Father Andrew need to hear from you....
My letter has already been sent.
Rick
My letter has already been sent.
Rick
My opinion Andrew M. Greeley : Hunting's in genes, but it's hardly sport
Printed in the Arizona Daily Star
My opinion Andrew M. Greeley
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.23.2006
http://www.azstarnet.com/opinion/117125
I have a hard time understanding that hunting and fishing are sports. Is it
not in the nature of sport that the playing field be level?
One does not match a junior-high school team with the Detroit Pistons, nor a
third-grade football team with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Is it fair, sporting that is, to match a lake trout with a human equipped
with all the latest gadgets including sonar and specially designed bait? Or
to match a small bird with a big human carrying a specially made shot gun?
Is it fair to match a doe, graceful and attractive but stupid creature that
she is, against a large and overweight human with a high-caliber rifle or
even a bull rhino, dangerous but half-blind creature that he is, against a
human with an even higher-caliber rifle?
You tell me.
Hunting and fishing as a livelihood, to feed oneself or one's family or
one's customers, makes sense. But for the fun of it?
It seems to me that it is a case of one of God's smarter and/or bigger
creatures killing one of his less intelligent and/or smaller creatures for
the pure joy of killing. All right, call it killing if you want, but don't
call it sport.
Any more than it is sport for a little girl to stamp out a long line of ants
or a little boy to pull the wings off flies.
A fishermen holds up his catch to be admired and photographed; he is eager
to tell you "what a great fight he put up." This praise means very little to
the fish either way, but clearly means a lot to the fisher.
Or a hunter boasts of killing an elk with an impressive display of antlers.
But he did not have to wrestle with those antlers, nor did the black bear
have a sporting chance to knock the rifle away from his killer.
One might argue that the male members of the species are selected in the
evolutionary process for a propensity to kill animals so that they might
feed and protect their spouse and children.
The love of the hunt may be genetically programmed into men, even though
killing lesser creatures is no longer necessary, in most circumstances, for
family protection.
Better that they kill animals than other human beings. A man has to respond
to the demands of testosterone some way or another.
Maybe human males are less likely to engage in drunken barroom brawls if
earlier in the day they knocked off a covey of birds or a family of deer or
triumphed over a fighting muskie.
Hunting and fishing may well be safety valves for male rage - else why are
both enterprises praised as though they were sacred behavior? Maybe not so
long ago they were.
But civilized behavior today? Gimme a break!
I'm not a vegetarian, though my favorite food is pasta. Humans are
omnivorous creatures, because they had to be at one time to survive. But are
we programmed to be killers even when we do not need the food; is it in our
genes or our bones to kill something, anything just because we can?
Hunters want to cull the deer herds in our forest preserves. Would it not be
better - and safer - if we brought in the timber wolves for that task?
Killing inferior creatures as a sport is absurd. Yet the toll of sportsmen
killed by other sportsmen every year shows just how eager the men with guns
are to pull the trigger.
The Rev. Andrew M. Greeley, a Catholic priest, teaches at the University of
Chicago and the University of Arizona. Contact him at [email protected]
