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Comment by danpat | Hacker News Reader

This has been my experience almost exactly (s/Yukon/Alberta/). I now hunt yearly and basically don't any meat that I didn't kill myself. One deer is enough for a couple for a year.

I found the experience it very self-illuminating, the hypocrisy of will-not-kill-but-will-eat-from-store became much more focused.

The experience of hunting wildly varies. I've had one or two gut-wrenching bad shots, hitting the animal in the leg then having to track it down and end it. Most of the time, the animal is dead before the sound of the shot reaches them, before which they were blissfully grazing.

Regardless of the experience, you reflect on what you've just done far more than when you buy meat on a shelf.

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If it works for you, fine. But I object to you calling people who eat what they do not kill hypocrites. If someone takes part in a protest against meat products because of animal suffering, and then eats meat or wears leather, they are hypocrites. But if they cannot bring themselves to kill the animal themselves but still eat meat, they are not hypocrites. If they were, people who are queasy when they see blood, but would want a surgeon to care for them or their friends when they are in an accident, would be will-not-doctor-but-will-be-doctored hypocrites.

I think the main problem here is that when some people have an experience they find illuminating, their reaction is to look down on other people who do not share the newly acquired viewpoint.

> If someone takes part in a protest against meat products because of animal suffering, and then eats meat or wears leather, they are hypocrites.

I highly disagree.

Why would wearing a leather jacket make me a hypocrite? It's very much possible to raise and butcher an animal humanely, and still enjoy its meat and leather.

I was not specific enough. I should have said if someone takes part in a protest against all meat products. You are right: it is not hypocritical to campaign against inhumane treatment of animals but not against humane butchering.

> The experience of hunting wildly varies. I've had one or two gut-wrenching bad shots, hitting the animal in the leg then having to track it down and end it.

So far I've been involved in 4 moose, 3 bison and a few sheep. Because the animals are so large, and we're often in extremely remote places making recovery a challenge, we won't take a shot unless we know it's a good one. So far I've never seen an animal take more than 1 step after the first shot, though we usually unload on it to kill it as quickly as possible. I only shoot a 30/.06 180grain which is the minimum legal for bison, so unloading quickly is a good idea.

> Regardless of the experience, you reflect on what you've just done far more than when you buy meat on a shelf.

Absolutely, which I think is the most important part. Every time I unwrap some meat from the freezer I can't stop the memories flooding into my mind of how it looked standing up, how we butchered it, how back breaking the work was, and how hard it was to canoe/hike/whatever out of there with it. Amazing.

While I support your position, hunting your meat or even eating only hunted meat is not a solution. If all meat would be hunted instead of factory farmed wild animals would quickly deplete. Or at least that's what my common sense tells me.

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