Data is Beautiful

Also organizations like hunting lodges put a lot of effort and money into wildlife conservation and wilderness preservation. There's a lot of natural habitat that is protected today specifically because of the work of groups of hunters. Without them that land would have been used for something else. It's obviously self-interested, but it benefits more than just them.

I agree but I do have a little issue with the "wasting resources" part, that's a very anthropocentric view to take. There's an entire ecosystem of organisms that would love to use those resources, and in many cases leaving the carcass behind is better for that system than taking it away and depleting it of that biomass. There's obviously a lot of "ifs" involved but I wouldn't generalise by saying that because a human didn't get to eat it the resource was "wasted".

It's unfortunate that our ancestors have left us with this kind of ecological trolley problem, where in order to keep the system balanced and prevent collapse we're obligated to go out and kill a lot of creatures, but such is the world we've inherited.

Chronic Wasting Disease is a particularly scary prion disease that is highly dependent on deer population density.

This relates to Britain, not the United States. Results will be different.

I’d argue that even if you waste everything from hunting deer, in most areas of the US fact their is now one less deer is definite ecological benefit all on its own.

A forest with a large deer population where people don’t landscape and fence every tree is going to become either a near monoculture with the only exceptions being invasive species. This is because deer eat most but not all native saplings before they can grow to the point they can survive a deer attack, and with most forests in the US having far, far higher populations than natural we get far fewer native trees than natural.

Normally anything like modern deer levels would have led to a population explosion of predators to keep them in check, but because most deer predators are far more vulnerable to human presence, activity, and historical control efforts than deer, which thrive in human dominated areas, the result has been significant damage to forests.

As such, anything like hunting that can lower the deer population back towards natural is very enthical as it doing far more to protect the forest than any number of newly planted saplings could ever do. Your mileage may very, all forests arn’t the same, check the ecology of your local forest before hunting to figure out what the forest needs more of and what it need less of, etc…

Yeah, I'm vegan and still recognize the need for deer hunting in the US (and anywhere else where all their natural predators have been eliminated). I don't know of any other effective method for controlling their population when no other species exists to do it. I would be totally open to reintroducing wolves, bears, big cats etc to areas where they existed historically, but I just don't see enough popular support growing for that that it seems likely to happen anytime soon. People like their meat too much and wild predators kill free ranging livestock, plus I suspect most people are not going to want to worry about encounters while they're out in nature (see my link below for how things have been going with the red wolf re-introduction to North Carolina, US). I mean I'm an animal lover and it still makes me a tiny bit nervous when I go out into bear country in the wild parts of my state (not that that would stop me from supporting re-introduction). Lots of people are ignorant and don't give a shit about harming ecology if it benefits them in some way.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/09/04/endangered-red-wolves-need-space-to-stay-wild--but-there-s-another-predator-in-the-way---humans

I live in an area in central Europe with a lot of deer and while I don't particularly like hunting, it is absolutely necessary to keep the deer population at bay here. With no natural predators, their population would explode without hunting and they are already numerous. I can walk out of the door here and within a matter of minutes I can spot a deer or two.

Wild boars are also quite a nuisance.

I wonder now, what happens to the results if you put the question about factory farming at either the beginning or the very end?

My guess is that when at the beginning, the percentages would shift significantly into the acceptable range because of the not wanting to look inconsistent.

They're also quite intelligent and are likely to be extremely aware of their captive situation. It's basically slavery.

I went to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. They explained that riding elephants is incredibly stressful for the elephant's back, and that in order to train them to obey, torture is usually involved.

I'm against zoos as well. I know some do good work with rehabilitation and such (and we should support them), but a lot just capture animals for our enjoyment. Even if they're not explicitly mistreated, it's pretty cruel to just keep them in a cage for the rest of their lives.

The MD renn fest had an elephant.

There was a divide between the folks who thought “ohhhh it fine” and the rest of us who thought “elephants don’t live in Maryland and definitely don’t give rides to screaming children, willingly”

The MD renn fest elephant was also used as Trump advertising at other events, which did NOT help the communities view here in MD.

There was a noticeable boycott until they stopped abusing the elephants at the MD renn fest.

It makes more sense as the survey was conducted on British adults.

I wonder if this odd result is from the question not specifying trophy hunting vs. food hunting. If you eat meat it wouldn't make sense to be against food hunting, but it would make sense if you think they're hunting deer just to hang a big antler head on your wall

1. It’s British adults, not Americans. Private gun ownership is uncommon-to-rare, and hunting even less so.
2. It’s British adults, so you need to read almost everything through the lens of classism and/or class jealousy. Most hunting in the UK is done by the upper class - there are genuine outdoorsmen hunting types but the norm is posh folk hunting for sport.

The headline says British adults so it's not going to be applicable outside Britain.

Note they merge 'somewhat unacceptable' and 'unacceptable' into the bars, which is.... a choice.

Dog races are worse than horse races, mostly because the dogs are trained to be more-or-less psychotic. Horses, you can see as understanding the competition they're in and being (at least mostly) willing participants.

Winners of dog fight bets probably

The demographics sampled are adults from the UK.

I'm by no means a vegan, but it has always weirded me out how people see no problem of dragging an animal out of the water by using a hook in the animal's mouth. Even weirder is it when people then throw the fish back into the sea to be "ethical". It's just plain recreational torture at that point.