Hunting Sense

Hunting and guns often go hand in hand, but do hunting issues always need to be turned into gun-right issues? Not hardly, but more times than not, they are. There are times when the two may overlap, but sometimes a hunting issue is just that, a hunting issue and no more. And when it is made into more, it often does more harm than good.

In the hunting world, there is a thing we refer to as ‘fair chase’, something I have wrote on in a previous post titled Fair Chase Ethics Creates Unfair Controversy. It is basically the belief that a game animal should not be taken by means that give the hunter an unfair advantage over the animal. Exactly what this constitutes is of varying opinion, as I mentioned in the post on the subject. But the ethics behind this belief is what I consider to be paramount to the subject of this post.

Sometimes, it isn’t a question of hunters’ rights to use a weapon, but rather if they should use those weapons based upon the ethics behind ‘fair chase’. If I feel that a certain weapon shouldn’t be used for hunting, that doesn’t automatically translate to they should be banned from even being owned. And when it becomes that argument, the real issue of hunting becomes null and void.

Many people view hunters in a negative light, and if the ethics of hunting becomes second place to our right to use any weapon we chose, even if it isn’t sportsman-like to do so, then it only gets worse. Our ethics are our saving grace, and if we let them fall to the wayside, it gives anti-hunters and animal rights groups, like PETA, all the ammunition they need to successfully do us in.

Yes, gun-rights are worth fighting for, but lets not muddy the waters of what are hunting issues with them. Both are worth standing up and fighting for, but there is an appropriate time to do so for each. Let’s not make a hunting issue something more than what it is.

I know that this may get some very unfavorable comments, but I’ve given a lot of thought to the subject, and this is the way I feel on it. If you don’t feel the same, that is your right, but you may need to consider the realities of how things work.

hunting, Gun-Rights, hunting issues, Second Amendment, Fair Chase, hunting ethics