opportunity" to anglers. Supported mainly by fishing guides and a burgeoning sport-fishing industry, this has caused no end of conflict. In recent years, for example, king (chinook) salmon have been returning to their Alaskan spawning streams in low numbers for reasons that remain unknown. At times, fishing has been limited to "c & r only." In my view, when there are so few fish returning that the species is fighting for its collective life, there should be no fishing at all, let alone fishing that makes these magnificent animals fight for their collective life and possibly die without having a chance to reproduce its kind. All this, just to give someone a thrill, a few moments of fun.

Is this particular sport fishing moral?

I hope catch and release is moral, I do a hell of a lot of it. I've been tagging fish since the late 80's, and the only time I've re-caught a fish I've tagged has been within 10 minutes of putting the stupid bugger back in the water! I have had a few others re captured, and it's a bit of a thrill to be notified of the details of a fish (growth, location) years after I've sent them on their way:)

I still fish for food, but I find myself putting more fish back than I keep, my favorite eating fish has upper and lower size and bag limits, so I'm very careful about what I keep.

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It depends completely on your moral outlook. A Buddhist wouldn't agree that inflicting suffering intentionally on any being is in any way moral, even (or especially) if it's "just" a fish.

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At the most basic level, yes, unarguably so.

As such, is modeling any worse than hunting in the grand scheme of things? At least with hunting one can feed their family and survive.

Modeling is slowly increasing the entropy of the universe with little tangible benefits as a whole other than an individuals personal satisfaction. At best some group satisfaction. Think of the carbon footprint of this hobby or put it in units of completing a single kit.

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You can add to that the energy it takes to run your computer and the additional energy it takes to recycle plastics and such.

Morality at this level has to come from the individual, it can't be mandated from above.

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As such, is modeling any worse than hunting in the grand scheme of things? At least with hunting one can feed their family and survive.

Modeling is slowly increasing the entropy of the universe with little tangible benefits as a whole other than an individuals personal satisfaction. At best some group satisfaction. Think of the carbon footprint of this hobby or put it in units of completing a single kit.

You bring up a good point. Think about all the things we do that use a lot of resources without accomplishing anything other than to provide fun and thrills. It occurs to me that modeling is a lot like masturbation—not that there's anything wrong with that.

One important difference between modeling and hunting/fishing is that the latter requires good habitat to sustain. As our population increases, fish and game habitat decreases, or is radically modified. There are far more moral issues with hunting and fishing than with modeling. As long as you're not spending the kids' college money—or worse, their food—on modeling, you're probably OK, moral-wise. Modeling can't compare with killing fish or wildlife just for the fun of it, especially if you're killing a species that is having trouble surviving.

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You bring up a good point. Think about all the things we do that use a lot of resources without accomplishing anything other than to provide fun and thrills. It occurs to me that modeling is a lot like masturbation—not that there's anything wrong with that.

One important difference between modeling and hunting/fishing is that the latter requires good habitat to sustain. As our population increases, fish and game habitat decreases, or is radically modified. There are far more moral issues with hunting and fishing than with modeling. As long as you're not spending the kids' college money—or worse, their food—on modeling, you're probably OK, moral-wise. Modeling can't compare with killing fish or wildlife just for the fun of it, especially if you're killing a species that is having trouble surviving.

Consider vacationing in the lower 48, you have been in the "wild" too long. Just a thought.---John

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Consider vacationing in the lower 48, you have been in the "wild" too long. Just a thought.---John

I vacation in what we Alaskans call "Outside" every winter, John, but I get your point. Some things are different in Alaska, mostly because it hasn't been messed up as much as other parts of the world. Lots of us Alaskans want to to keep it from being Californicated.

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I vacation in what we Alaskans call "Outside" every winter, John, but I get your point. Some things are different in Alaska, mostly because it hasn't been messed up as much as other parts of the world. Lots of us Alaskans want to to keep it from being Californicated.

We call it not becoming "blued".----gotcha---John

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Time to start a thread on the morality of model building?

Aren't we just driving consumerism that ultimately feuls global climate change?

The parallels between religion and "environmentalism" have always fascinated me.

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Nope. The Right wants more of my low to middle class tax dollars than the Left. The Right wants to determine how my sisters and mother use their body. The Right wants to socially engineer the country by undercutting funding for education. The Right has continuously voted to slash Veterans benefits, including education, vocational training and the ongoing rehabilitation for our injured Warriors. The Right doesn't know that it even wants these things until someone challenges it on it.

I don't have a problem with you holding your views, I have a problem with you generalizing the Left without a leg to stand on.

I had a nice response all ready to zing your way, but decided against it.

I will just send you a copy of my book when it comes out.

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Why would you think of doing that when it's clearly against the rules? Any escalation's only going to destroy the thread, which I assume the original poster cares about.

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Why would you think of doing that when it's clearly against the rules? Any escalation's only going to destroy the thread, which I assume the original poster cares about.

I AM the original poster! lol.

And I was not really going to escalate it with hostile intent or personal attack. In my view, a political post, or a post the evolves in a political direction really should not be a problem if kept civil. Unfortunately, very few people can debate controversial subjects without expressing undue emotion: then the personal attacks and name calling starts and the thread collapses into meaningless slander.

This is how it should be done by adults...

To be clear, this is not a personal argumentative political post, but an example of how a political post can be handled with skill and respect for different points of view

Lets look at one of the things you alluded to in your earlier post above....abortion. Now that is about as hotly debated and emotionally charged subject as we have, right? All sorts of potential for people to get fired up about that.

The liberal position on abortion is about empowering women. The accusation is that conservatives (men inferred) want to control what a woman does with her own body. And if the subject is spun that way, then it seems as though the thoughtless conservatives want to control a woman's private, reproductive choices unjustly.

But let us look at it from another, equally reasoned perspective. A conservative would say that a human life begins at conception, because unless overt action is taken to keep it from developing naturally, a baby will be born. A conservative would also say that no freedom of choice is being denied here, because it is well known that no form of preventative birth control is foolproof, that actions have consequences, and that individuals know before engaging in sex that a possible result of sex is pregnancy. The couples choice was to accept the risk. They made their bed and now have to lie in it.

But there is more, because notice I said couple. It is not just about the woman. Just because her plumbing requires her to be the one that carries the child, it does not mean she has greater rights. There is a partner involved, and if we want to talk about fairness and "equal rights," the we need to equally consider the father. He was also involved in this little roll in the hay and is equally responsible for the result. The parent's choices being made to engage in sex, the product is equal parts genetically of both parents. Where are the father's rights when insisting on a woman's right to abortion (remember it is NOT reproductive choice, as that choice was already made)? The answer right now is nowhere. He has no rights prior to the child being born and has to sit and watch as his progeny is destroyed. That is neither equal, nor fair. However, you can bet your a$ that if the mother decides to carry the child to term, then the father will be expected to pay generous child support for 18 years and then some. After all, the child is his "equal responsibility." And, often times, equal responsibility ends with money, as Mom will often discourage Dad from participating in the child's upbringing when she moves her new man into the picture. She will be a lot more accommodating if the checks stop coming.

The point here being that it is not so simple as "the conservatives want to unjustly control what women do with their bodies."

But back to the original point. Regardless of the difference of opinion that two people may have, be completely non political on the board here inhibits the free exchange of ideas among peers. And make no mistake about it, everyone who frequents this board regularly is a peer in the modern sense of the word. We talk about all sorts of things, and many have nothing to do with modeling. This last little exchange between us would not be possible if no politics were strictly observed. Yet we did all of that, and I doubt that you are personally offended by anything I said here.

I for one think politics is okay as long as folks don't get personal.

Edited by DutyCat
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It depends completely on your moral outlook. A Buddhist wouldn't agree that inflicting suffering intentionally on any being is in any way moral, even (or especially) if it's "just" a fish.

To a fisherman like me, it's never just a fish.

The hard part is how else do we study them without catching and tagging them?

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Thanks for sharing your viewpoints on abortion.

No, those aren't mine. I brought it up as an example on how to civilly discuss politics in a thread because exhausted had alluded to reproductive choice in the first line of his previous text.. I am actually pro-choice, but preferably in the first trimester. I think there are too many people in the world as it is, and I am not religious at all...don't believe in a deity, souls, demons or any of it. I am more of a rationalist/scientist/pragmatist. I represented a very conservative point of view as a demonstration of how it can be done respectfully without calling someone a baby killer, or soul destroyer or whatever.

Edited by DutyCat
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No, those aren't mine. I brought it up as an example on how to civilly discuss a thread. I am actually pro-choice, but preferably in the first trimester. I think there are too many people in the world as it is, and I am not religious at all...don't believe is a deity, souls, demons or any of it. I am more of a rationalist/scientist/pragmatist.

Ok... just not sure that this is a subject that can be discussed civilly. We'll see soon enough.

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A conservative would say that a human life begins at conception, because unless overt action is taken to keep it from developing naturally, a baby will be born.

This isn't a political statement. It is a religious statement. Just because one is politically conservative doesn't mean being anti-abortion (me for example). What makes something "moral" isn't absolute, it varies with time and popular opinion.

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No, those aren't mine. I brought it up as an example on how to civilly discuss politics in a thread because exhausted had alluded to reproductive choice in the first line of his previous text.. I am actually pro-choice, but preferably in the first trimester. I think there are too many people in the world as it is, and I am not religious at all...don't believe in a deity, souls, demons or any of it. I am more of a rationalist/scientist/pragmatist. I represented a very conservative point of view as a demonstration of how it can be done respectfully without calling someone a baby killer, or soul destroyer or whatever.

So reluctant to post on this but just in the spirit of expanding this a little. You bring up the couple's rights (which I kind of agree with that point, though I'd never heard it presented quite that way) but if you accept the viewpoint of life at conception, then there are actually 3 people's rights to consider (or more if multiples are conceived). A pro-life viewpoint weighs mostly on the right of the most vulnerable one since the unborn child has no other voice. So there are ways of approaching the subject civilly of course, but it is a very emotional subject from pretty much all sides you look at it.

Bill

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So reluctant to post on this but just in the spirit of expanding this a little. You bring up the couple's rights (which I kind of agree with that point, though I'd never heard it presented quite that way) but if you accept the viewpoint of life at conception, then there are actually 3 people's rights to consider (or more if multiples are conceived). A pro-life viewpoint weighs mostly on the right of the most vulnerable one since the unborn child has no other voice. So there are ways of approaching the subject civilly of course, but it is a very emotional subject from pretty much all sides you look at it.

Bill

Very good. Again I am not really trying start a debate on it. I was just showing how an emotionally divisive subject could be debated by simply representing non personal "viewpoints". I had a similar situation recently with a certain teenage young lady, her boyfriend, and her other boy "friend." When we talked "personally," she would get upset, but when I put in non personal terms like given girl and boy A and boy B, it was a lot more manageable as it wasn't "her." Once it became a non personal hypothetical, she could handle it, even though she knew it was her and so did other adults involved in trying to provide guidance. Go figure.

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Hey the debate is started. I appreciate your tone, though I will admit I only skimmed through your reply. But try to keep in mind that people who aren't as mild-mannered in their approach may choose to follow your lead on this, which may make the thread take a dive for the worse.

I think it would be in our best interest to keep this thread about hunting and fishing before it devolves into insults. The trick is to avoid overgeneralizing, maintain respect for differing views and smartly argue a point without your personal passion and urgency on the issue. I know some here are great at that, but it only takes a single unchecked spitfire to ruin it. And keep in mind that personal attacks and political speech here is under-moderated, which further complicates the issue.

For those that can keep it civil and respectful, I appreciate you a whole lot. For those that can't do it without the attacks and generalizations, please check yourself.

On a personal note, I'd like to add that I know that the modeling demographic largely leans to the Right. I respect that and I appreciate you all. I, however, lean heavily to the Left though I understand that complex problems aren't solved by hardline agendas. Problem solving will often borrow from both sides for an effective answer.

I will say that I generally will take a blanket attack on the Left to be an attack that includes my countrymen and I as the target. That's really no different than if I made unwarranted blanket attacks on the Right. But if we address specific issues and avoid statements like "the Left (or Right) is responsible for ruining X" or "Republicans (or Democrats) only think Y" then there really is no reason we can't have meaningful conversations among respectful adults.

To end, I'd just like to say that the method we use to discuss contentious issues shouldn't aim to silence the other side, but instead result in respect and self-policing when tempers begin to rise.

Edited by Exhausted
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