>>1815389>How do you feel about hunting?I love it.
>>What is ethical hunting to you?Hunting fair chase and obeying the law. It also means being a good ambassador for the activity.
>Do you consider high fence hunting unethical?This is going to be a long one.
Personally, I'm not a fan of high fence shoots/canned shoots at all. I use the phrase, "canned shoots" very deliberately; shooting an animal in what is essentially an oversized pen is, IMO, simply not hunting. This is especially true when the animal in question is one that is outside of its natural habitat/range, as is the case with many exotic game farms in the USA. They also give hunters and hunting a bad name in the public eye and gives the anti-hunting propagandists ammunition. Even though they (anti-hunters) may not have fact-based arguments, they can use things like canned shoots to pull at the heartstrings of many easily-influenced people in the public sphere.
Having said that, there are some clear benefits to having these operations in place. Take the example of the scimitar-horned oryx as an example. It hasn't been sighted in the wild since 1988, and it has been declared extinct in the wild in its native range (North Africa) since 2000. At the same time, they are thriving on private game ranches in the US, with a population of well over 11,000 in Texas. It’s the same principle that governs conservation all over the world: giving wildlife value. People have an incentive to look after the animals and grow their populations. Because of these game ranches, the scimitar-horned oryx may one day have the opportunity to return to its native range. Without them, the species may have been doomed to extinction. I still prefer other hunting-oriented conservation methods (e.g. North American model, or community-based conservation as is the case in countries such as Namibia and Zimbabwe), but it is hard to deny that these game farms have some benefit.
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