Pictured here during his 1909 safari, Theodore Roosevelt poses with a downed African elephant.
For the vast majority of his time on the planet, man has been a hunter. From his proto-human ancestors stalking the plains of Pleistocene Eurasia to his modern beginnings in the East African Rift Valley, man's survival has been dependent on his ability to find, stalk, and kill prey. The evidence of this necessity can be seen in human physiology: sharp canine teeth for tearing flesh, forward-facing eyes for judging distance, even language likely found its origins in the hunting cues of early hominids.
Primeval man may have discovered the earliest form of reciprocal altruism in the form of the share of a successful kill, as the entire carcass of large prey animals would prove too much sustenance for one individual. By sharing the kill, the hunter raised status in his tribe while also earning himself a meal when one of his neighbors proved more successful in another day's hunt. Man's eventual ascendance to the top of the food chain may have been due in part to hunting, as researchers believe that the high protein diet that early hominids subsisted on encouraged the brain development that would eventually make humanity the apex species on the planet (Ref. 2, 3).
Hunting would continue to be vital to mankind's continued existence for millennia until the advent of farming around 8000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. From this point forward, it was possible to keep a sedentary food supply, although it would still be occasionally necessary to venture out in order to deal with feral predators. Extending forward into the modern era, hunting continued to be an important way of life, which can be seen from the settlers of the American frontier to present day hunter-gatherer societies. Even in the developed world, where there is abundant and inexpensive pre-butchered meat, hunting has persisted.
This leads to the question of this essay - Is this okay?
Hunting does not currently enjoy the idolatry it formally received, and the form which gets the lion's share of modern criticism, trophy hunting, makes for an easy target. The idea that it is permissible to take an animal's life for the sole intention of displaying its skin, horns, or head in a scarcely concealed gesture of macho pride (in this case, macho is the correct adjective, as the world of hunting is indeed male-dominated) is a hard pill to swallow for most members of Western society. However, there are problems with this philosophy, namely its moral compartmentalization and intellectual dishonesty, as the reason for the majority of aversion to trophy hunting is due to the oft-magnificent nature of the trophy animals themselves. Biologists refer to these animals as the "charismatic mega-fauna", and their images are emblazoned ubiquitously throughout popular culture. There is a reason that eagles, lions, bears, and tigers are unanimously popular as emblems of state throughout the world, and that puppies, kittens, and pandas run rampant through internet media. As a result, the general public often requires no impetus to rush to the aid of dolphins caught in tuna nets, elephants shot for their ivory, or baby seals clubbed for their pelts.
However, this admirable display of compassion for our fellow animals is conspicuously absent when directed toward the destruction of the less charismatic fauna. It is hard to imagine, for example, a crowd of incensed activists protesting devastation of Madagascan hissing cockroaches or Pacific lampreys. Evidence of this double standard can be found firsthand in any number of gas stations throughout the US Gulf Coast, where you may purchase with kitschy delight the skin, jaws, and disembodied, perpetually smiling heads of American alligators. There is good reason to believe that if, in contrast, these alligators were switched with the amputated heads, wings, and talons of bald eagles they would not be as hot a commodity. It follows that we must endeavor to protect animals not according to their charisma or cuteness, but rather for their ability to suffer.
While it is true that the human diet has been designed expressly for the consumption of both vegetables, fungi, and meat (although it is possible and, indeed, healthy to limit consumed animal protein to the nonviolent sources of eggs and milk), it is important to limit the amount of meat being produced to the amount that we would consider healthy to ingest, as any excess meat would represent unneeded suffering on the part of the animals being butchered. Therefore, we should take a look at the amount of meat being produced versus the amount that is medically recommended. The following information attempts to elucidate this argument.
130 lbs of meat per person recommended annually by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Ref. 6)
292 lbs of meat produced per person annually (Ref. 7)
As we can see, this results in an effective annual surplus of approximately 162 pounds per person, which, at a national population of 319 million people as of 2014, comes out to a US surplus of 51.7 billion pounds of meat. Numbers such as these are often difficult for the human mind to comprehend, so to put this into perspective we can visualize this as the average amount of meat we could expect to obtain from 106,000,000 cows - enough cows to stand head to tail, shoulder to shoulder, across the surface of Alaska and California combined.
This is a sobering figure, although it effectively communicates the notion that we are doling out an extreme amount of suffering unto the US livestock population alone. In modern-day factory farms these animals are also exposed to filthy, inhumane conditions to the extent that, after a few videos surfaced showcasing the cruelty and squalor of these facilities, it is now illegal to shoot video of factory farms in many US states.
Hunters often try to use this information to their advantage, claiming that by hunting they help control animal populations, as well as curb factory farms by acquiring their own meat. While it is true that by hunting they do not take part in the consumption of factory farmed meat, this does not mean that this is a good or moral substitute. If instead of factory farming we opted to hunt en masse, a method that some idealistic hunters put forward, we would run into serious obstacles with regard to practicality. For example, if we decided to procure our meat from the white tail deer population of the US, a popular animal for hunting, it would require the killing of some 692 million animals annually. This would put a bit of stress on the white-tailed deer's natural US population of 20 million, not to mention the logistical concerns of mobilizing the entire population out to rural areas in order to hunt (Ref. 9,10).
The point to be made here is that, for better or worse, animal husbandry is a fact of life. Even if we were to solely subsist on lacto-ovo vegetarianism and fully rid ourselves of meat as a source of protein, there would be a need to cultivate animals in large numbers. This brings us to conclude that if farms are to continue to exist, they must be done as humanely as possible. This will require us to eschew the tendency to demonize technological progress, and instead to attempt to get smarter and more moral with our farming. There is often a cynical misconception that the human race needs to return to its roots, to uncouple itself from the trappings of modern society and revert to a more natural way of life. The fallacy here lies in the definition of the term 'natural'.
In The Extended Phenotype, ethologist Richard Dawkins' followup to his massively influential book The Selfish Gene, he argues that we should not only consider physiological parameters such as skin, tooth size, or hair color as manifestations of an animal's phenotype (the outward expression of its genetic makeup), but also its behavior. For example, it can be argued that a beaver dam is a direct expression of the same genetic forces that forged its flattened tail or chisel-like incisors. By extending this hypothesis in an anthropocentric manner, it is possible to observe constructions such as skyscrapers, Boeing 747's, or even nuclear power plants as examples of our own extended phenotype. By accepting the fact that the feed trough is as much a part of our genetic expression as the bow and arrow, we can avoid the Luddite pitfall of vilifying farming categorically.
I'll quickly address the argument that hunters act in the animal's best interests by acting as population control by simply stating that, historically speaking, even the most erudite biologists, game wardens, and naturalists get their predictions of animal populations famously wrong. One must look no further than the disasters of the cane toad, introduction of rabbits to Australia, and Africanized bee to see that humans often screw up when they decide to take an active role in nature. Animal populations can indeed wax and wane dramatically, however these animals tend to remain in equilibrium with their environment unless they experience an increase in birth rate, a decrease in mortality rates, or a decrease in resources.
Wildlife agencies often play a role in these population instabilities, as many go out of their way to feed and foster the game animal populations in the off-season. Hunting season is big business for states such as Wisconsin, who boasted in the 2006-2007 Fish and Wildlife Annual Report that, “Your purchase of hunting and fishing licenses and stamps enable us to raise hunting and fishing opportunities to a new level … We rank first in the country for the highest single-year deer harvest on record and are number one for deer harvest over the past decade.” Each year, Americans spend nearly $6 billion on hunting, making it well worth the efforts of these departments to draw in additional customers (Ref. 11, 12).
Hunting itself can lead to population instability, such as when an environment replete with natural resources and low in predators is manufactured by hunters and game wardens, allowing wildlife to flourish. Hunters then pick off the oldest males, leaving the younger generation to rapidly fertilize the now less numerous, and heavily female, population. This 'Bambi Boom' of maturing animals then falls into a Malthusian catastrophe as the sky-rocketing animal population runs head-first into the brick wall of an environment only equipped to support the prior generation. The only two outs for a demographic such as this is by a massive dying off, or intervention by wildlife agencies to sustain it and therefore continue the cycle.
These arguments for population control also say nothing of the morally dubious nature of killing animals in order to spare them an unpleasant death by predation or starvation, as this seems tantamount to the notion of euthanization of a human being on the grounds of a high genetic predisposition to a terminal illness. Why we would employ such a fatalistic worldview in 'altruistic' service of animals, while regarding its utilization toward humans as, at best, crackpot and, at worst, genocidal is beyond comprehension.
With modern hunting's appeals to necessity, practicality, and pragmatism shown to be questionable under scrutiny, we arrive at the main reason that it has persisted into modernity - its practice as recreation. There can be no doubt the genes that sculpted humanity into an apex species still have a proverbial soft spot for hunting. The same genetic drives that compelled ancient man to stalk prey across the African savanna are still largely unscathed, the only difference being that they have updated the year, make, and model of their survival machines by many millennia. However, the fact that we still feel these compulsions is no justification for their enactment. Modern man is in a constant state of struggle against his animalistic nature, stated beautifully by Sigmund Freud in his comment that “civilization is built upon the suppression of instincts”. It was not so long ago that it was normal for a society to find communal joy in spectating the bloody traditions of the Roman coliseum or medieval public hanging. It must be remembered that modern sensibilities are just that - modern sensibilities.
In the developed world, the visceral satisfaction derived from the hunting and killing of an animal needs to be offset by our modern awareness of the suffering we are causing. It is already difficult to justify the butchering of an animal for the arguably shallow enjoyment we derive from its consumption, and this sensibility applies even more dramatically toward their hunting for any reason other than necessity. It can be further argued that the sense of enjoyment derived from this activity is uncomfortably close to the macabre enjoyment we formerly derived from public executions and other blood entertainment. The philosopher Peter Singer wrote in 1981 that modern man is currently living through a period of expansion of our circle of empathy beyond the historic radius of the family or tribe. In 2015, perhaps it is time we begin to fully expand our circle with regard to animals, lifting the moral myopia that currently relegates them to the sanguinary domain once occupied by heretics, blasphemers, and gladiators.
References
1. https://www.eduplace.com/...
2. http://www.livescience.com/...
3. http://www.livescience.com/...
4. https://www.nssf.org/...
5. http://www.census.gov/...
6. http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/...
7. https://www.meatinstitute.org/...
8. http://igrow.org/...
9. http://wildlifecontrol.info/...
10. http://www.deertrail.us/...
11. http://dnr.wi.gov/...
12. http://ideas.time.com/...