In Eric Zorn’s most recent column on hunting, a hunter, Scott Brasier, insinuates that without hunting’s “management” role, animal populations would run amok. Brasier asks: “Do [imprudent anti-hunters] justify this suffering, pain and death of animals as a `distasteful, regrettable yet unavoidable’ aspect of their opposition, or just collateral damage?”
The difference between the hunting death of animals and deaths caused by road accidents is rather stark: One is purposefully inflicted upon another sentient being, while the other is done incidentally. If Brasier asserts that able hunters want to mitigate “undue suffering,” then perhaps vaingloriously killing an animal based on self-serving and ultimately destructive principles should be considered inappropriate and “undue.”
For billions of years, nature has successfully regulated itself and managed its populations–at least, until the advent of human overpopulation and manipulation.
