Considerations on the Morality of Meat Consumption: Hunted-Game versus Farm-Raised Animals

Donald W. Bruckner

Introduction There are debates in the animal rights and environmental ethics literatures concerning the morality of hunting. There are also debates in the literature concerning the ethical treatment of farm animals. The discussions to date, however, have systematically overlooked one central question relevant to both debates: What is the moral status of consuming meat produced from hunted-game animals in comparison to the moral status of consuming meat produced from farm-raised animals?1 In this paper, I argue that eating meat from hunted-game animals is morally preferable to eating meat from farm-raised animals. To take some of the roughness out of this claim, I need to add some provisos and delineate the topic more precisely. First, for the purposes of this paper, we must set aside hunting without an intention of consuming the game killed. At least three (non-exclusive and nonexhaustive) subcategories of hunting fall into this category. (1) Trophy hunting is hunting in order to have all or some part of the killed animal mounted for display. For instance, one might go on a pheasant hunt in order to kill a brilliant cock and have it mounted by a taxidermist. (2) Sport hunting is hunting for the challenge of hunting, as recreational activity. For example, a Grand Slam hunter attempts to take a ram from each of the four types of North American wild sheep, in order to meet this very difcult challenge. (3) Varmint or nuisance animal hunting is hunting for the purpose of reducing the population of animals that cause some kind of damage to property or otherwise interfere with human activity, but the meat of which is usually not consumed. Examples include hunting crows that eat germinating corn seed or coyotes that prey on livestock.2 I set these aside because each of these subcategories of hunting is different enough from the type of hunting I shall treat, hunting for the sake of meat consumption, that a discussion of its morality would necessarily differ from the discussion to follow.3 More to the point, these are set aside since they are not directly relevant to the main topic of concern here, which is consumption of hunted meat in comparison to farm-raised meat. Second, we must set aside three types of hunting, the moral statuses of which are certainly questionable, whether done for the purpose of meat consumption or not. First, we set aside hunting in conditions other than fair chase. Fair chase
JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 38 No. 2, Summer 2007, 311330. 2007 Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

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hunting can be dened as hunting free-ranging wild animals in a sporting and lawful way, in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.4 What is sporting or an improper advantage is a subject of debate among hunters,5 but some of the things ruled out are clear. For example, it is unsporting and takes improper advantage to target animals trapped in deep snow or to jacklight deer (shine light in their eyes at night causing them to stand still and make easy targets). Second, we must set aside hunting game without taking due care to see that the game is humanely dispatched. This due care requires the selection of a proper hunting instrument and ammunition, and learning the basic ballistics and effective range of the ammunition. This involves practice to develop shooting prociency and learn ones own capacity and limitations. It also requires learning the basic anatomy of the game one is hunting in order to ensure a clean, one-shot kill, as well as the proper selection of shooting opportunities while aeld. Third, we must set aside hunting animals whose populations cannot sustain being hunted. State game agencies usually ensure this by employing game biologists who examine (among other things) population trends, habitat, niche, ecosystem changes, hunter success statistics, and carrying capacities,6 and who then set hunting seasons and harvest limits. At last, then, our topic is hunting animals whose populations can sustain hunting, with the intention of consuming their meat, under conditions of fair chase when the hunter takes due care to humanely dispatch the game.7 Having claried what kind of hunting is at issue, we should clarify what kind of farming is at issue as well. The farming practices I wish to criticize and set against hunting are most often associated with industrialized agriculture or factory farming. This type of farming has been widely discussed in the philosophical literature and in the popular press. Some of the morally questionable aspects of industrialized livestock production will be described in Section 1.1. For now my thesis can be stated as: eating meat that has been hunted as described is morally preferable to eating meat that has been farm-raised, where farm-raised means raised, transported, and slaughtered under a system of industrialized agriculture. Finally, we must note the very limited purpose of this paper. This paper remains agnostic on the issue of whether consuming meat is morally permissible. The limited topic of this paper is the moral status of consuming farm-raised meat in comparison to the moral status of eating hunted meat. So I am not taking a position on the rightness or wrongness of meat consumption considered merely as such but am instead taking a position on the moral status of consuming farmraised meat relative to the moral status of eating hunted meat. Therefore, my arguments and thesis can be accepted regardless of ones position on the morality of meat consumption considered in itself. In particular, someone who holds that all meat consumption is wrong can retain that position and also accept my thesis that consuming factory farm-raised meat is morally inferior to eating hunted meat. My argument for the moral superiority of eating hunted meat is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I argue the claim from the standpoint of animal welfare. In Section 2, I make the argument from the perspective of human welfare, and

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human value more generally. The central arguments are based on welfare. In the rst section, the claim is that the net effect on animal welfare brought about by consuming hunted-game animals is superior to the net effect on animal welfare from consuming factory-farmed animals. Similarly, the second section argues that the net effect for human welfare is better from consuming hunted-game animals rather than factory-farmed animals. Since a non-utilitarian moral theory can place moral weight on animal and human welfare, these arguments do not presuppose that some version of utilitarianism is the correct moral theory. Finally, in Section 3, I consider a series of important objections to my arguments and claims, and further develop the views developed in the rst two sections in response to these objections. 1. Animal Welfare I assume that there is such a thing as animal welfare, that rough comparisons of welfare can be made, and that animal welfare has moral force. All else equal, animal welfare ought to play a role in our moral decisions. 1.1 Life and Death on the Factory Farm The abuses of factory-farmed animals are well established. The philosophical and scientic literatures, as well as the popular news media, contain scores of accounts of the living, transportation, and slaughter conditions of such animals. These accounts make a convincing case that many factory-farmed animals are often ill-treated and suffer discomfort and pain, to put it mildly. Mother pigs (sows) live in isolated gestation crates that are too small for the pig even to turn around.8 The veal industry has long been criticized for raising the male offspring of dairy cattle in conned spaces to limit movement in an attempt to improve the growth and appearance of the meat.9 Unnatural selection among strains of broiler chickens has led to chickens that gain muscle weight so fast relative to the gain in bone strength that leg abnormalities and lameness often occur.10 Design of housing systems and methods of handling spent laying hens on their way to slaughter have been criticized in the scientic literature for resulting in an unacceptably high number of broken bones.11 Injury and death of pigs during transport is a serious problem. One report from the National Pork Board claims that 420,000 hogs are injured in transit each year, while 170,000 die.12 At least one cattle slaughterhouse has been criticized for sometimes dismembering fully conscious cattle.13 At one processing plant, the scalding of live pigs that had not been properly stunned has been documented.14 These are merely examples of what I take as established, that factory-farmed animals often suffer in their lives, transportation, and slaughter.15 Compare the situation of factory-farmed animals with that of wild animals hunted for meat. Wild animals appear to have better lives, overall and on average. Consider that wild animals are not kept in connement. Compare, for instance, the living conditions of chickens, turkeys, or geese raised in cramped quarters with

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those of unconned wild pheasants, turkeys, or geese. It seems reasonable to believe that the welfare of animals kept in connement is lower than that of unconned animals. One of the reasons to believe that animals kept in connement fare less well than those that are not conned is that connement frequently limits the range of natural behavior that an animal can perform. For example, a wild boar can root and nest, but a conned pig cannot. There is good scientic evidence that animals unable to engage in some natural behaviors suffer stress, as indicated by increased levels of stress hormones.16 Certainly not every wild animal will live under less stress or pain than every factory-farmed animal, but just considering that factory-farmed animals are generally conned and wild animals are not, it seems reasonable to conclude that, on average, the living conditions of wild-game animals are better for them than the living conditions of factory farm-raised animals are for factory farm-raised animals.17 Game animals are not transported to slaughter. The analogue of transportation of factory-farmed animals in the case of hunted game might be the hunting itself. Hunting certainly can cause fear and stress to the animal hunted equal to or greater than the stress involved in some forms of transportation of farm animals to slaughter. No doubt ushed upland game birds (e.g., grouse, pheasant, quail), or waterfowl landing into decoys and being shot at suffer stress, as do rabbits chased out of a thicket and the members of a group of deer, some of which have just been shot. Yet, this stress is eeting (the frightened game either escapes or is killed by the shot), and unlike, for instance, the prolonged torture-like state that hogs can be subjected to without food or water in the back of a tractor trailer. Moreover, this stress of being hunted is not unlike the stress that might be inicted by a natural predator, such as a fox or hawk. Finally, what can we say about the death of the hunted animal in comparison to the death of a factory farm-raised animal? Recall that we are considering only hunting where the hunter takes due care to ensure a clean and humane kill. Does the game animal experience pain with such a kill? The best answer here is sometimes, as the answer will depend on the case. A wild turkey, for instance, that is hit in the head and neck with several shot pellets from a reasonable range will die immediately due to the instant devastation of the central nervous system. Death may not be instantaneous for a big game animal (e.g., deer, bear, sheep) even in the case of a textbook broadside hit to the heart/lung region with adequate ammunition. An animal hit in such a manner, however, usually runs less than one hundred yards in a matter of seconds, during which time the brain is starved of oxygen due to loss of blood pressure, consciousness is lost, and the animal dies. It has been established that slaughterhouses frequently do not take due care to ensure the same rapid death for farm animals.18 Thus, from the standpoint of the actual death experience and the care taken to avoid needless suffering, hunted-game animals would seem to fare better than factory farm-raised animals. Taken as a whole then, the average living conditions, transportation (or hunting) conditions, and experience of death are better for a wild-game animal

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than for a factory-farmed animal. It is important to stress that it is the average and the whole package that is of concern. It would be easy to point out individual cases where, for example, the stress caused by hunting an individual animal is greater than the stress caused by transportation of the specic animal the hunter would otherwise have consumed. Thus, the emphasis on the average is important. As well, one might claim, for example, that the comparison between the life of average wild animals and the life of average factory-farmed animals is too close to call.19 Nevertheless, the whole package of life, transportation (or hunting), and death experience is still plausibly much better for hunted-game animals than for factory-farmed animals, even if the comparison for a particular component of the package is questioned. Thus, from the standpoint of animal welfare, eating hunted meat is morally better than eating factory farm-raised meat. By reducing demand for factoryfarmed animals, the consumer of hunted meat raises average animal welfare. 1.2 Game Management There is another argument from animal welfare that contributes to establishing the moral preferability of eating hunted meat over factory farm-raised meat. In nature, an animal species naturally tends to be in balance with its available habitat and food sources, with those competing for the same habitat and food sources, and with its predators (or prey). This balance is sometimes disturbed. A disturbance can have a natural cause, for example, a cold, wet spring that reduces the survival rate of newborn rabbits, but not of their predators. A disturbance can also be caused by human action, for instance, the introduction of a non-native species to an area without predators to control the population. Whatever the cause, a game species can become overpopulated relative to its available habitat and food20 and several consequences may result. First, due to the shortage of preferred food, animals may turn to less preferred food sources, thereby eating other animals out of house and home (e.g., overpopulated deer, without enough fallen acorns to go around, eat a great deal of understory which is home to grouse). Second, some of the animals may starve as a result of the inability to obtain sufcient nourishment. Third, due to the unnaturally high population density, disease may spread rapidly in the overpopulated species, causing decimation. Hunting overpopulated game animals can reduce populations and thus help avoid these consequences, thereby raising average levels of welfare for the targeted species. Thus, although it is clearly not better for an individual animal for it to be hunted and killed rather than not, it is clearly better for wild animals as a whole for some of them to be hunted so that the consequences listed above are avoided for most of them. Thus, we have two arguments in favor of hunting from the point of view of animal welfare. First, hunting raises average animal welfare since it reduces demand for factory-farmed animals, the lot of which is worse than that of game

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animals. Second, hunting overpopulated game animals (or game animals that would become overpopulated if not hunted) is better for wild animals as a whole than not hunting them. 2. Human Welfare and Value In Section 1, the focus was on the claim that hunting and consuming game animals is better, from the perspective of animal welfare, than consuming factoryfarmed animals. In this section, I shall argue that it is better for human welfare for wild-game animals to be hunted rather than not, and that hunting furthers important human values. 2.1 Game Management from a Human Perspective Having just considered game management and animal welfare, let us consider game management in connection with human welfare. Homeowners are often initially thrilled to see a few deer or a ock of Canada geese in their residential developments, but when the animals devour vegetable gardens and expensive ornamental plants or leave volumes of droppings around a well-manicured public pond, humans grow impatient. Beyond these inconveniences, perhaps the most serious negative impact wildlife has on human welfare is through motor vehicle collisions. Each year in the United States, there are more than one million deervehicle collisions resulting in about 29,000 human injuries, more than two hundred human fatalities, and an estimated $1.1 billion in property damage (1993 dollars).21 As well, each year, wildlife destroys an estimated $498 million in agricultural crops22 and deer cause more than $367 million in damage to timber.23 The concern now is that human welfare is negatively impacted by the population density of the game animals, and humans are not willing to tolerate the negative impacts, at least at such levels.24 When these animals are hunted for food, their populations are lowered, the negative impacts are reduced, and human welfare is raised. It should be mentioned here that one frequently alleged source of overpopulation of some species (e.g., deer) is that wildlife management ofcials set hunting seasons and harvest limits too conservatively in order to ensure a plenitude of the animals for hunters, who usually pay their salaries through license fees.25 If this is true, then it is a criticism not of hunting, but of game management as currently practiced. Thus, the criticism acknowledges the human benet from game management, and argues for even more hunting on the basis of human welfare. 2.2 Positive Economic Impact of Hunting Annually, hunters contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. Hunters do not only purchase rearms and ammunition. They also outt themselves with specialized apparel, camping equipment, decoys, boats, binoculars, meat process-

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ing equipment, books and magazines devoted to hunting, and so on. As well, hunters spend money on transportation, lodging, and meals while traveling to hunt. One study puts the total U.S. hunting expenditures in 2001 at $20.6 billion, including $10.4 billion on equipment and $5.3 billion on trip-related expenses.26 These economic impacts clearly improve local economies and contribute positively to the national economy. In addition, more than 575,000 jobs were supported in the United States by hunting activities in 2001.27 This economic impact is a clear contribution to human welfare. It would be legitimate to respond to this point about the positive economic impact of hunting by pointing out the negative economic impact produced by reducing demand for industrially raised farm animals. Surely we should factor in that negative impact as well. Indeed, we should, but as one anti-hunting organization is quick to point out [w]hen all costs are considered . . . hunting is not an economical way to provide food.28 For instance, in 1990 Maryland hunters spent more than $51 million to kill 46,317 deer, which translates to $24.44 per pound of venison.29 Surely this is not a surprising result. Factory farms are designed to produce the largest quantity of the highest-quality meat for the lowest total cost, and this method of producing meat is much more efcient than hunting. The result is that by increasing demand for hunting-related expenses and decreasing demand for factory farm-raised meat, hunters make a greater net contribution to the economy. 2.3 The Value of Hunting for Food as Activity There is more to be said for the positive contribution of hunting for food to human welfare, and to human value more generally. My aim in this subsection is merely to submit some of the more important features of hunting for food that make it a valuable human activity, without launching into a deep exploration.30 In considering the value of hunting for food as activity, I have in mind Aristotles distinction between praxis (activity) and poeisis (making, production). Aristotle claims that eudaimonia (human happiness, or thriving) consists in activity valued in itself, rather than in a goal to be attained. For Aristotle, happiness does not consist in attaining (i.e., producing for oneself) a certain level of wealth, or political honor, or anything else. Rather, human happiness consists in living in a way that manifests the excellences (virtues) of a human being.31 So in considering hunting for food as activity, I have in mind the ways in which hunting for food is valuable in itself, apart from the production of nourishment and other positive consequences. One clear element of the value of hunting is a heightened experience and knowledge of nature. A successful hunter does not simply walk into the woodlot, traipse into the eld, or wade into the marsh and wait for the game animals she targets to happen by. The game needs to be studied. When and where do they rest, feed, or travel? By what senses are they most likely to detect human intruders? What does the game convey with its various vocalizations? What behaviors or

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movements would be elicited from which imitation vocalizations (game calls)? Can the animals next action be predicted from its current body language? Does the presence or absence of a given animal, plant, or terrain feature signal the presence or absence of the targeted game? Although a hiker, photographer, or other non-hunting nature enthusiast might have a similar experience and knowledge of nature, hunting provides a unique access point for this experience and knowledge.32 Certainly this is something valuable about hunting. Given the complex skills called for by hunting, one is put in mind of a general principle of human motivation put forward by Rawls, the Aristotelian Principle.33 According to this principle, human beings take more pleasure in doing something as they become more procient at it, and of two activities they do equally well, they prefer the one calling on a larger repertoire of more intricate and subtle discriminations.34 The general idea is that humans are not generally content mastering an activity, and then performing that activity over and over. Rather, after mastering an activity, people seek a variation or renement on the activity that calls on the skills needed for the original activity, yet that presents new and greater challenges that require more strenuous exertion or more rened action, as well as practice or training to meet the new challenges. Beginning equestrians nd it sufciently challenging to attend to the elements of horse care, keeping themselves in the saddle, and mastering the walk, trot, canter, and gallop. As these basics are mastered, individuals naturally seek new challenges, perhaps through jumping, rising through the levels of dressage, or taking on the challenges of barrel racing. Now not only is storming into an area that may hold game animals usually an ineffective way to hunt but, if Rawls principle is right, hunters naturally take more pleasure in hunting as their skills develop and the complexity of their hunting methods increases. As one example, one does nd that some hunters, once content to harvest big game within the range of a modern rie (200300 yards), grow tired of what they perceive as an exercise of mere shooting skill. They turn instead to mastering a different hunting instrument with a shorter lethal range, for example, a primitive intlock muzzleloading rie (125 yards), a hunting pistol (75 yards), or a bow and arrow (40 yards). New challenges are then provided. First, one must gain knowledge of the new instrument and develop skill in its use. Second, one must learn new hunting techniques, or master familiar techniques at a new level, in order to stalk or attract the quarry within shooting range. The demand for knowledge of the game animal increases as the demand to get closer to it increases. This opportunity for human development and the attendant increase in pleasure provided by hunting are of value. Finally, the social value of hunting cannot be disputed. Many families spend signicant time together at their hunting camps. Hunting provides bonding experiences between parents and children, and a childs rst successful hunt often marks an important rite of passage. Social networks beyond the family are often developed and maintained through hunting. The associated activities of target shooting, pre-hunt scouting, trip planning, and social events such as game dinners and shooting leagues at gun clubs also hold social value.

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2.4 The Use of Humans in Animal Slaughter A large slaughterhouse is an extremely dangerous workplace. Some slaughterhouse employees relate stories of live cattle being shackled and hoisted while fully conscious after the knocker failed to deliver an accurate blow to the head with his captive bolt stunning device. These cattle can kick and thrash, causing severe injury to the sticker, the worker responsible for severing the animals carotid artery once it is stunned and hoisted.35 Other slaughterhouse employees report broken bones from falling cattle.36 Other workers have been cutby themselves or other workerswhile trying to keep pace with the rapidly moving disassembly line or as a result of an improperly stunned pig kicking the sticking knife out of a workers hand.37 The data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics corroborates this anecdotal evidence. In 2004, the occupational injury and illness rate for all animal slaughtering and processing was 9.8 percentthat is, 9.8 percent of people working in the animal slaughtering business reported some type of work-related injury or illness that year. The rate was higher for non-poultry slaughtering, at 13.3 percent. These rates stand in contrast to the average injury and illness rate for all manufacturing jobs, which was 6.6 percent. The rates are roughly the same for 2003: 10.3 percent for all animal slaughtering and processing, 12.9 percent for non-poultry slaughtering, and 6.8 percent for all manufacturing.38 Thus, the illness and injury rate for non-poultry slaughterhouse jobs is roughly twice that of manufacturing jobs in general. Due to perverse incentives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, these reported injury rates are likely much lower than actual injury rates.39 Given these facts, it is not surprising that annual turnover rates at slaughterhouses can be as high as eighty to one hundred percent.40 It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that reducing demand for meat processed in slaughterhouses is benecial for humans. All else equal, therefore, actions that reduce demand for meat processed in slaughterhouses are morally preferable to actions that do not. Eating hunted meat reduces demand for meat processed in slaughterhouses. Hence, eating hunted meat is morally preferable to eating farm-raised meat that is processed in slaughterhouses. To summarize Section 2: hunting is morally preferable not only from the perspective of animal welfare, but from the perspective of human welfare (and human value more generally) as well. This follows from the considerations of game management, economics, the value of hunting for food as activity, and the use of humans in animal slaughter.

3. Objections Having laid out the essentials of the case for the moral superiority of eating hunted meat over factory farm-raised meat on the basis of animal and human welfare, there are several objections to be considered.

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3.1 Hunted Meat versus Non-factory-farmed Meat The rst objection to consider does not challenge the view that it is morally preferable to obtain meat through hunting than through industrialized agriculture. Instead, this objection asks whether it is not even more morally sound to obtain meat through non-factory farming methods in which the living, transportation, and slaughter conditions are perhaps better for the farm animals than the corresponding conditions for hunted-game animals.41 That is, instead of farming as it is actually practiced to produce most of the meat that is consumed, why not consider a reformed or ideal method of farming? After all, the objector might continue, the type of hunting that has been presented so far is at least somewhat idealized (e.g., few if any hunters can claim a one hundred percent one-shot kill rate), so it seems only reasonable to consider idealized farming. Let us suppose that we could agree on a formula of morally ideal farming.42 What is the moral status of consuming farm animals raised according to the morally ideal standard in comparison to the moral status of consuming game animals hunted according to a morally ideal standard? In what follows, I claim that morally ideal hunting and morally ideal livestock production are morally equivalent in the sense that neither is morally superior to the other. For this conclusion, I offer two independent arguments. First, notice that we are comparing morally ideal hunting and morally ideal livestock production. Since we are considering moral ideals, all that is morally objectionable has been removed from each. Thus, they are on equal moral ground. This argument might appear spurious, because it may not necessarily follow from the moral purication of two practices that they are morally equivalent. To see this, suppose A and B are two practices or forms of activity that can be practiced in morally better or worse ways, for example, (A) making a living as a trader on the oor of the New York Stock Exchange, and (B) making a living as a public school teacher. Purify A and B morally so that, for example, the morally ideal trader does not engage in insider trading, and the morally ideal teacher does not abuse the position in order to engage in pedophilia. Nevertheless, it might be argued that the morally idealized forms of A and B are not on equal moral ground. The ideal practice of A could fall short of the ideal practice of B morally, for two possible reasons. First (it could be argued), A is intrinsically wrong (perhaps because it is part of a system that alienates workers from the means of production), but there is nothing intrinsically wrong in B. No amount of purication of A could make it morally acceptable, unlike B. Thus, the idealized forms of A and B do not stand on equal moral footing. A second reason one might give for this conclusion is that the consequences (for humans) of the practice of A are less positive than the consequences (for humans) of the practice of B. Since an assessment of A and B must take account of consequences for humans, one might argue, idealized A is less morally good than idealized B. It is true enough that it does not necessarily follow from the moral purication of two practices that they are morally equivalent. However, the sort of

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argument used to illustrate that morally puried stock trading and teaching might not be on equal moral ground does not go through in the case of morally puried hunting and livestock production. First, if either hunting or livestock production is intrinsically wrong, then both are, for the most plausible intrinsic wrong is the same for bothviolating an animals rights by killing it.43 So either both practices are intrinsically wrong or neither is. In each case, they are morally equivalent. Second, the idealized forms of hunting and livestock production will differ from the actual forms in that the negative consequences of each real-world practice for humans and for animals will be removed: Slaughterhouses will not be dangerous, livestock will be transported and killed humanely, and so on; no hunters will accidentally shoot humans, all hunted-game animals will be killed quickly with one shot, and so on. Thus, the differential negative consequences of farming and hunting will have been removed, so there can be no distinction between the two on those grounds. Therefore, there is good reason to believe that idealized hunting and idealized production of farm animals raised for slaughter are morally equivalent. There is a second, independent argument for this conclusion. The rst argument was a conceptual argument to the effect that two morally ideal and otherwise comparable practices must, by virtue of their ideality, be morally equivalent. The second argument is practical, as opposed to conceptual, and claims that to try to compare the moral statuses of idealized hunting and livestock production is to try to slice things too thinly and to try to make moral distinctions where it is practically impossible to do so. The reason for the practical impossibility is that the considerations that now confront us appear indecisive. For example, meat that is currently raised according to elevated moral standards (organic, etc.) is in relatively low supply, so the meat often has to travel long distances to reach consumers. One could expect the same for meat raised according to the ideal standard, which may result in a greater use of petroleum per pound of ideally raised meat, a negative consequence for humans. Yet hunters also burn petroleum traveling to their hunting grounds, so this consideration is indecisive. As well, hunting is a very economically inefcient means of securing food. It would perhaps be more socially responsible for hunters to stop hunting and buy ideally raised meat, and then redirect the money saved to important social causes. On the other hand, raising meat according to the ideal moral standard would surely be less economically efcient than industrialized livestock production, so this consideration is also indecisive. Another consideration might be that increasing demand for morally ideal meat from livestock would reduce demand for goods and services related to hunting, a negative effect on humans. Yet it might be equally negative to shift demand from livestock production to hunting goods and services. We appear to have a dizzying constellation of indecisive considerations. It appears practically impossible to establish that ideal hunting is clearly morally superior or clearly morally inferior to ideal farming. Thus, the best we can say is that, for all we can tell, they are morally equivalent.

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3.2 Real-World Hunting The objection just canvassed claimed that the discussion to that point was focused exclusively on the most prevalent type of farming as it is actually practiced, factory farming, and did not account for alternative methods of farming. In brief, the objection claimed that the focus was on actual farming rather than reformed or ideal farming. The next objection claims that I have made exactly the reverse error in my characterization of hunting, focusing on an unrealistic and idealized form of hunting that is far from reality. Thus, the tasks in this section are to examine the image of hunting presented so far, to amend that picture as necessary to reect reality more accurately, and then to compare the resulting realistic picture of hunting with the realistic picture of factory farming presented above. Consider, rst, that not every animal shot during the course of hunting for consumption dies a swift and painless death as a result of one well-placed shot. Some are wounded and die an agonizing death, sometimes without being recovered for food. Estimates of wounding rates vary widely. One frequently cited study of bow hunting wounding rates for whitetail deer estimates that thirteen percent of deer shot with bow and arrow are not recovered and either die or heal.44 One South Dakota State Waterfowl Biologist estimates a wounding loss rate on ducks of at least twenty-ve percent.45 Anti-hunting organizations claim much higher rates. Whatever the true wounding rates, it is clear that some hunted-game animals do suffer painful wounds and protracted deaths.46 Not only do real-world hunters sometimes cause this gratuitous pain for animals, but some also negatively impact the welfare of other humans. The so-called slob hunters hunt drunk, trespass, litter, cut fence, act belligerently, and violate game laws by hunting out of season or exceeding harvest limits. Such hunters prompt other outdoor enthusiasts to curtail their outdoor recreational activities (e.g., hiking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing) during hunting seasons out of fear of confrontations with hunters or, worse, being hit by a bullet intended for a game animal. Indeed, annually hunters shoot and injure or kill hundreds of their own ranks as well as innocent non-hunting bystanders, often as a result of violating basic rearm safety rules or by shooting at human movement mistaken for the movement of a game animal.47 Surely not every meat hunter can be defended morally. Indeed, it would be antithetical to my project of establishing the moral superiority of a certain type of hunting over factory farming to try to defend hunters who engage in clearly immoral behavior such as hunting drunk or taking shots in which they are not condent. Clearly, then, I cannot be expected to defend every instance of hunting or even hunting generally, as it is actually practiced. If the result is that my defense applies to less than all of the actual hunting that goes on, that is acceptable and should not be surprising. The valuable point will still stand that those meat hunters who obtain their meat through morally defensible hunting are in a better position morally than consumers of industrially raised meat. Establishing that point is the main goal of this essay.

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To be clear, the objection under consideration claims that to defend eating hunted meat over eating farm-raised meat, I must establish that real-world hunting is morally superior to real-world farming, as both are actually practiced. That is not a reasonable demand, for it is not and should not be my aim to defend all real-world hunting, with all of its warts. My goal is to examine a certain type of hunting and compare it with real-world farming. Now certainly, if the type of hunting I am defending is so idealized that it comprises only an insignicant portion of the hunting that actually goes on, then that is a serious problem. So the relevant question is: How far from reality is the idealized picture of hunting that I have presented? The objection raises two main points. First, it claims that some hunted animals suffer and experience agonizing deaths. Second, it claims that hunting often negatively affects humans, by forcing non-hunters to curtail outdoor recreational activities and by injuring or killing both hunters and non-hunters. I shall address these objections in reverse order. There is no doubt that slob hunters exist. Many readers surely could relate rsthand encounters. Non-anecdotal evidence, however, tends to support the view that most hunters are law-abiding. For example, in 20022003 the Pennsylvania Game Commission successfully prosecuted 8,622 cases against hunters.48 Given that Pennsylvania hunters spent at least 8.6 million days aeld in the same period,49 this means that a violation that was successfully prosecuted occurred once in every one thousand hunter days aeld. Given that approximately ninety percent of hunters indicate that they would report other hunters they discovered breaking laws regulating hunting,50 this sort of data tends to show that hunters are generally law-abiding, which speaks against the slob hunter stereotype. Statistics on hunting accident rates (the vast majority of which are shootingrelated) relative to other forms of outdoor recreation mitigate the concern over shooting accidents. In the United States in 2002, there were approximately twenty million hunters and 850 total accidents, eighty-nine of which were fatal. Nonhunting bystanders were involved in just fteen of these accidents.51 In 2004, there were only 445 total accidents, forty-two of which were fatal.52 By way of comparison, in 2004 out of 40.3 million participants, 524,000 bicyclists were injured severely enough to require treatment in a hospital emergency department.53 Out of 9.5 million participants in horseback riding in 2002, nearly 71,000 required treatment.54 Thus, relative to some other common recreational activities, hunting is safe and does not present unreasonable danger either to participants or to bystanders.55 Turning to the rst point raised by this objection, it is indeed worrisome that some game animals are not killed quickly and suffer as a result. Although animal welfare is one of the main considerations that I have used to argue for the moral preferability of eating hunted-game meat over factory farm-raised meat, three points help to answer this otherwise very damaging objection. First, although the ideal of a one-shot kill is not always achieved, we must remember that the cited wounding statistics include wounding by hunters we should not defend morally. Presumably, the wounding rates for hunters I wish to

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defend, who do take due care to dispatch the hunted game quickly, will be at least somewhat lower than those cited. Surely, however, I must be prepared to defend some instances of hunting that result in a wounding loss to a game animal. Even a careful and skillful shooter will sometimes make a poor shot due to unexpected animal movement, wind gust, equipment or ammunition failure, or simple human error. This leads to the second point: as long as due care is taken to dispatch the game animal humanely and the hunter can reasonably expect the shot to be humane, even if the success rate is not one hundred percent, the due care and intention carry signicant moral weight. It is worth pointing out that in a recent study by sociologist Jan Dizard, all of the hunters he interviewed emphasized the importance of endeavoring for a one-shot kill, and many reported frequently passing up shots with which they were not comfortable.56 The literature cited in Section 2.4 tends to show that the same due care to ensure a humane death experience is frequently not taken in slaughterhouses. These differences between careful hunting practices and the practices of slaughterhouses contribute to mitigating the concern raised by non-one-shot kills. Finally, it is also important to remember that the death experience is just one component of animal welfare. As stressed in Section 1.1, it is the whole package of living, transportation (or hunting), and death experience that is better, on average, for game animals than for factory-farmed animals. Again, it would be easy to point out an individual case of a particular game animal whose death experience is much worse than that of a particular factory-farmed animal. It would also be easy to point out an individual case of a particular game animal whose whole package of living, being hunting, and experiencing death is worse than the whole package for a particular factory-farmed animal. The point still stands, however, that it is the whole package, on average, that is better for game animals than for factory-farmed animals. To sum up this section then, we considered whether the characterization of hunting presented at the outset is true to reality. The worry was that I had unfairly compared a sanitized representation of hunting with factory farming. I argued that I need not defend every instance of real-world hunting, but that the characterization of hunting presented at the start of this essay is not that far from reality. Further, I argued that even when considering more fully some of the negative consequences of hunting not originally canvassed, hunting is still morally preferable to raising livestock on a factory farm. Thus, the central claim of this paper still stands: consuming hunted-game meat is morally preferable to consuming industrially raised meat. In brief, I am defending hunting of a particular sort, that sort of hunting does go on, and eating meat from game that is hunted that way is morally preferable to eating factory-raised meat. 3.3 The Depravity of the Hunter One might grant that, from a moral viewpoint that factors in both humans and animals, eating hunted meat is better than eating factory farm-raised meat.

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Nevertheless, one might wonder if this thereby makes the hunter morally praiseworthy. Indeed, the contrary might be claimed that the hunter, by his very willingness to stalk and kill wild-game animals, reveals moral traits that, to say the least, are less than praiseworthy and not of the sort that we want to encourage in civil society. The willingness to inict pain on animals and treat them as mere objects to be used for our purposes shows that the hunter considers killing for fun to be acceptable recreation, as the Humane Society of the United States puts it.57 This kind of character can hardly be something we want to encourage in society, for this uncaring attitude of hunters of [k]illing for fun teaches callousness, disrespect for life, and the notion that might makes right.58 Since hunting for meat is the topic here, we can set aside the uncharitable identication of hunting with killing for fun as mere rhetorical ourish inessential to the objection.59 At root, the objection asks: Does the hunter not display a questionable moral character by his willingness to kill? I would argue that the non-hunting meat-eater who is content with blissful ignorance about the production of meat is actually in a worse position morally. For she likely causes more animal pain than the hunterindeed she causes cruelty in some casesyet has someone else do the dirty work for her. Her hands are cleaner only literally. Hunting and killing force the hunter to confront reality in the production of his food in a way similar to the way in which Henry David Thoreau wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life in retiring to live in the woods at Walden Pond.60 The hunter showsor is forced to geta real understanding of nature and of the source of his food by participating in the hunt, killing the game, confronting the dead animal, getting splashed with blood while removing its entrails, and dragging or carrying the animal from the hunting place. Watching a beautiful animal die from ones own shot and then gutting and transporting it arefor many huntersdecidedly unpleasant tasks. They are necessary parts, however, of the whole (rather enjoyable) experience of hunting for consumption. One gains an appreciation and knowledge of ones food by participating directly in this enterprise, which is unlike the appreciation the non-hunting meat-eater might get from a visit to the county fair. So, far from showing the hunters thirst for blood, a hunters willingness to kill the source of his food is worthy of respect rather than contempt. He moves much more deliberately through his moral practices than the non-hunting meat-eater who turns a blind eye to the facts about the production of factory farm-raised meat.

Conclusion Those for and those against eating meat ought to agree that consuming hunted meat is morally better than consuming most farm-raised meat, that is, meat raised on factory farms. Those who are not opposed to the consumption of meat ought not criticize hunters of meat, since hunters way of providing themselves with meat is better than the usual way. Those who are opposed to the consumption of

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meat also ought to realize that whatever the moral status of hunters is, consumers of industrially raised meat are in a worse position morally. To be sure, much farming and hunting, as they are actually practiced, fall short of the morally ideal versions of these practices. Yet as both are actually practiced, hunting for meat is morally preferable to raising animals industrially. As well, morally ideal versions of hunting and farming appear to be on morally equivalent ground. These conclusions follow on the basis of human and animal welfare. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 33rd Conference on Value Inquiry in April 2006. I am grateful to Eric Cave and other participants for discussion. Thanks go as well to three anonymous referees from this journal for critical feedback, to Lynne Dickson Bruckner for many conversations on the arguments herein, and to Dale Miller and Emily Nelson for initially prompting me to think carefully about hunted-game and farm-raised animals. Notes
1

For instance, John Alan Cohan (Is Hunting a Sport? The International Journal of Applied Philosophy 17 (2003): 291326) argues that hunting is morally wrong, but takes solace in our ability to go to the market to purchase meat, sh, and poultry (p. 317), without examining the moral status of doing so in comparison to the moral status of eating hunted meat. Other authors skirt the issue by presenting a faulty dilemma, for instance, by arguing that eating animals raised for slaughter is morally wrong, therefore, we should be vegetarians. For this claim, see Bart Gruzalski, Why Its Wrong to Eat Animals Raised and Slaughtered for Food, in Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, ed. Steve F. Sapontzis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 12437, at 128. Jordan Curnutt argues that hunting is wrong because it harms animals, but does not consider the question whether it might prevent more harm (to farm animals) than it causes (to game animals) ( Jordan Curnutt, How to Argue for and Against Sport Hunting, Journal of Social Philosophy 27 [1996]: 6589, 78ff.). Michael Pollan does consider this question and reaches some of the same conclusions reached here in The Omnivores Dilemma (New York: Penguin, 2006), his popular discussion of the sources of human food. 2 In the philosophical literature on hunting, authors frequently fail to dene what they mean by hunting. Thus, these several types of hunting are almost never distinguished. For some notable exceptions, see Curnutt, How to Argue; Roger Scruton, Ethics and Welfare: The Case of Hunting, Philosophy 77 (2002): 54364; and Charles List, On the Moral Distinctiveness of Sport Hunting, Environmental Ethics 26 (2004): 15569. 3 Other philosophers have been more ambitious in their attempts to defend or criticize hunting, broadly conceived and without much distinction among types of hunting. See, for example, List, Moral Distinctiveness; Margaret Van de Pitte, The Moral Basis for Public Policy Encouraging Sport Hunting, Journal of Social Philosophy 34 (2003): 25666; Theodore Vitali, The Ethics of Hunting: Killing as Life-Sustaining, Reason Papers 112 (1987): 3341; and Theodore Vitali, Sport Hunting: Moral or Immoral? Environmental Ethics 12 (1990): 6982. 4 This is a paraphrase of the Boone and Crockett Clubs denition (Fair Chase Statement, http:// www.boone-crockett.org/huntingEthics/ethics_fairchase.asp [accessed February 3, 2007]). They include ethical in their denition, but it would clearly beg the question of this paper to stipulate that the hunting in question is ethical. 5 See John Trout Jr., You Call This Hunting? Deer and Deer Hunting 27, no. 4 (2003): 11020; Brigid ODonoghue, Yes, We DO Call This Hunting! Deer and Deer Hunting 27, no. 8 (2004): 6467;

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and Editorial Staff, What Is Fair Chase: An In-Depth Look at What Fair Chase Really Means to Hunters, Hunting Illustrated, 4, no. 1 (2004): 6475. See also Vitali, Ethics, 39; and Jim Posewitz, Beyond Fair Chase: The Ethic and Tradition of Hunting (Guilford, CT: Falcon, 1994), 57ff. 6 The biological carrying capacity of a game species in a geographic area is the population density of the game animal that can be sustained by the habitat. The biological carrying capacity may be greater than the social carrying capacity, the density that society is willing to tolerate. 7 Note that we are only considering hunting wild-game animals, as opposed to animals that have been raised on game farms and released into the wild to be hunted. Since the aim is to compare the moral status of consuming hunted meat as opposed to farm-raised meat, we must exclude animals that are both farm-raised and hunted, at least in this initial inquiry. 8 Marc Kaufman, In Pig Farming, Growing Concern; Raising Sows in Crates Is Questioned, The Washington Post, June 18, 2001. See also Bernard E. Rollin, Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995), chap. 3, esp. 7591. 9 Apparently this attempt is misguided. See T. L. Terosky et al., Effects of Individual Housing Design and Size on Special-Fed Holstein Veal Calf Growth Performance, Hematology, and Carcass Characteristics, Journal of Animal Science 75 (1997): 16971703. In this study, stall, pen design, and width did not affect the growth, hematology, carcass weight, or muscle color (grade) of special-fed veal calves (p. 1701). 10 David Fraser, Joy Mench, and Suzanne Millman, Farm Animals and Their Welfare in 2000, in The State of the Animals 2001, ed. Deborah Salem and Andrew Rowan (Washington, D.C.: Humane Society Press, 2001), 94. 11 T. G. Knowles and L. J. Wilkins, The Problem of Broken Bones During the Handling of Laying HensA Review, Poultry Science 77 (1998): 17981802. 12 Joe Vansickle, Quality Assurance Program Launched, National Hog Farmer, February 15, 2002. These injuries and deaths may be due to unnatural selection for rapid growth and leanness, which has led to more fragile pigs more likely to be injured or die during transport. See Temple Grandin, Progress in Livestock Handling and Slaughter Techniques in the United States, 19702000, in The State of the Animals 2001, ed. Deborah Salem and Andrew Rowan (Washington, D.C.: Humane Society Press, 2001), 108. 13 Joby Warrick, They Die Piece by Piece; In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost, The Washington Post, April 10, 2001. 14 Ibid. 15 To be clear, this abuse is not established by the foregoing smattering of examples. The broader philosophical and scientic literatures and the media accounts establish the abuse. For a very good overview of practices in the U.S. livestock production, see Rollin, Farm Animal Welfare. Chapter 3 of Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: New York Review of Books, 1990) covers much of the same ground. 16 For instance, see A. B. Lawrence et al., The Effect of Environment on Behaviour, Plasma Cortisol, and Prolactin in Parturient Sows, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 39 (1994): 31330. 17 As an anonymous referee points out, advocates of hunting sometimes argue that life in the wild is so nasty, brutish, and short that shortening it further is a kindness. Further, and contrary to what I claim in the text, one might argue that it is impossible to establish whether life in the wild is generally better than life on the factory farm or generally worse, since so much depends on factors such as climate, ecosystem, and species mix. Thus, the argument I give in the text is inconclusive. To this I respond with the following dilemmatic argument: either life in the wild is better than life on the factory farm, or it is worse. If it is better, then my argument in favor of hunting on the basis of animal welfare succeeds: Hunting reduces demand for factory-farmed animals, so fewer animals are produced and live in those conditions, which increases average animal welfare. If life in the wild is worse, then hunting can still be defended on the basis of animal welfare, because hunters kill wild animals, which mercifully prevents their further suffering. So whether life in the wild is better or worse than life on the factory farm, hunting can be defended on the basis of animal welfare.

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See, for example, the references in the notes above as well as Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997). 19 See note 18. 20 That is, the biological carrying capacity of the habitat can be exceeded. 21 Michael R. Conover et al., Review of Human Injuries, Illnesses, and Economic Losses Caused by Wildlife in the United States, Wildlife Society Bulletin 23, no. 3 (1995): 40714, at 409. 22 Ibid., 411. 23 Ibid., 412. 24 That is, the social carrying capacity of the species has been exceeded. 25 Thanks to an anonymous referee for this point. 26 U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, 23. 27 Animal Use Issues Committee, Economic Importance of Hunting in America (Washington, D.C.: International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, 2002), 8. 28 Humane Society of the United States, Learn the Facts about Hunting, http://www.hsus.org/ wildlife/issues_facing_wildlife/hunting/learn_the_facts_about_hunting.html (accessed February 3, 2007). 29 Ibid. 30 Extended critical discussions of the value of hunting can be found in List, Moral Distinctiveness; John A. Pauley, The Value of Hunting, The Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (2003): 23344; Jan E. Dizard, Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the Contested Meaning of Nature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), esp. chap. 4; James A. Tantillo, Sport Hunting, Eudaimonia, and Tragic Wisdom, Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8 (2001): 10112; and Jon Jensen, The Virtues of Hunting, Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8 (2001): 11324. 31 For the praxis/poeisis distinction, see Nichomachean Ethics 1094a47 and 1140a124. For some relevant parts of Nichomachean Ethics on eudaimonia, see bk. I, chaps. 45, 7. 32 This point is frequently discussed in the literature. See, for example, List, Moral Distinctiveness, 16163 and Pauley, Value, 235. 33 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), sec. 65. 34 Ibid., 426. 35 See Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, chap. 2. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 85. Eisnitz approach is that of an investigative journalist, and her book is largely a transcription of interviews with slaughterhouse workers and others. These anecdotes, however, are corroborated by further interviews and, more importantly, statistical data reported in Eric Schlossers Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York: Harper Collins, 2002). 38 See Incidence Rates of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by Industry and Case Types, 2004, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, November 2005 and Incidence Rates of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by Industry and Case Types, 2003, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, December 2004. The lower rates of injury and illness in poultry slaughtering can be attributed to the more thorough mechanization of the poultry slaughtering process, due to greater uniformity in chicken size. On this point, see Schlosser, Fast Food, 17273. 39 Heres the Beef: Underreporting of Injuries, OSHAs Policy of Exempting Companies from Programmed Inspections Based on Injury Record, and Unsafe Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry, Forty-Second Report by the Committee on Government Operations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofce, 1988), H. Rep. No. 542, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. 40 The one hundred percent estimate comes from an interview with Mike Coan, then corporate safety director of ConAgra Red Meat for James M. Burcke, 1994 Risk Manager of the Year: Meatpackers Losses Trimmed Down to Size, Business Insurance, April 18, 1994; the eighty percent gure

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comes from an interview with Brett Fox, director of industry affairs and media relations, ConAgra Beef Company, for Schlossers Fast Food, see 325. 41 One might be tempted to take the next step: Would it not be even more correct morally to stop eating meat altogether? This question takes us well outside the focus of this paper, which is the morality of eating hunted meat in comparison to factory-farmed meat. The brief answer is that it does not follow on the considerations presented here that vegetarianism is morally preferable to eating hunted meat. As argued in the text, hunting not only prevents negative consequences of factory farming, but it also produces positive consequences for humans and animals, which would be lost with vegetarianism. Vegetarianism would prevent the negative consequences of hunting and produce its own positive and negative consequences. All of this would have to be considered in comparing hunting with the option of eating no meat. One may still wonder, however, what is morally superior: the hunting of game or the eating of the meat produced from hunting? Some of my arguments tend to support the hunting, but not necessarily the eating. I have made it clear from the outset, however, that it is hunting for meat that is at issue. As well, eating hunted meat (instead of letting it rot or going to the trouble to dispose of it, for instance) increases human welfare by providing nutrition and gustatory pleasure. So eating the meat once the animal is killed adds to human welfare. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for these questions and the tools for both replies. 42 In formulating such a standard, we would presumably start with some of the practices of farmers whose livestock is certied organic or certied humane. (The latter is a relatively new certication regulated by a private organization, Humane Farm Animal Care.) Considering the standards for these certications is beyond the scope of this paper. Let it sufce to say that these and other standards are commendable and vast improvements over the status quo of factory farms, but still fall short of morally ideal treatment of livestock. 43 See the work of Tom Regan, beginning with The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1983). 44 Wendy J. Krueger, Aspects of Wounding of White-Tailed Deer by Bowhunters (masters thesis, West Virginia University, 1995), 43. 45 Spencer Vaa, Reducing Wounding Losses, South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks, http://www.sdgfp.info/Wildlife/hunting/waterfowl/WoundingLosses.htm (accessed February 3, 2007). 46 As a reviewer points out, one cause of wounding losses may be the use of the more primitive and less lethal weapons mentioned in Section 2.3, which are more difcult to use effectively. 47 Thanks to Eric Cave and an anonymous referee for the combination of points here. 48 Pennsylvania Game Commission, 20022003 Commission Annual Report (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Game Commission, 2003). 49 Christopher Rosenberry, Game Take Survey (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Game Commission, 2003). This is a survey of small game hunters. To the days aeld for small game hunters, I added one day aeld for every licensed big game hunter (including deer), an extremely conservative estimate. 50 This statistic is not from a scientic study, but from an online poll by a popular publication. See 2003 National Hunting Survey, Field and Stream, http://www.eldandstream.com/eldstream/ hunting/article/0,13199,458217,00.html (accessed February 3, 2007). 51 Incident ReportNon-hunting Victims (press release), International Hunter Education Association, December 10, 2005, http://www.ihea.com/documents/Incident_PSA.pdf (accessed June 2, 2006). See also 2002 Hunter Incident Summary, Hunter Incident Clearinghouse, International Hunter Education Association, http://www.ihea.com/documents/ihea2002.pdf (accessed February 3, 2007). 52 2004 Hunter Incident Summary, Hunter Incident Clearinghouse, International Hunter Education Association, http://www.ihea.com/documents/2004_report.pdf (accessed February 3, 2007). 53 National Safety Council, Injury Facts, 20052006 Edition (Itasca, IL: National Safety Council, 2006), 130. 54 National Safety Council, Injury Facts, 2004 Edition (Itasca, IL: National Safety Council, 2004), 130.

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Sociologist Jan Dizard has a useful discussion of the public image that hunters portray and how hunters are partially to blame for what he claims is the non-hunting publics irrational fear of hunting. See his aptly titled chapter Bad Apples and Human Frailty, in Jan Dizard, Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 14569. 56 Dizard, Mortal Stakes, 126, 12942. 57 Humane Society, Facts. 58 Ibid. 59 This conation is common, not just among anti-hunting groups that tend to be less charitable in their interpretation of hunters actions, but in the philosophical literature as well. For example, Cohan claims that hunters take pleasure in killing (Hunting a Sport? 313) and that the purpose of hunting is to kill animals for pleasure (ibid., 317). Van de Pitte also equates sport hunting with killing animals for sport (Moral Basis, 263). List, Moral Distinctiveness, 15759, defends the view that killing is not the goal or dening purpose of hunting. Cultural anthropologist Marc Boglioli recently studied rural Vermont hunters and their attitudes. Of the fty hunters he interviewed formally, only two claimed to enjoy killing deer and many others found killing disturbing or unsettling; see Marc A. Bogioli, A Matter of Life and Death: A Cultural Analysis of Hunting in Rural Vermont. PhD diss., University of WisconsinMadison, 2004, 31, 11217 (on killing for fun) and 9798 (on being disturbed by killing). Dizard, Mortal Stakes, 13435, 138 reports similar ndings. 60 Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 2. Thoreau has mixed views on hunting, so I do not mean to co-opt him. While he advocates it for boys, apparently as part of their environmental education and for fostering their connection with nature, he renounced it for himself in adulthood. For a nice discussion of Thoreaus views on hunting, see Jensen, Virtues, 11617.