Farm Confessional: What Butchering Your Animals Really Feels Like | Hacker News Reader

Farm Confessional: What Butchering Your Animals Really Feels Like

modernfarmer.com

15 pointspalidanx12 comments

This article reminded me of the deer hunts I've participated in the past. Looking through the rifle scope, moments before pressing the trigger and feeling that inevitable moment of unconsciousness as the controlled explosion blasts out of the barrel and shocks your senses...I've always aimed for the upper neck. I've seen others shoot deer in the rump and also the shoulder area (which shoulder shots are often recommended to prevent them from running away after being shot)...but then run for miles in pain and exhaustion before expiring. To me, targeting anywhere but the neck is lazy and inhumane.

My neck shot is a way I come to terms with hunting a live animal. I miss more than I have hit - it's a way to keep myself sharp. One shot through the neck with an adequate caliber rifle stops the animal in their tracks and are almost always expired before I can run the 50-100 yards to where they fell. Of the few that were still alive when we reach them...one of us in the hunting party always carries a 9mm pistol to end things quickly.

It's still disingenuous to call this "being part of nature". This is asserting complete dominion over the predator prey relationship. There's no better depiction of how we are "above nature" than in the way that we can keep these animals in complete obliviousness of their ultimate fate for their entire lives.

Untrue, that's just the same human-exceptionalism with fresh set of paint from "we are uniquely awesome" to "we are uniquely terrible".

We're not that unique: Nonhuman species have wars, rape, pillage, lie, etc... and yes, that includes "raising" other creatures for food.

Certain ant species, in particular, manage aphid livestock. At various times, the aphids are raised, mutilated, drugged, and eaten.

You are coming awfully close to completely destroying any distinction between artificial and natural. Raising animals for food is not a natural human instinct and there have been plenty of human societies that hunt rather than raise livestock. Call it for what it is: a (very old) technology.

Would you say sex is just "old technology" for fertilization? Ultimately, how do you draw the line what is instinct or not?

Everything a human does is what humans do, by definition.

You're telling me ant-behavior is artificial and they have technology?

I'm saying ant behavior is artificial when humans emulate it. Just like humans flying isn't natural just because birds do it too.

You can't seriously be telling me that animal-husbandry is artificial... because early humans learned it from squinting at ants!?

Or are you telling me the ants are the artificial ones, and they learned it from us?

You claim there's a bright-line distinction between "natural" and "artificial", but so far your personal definitions appear to be illogical and mutable.

Humans are exceptional. No other species has cities, wars or agriculture on a remotely comparable scale, not to mention art and science.

P.S.: In addition to the more common aphid-herders, some scientists believe that Melissotarsus ants lack the normal digestive arrangement, and actually raise other insects purely for meat.

I agree. Nature is very cruel, thankfully we treat our livestock much better than we would if we were "being part of nature".

I agree as well, though this does undercut the original author's point. It's fine to embrace livestock raising as a human technological development. It's wrong to think that the relationship she has with her sheep is anything remotely similar to natural.

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