I was wondering something, what is /out/'s opinion on trapping

For survival, sure. Any sort of hunting for fun is kinda fucked up IMO.

>>752358
if you're only use the fur/skins and not the meat then you aren't doing all you reasonably can with what you kill
it's not fair to say you must use every piece of the animal but you can eat the meat or give it to others or feed pets there's no good reason to not take the meat

At this point if you're not spending every single free moment dealing with traps you're not making any money. Even then, you're still probably not making any money. Fur prices aren't worth anything right now. I stopped a few years ago. The amount of money I was making wasn't worth the effort. No problem with it. I don't even care if people do it recreationally. If you're taking out predatory animals I'm grateful. Pheasant and rabbit populations are a fraction of what they were when I was a kid. Michigan just made coyote hunting a year round thing. Hopefully that brings the numbers up.

Op here, when I was on the trap line we had a dog sled so we used the reject animals like raccoon, martin etc as dog food and beavers and such we ate. Just wanted to know your thoughts.

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I trap for fur/meat. With the prices down Im just trapping beaver for meat. But it's my dream to longline, but the prices don't allow it. Hard to find a reason to go set 300 traps and quit my jobonly to end up making minimum wage.

>>752358
Trapping is cruel and causes animals to suffer.

Obviously foothold traps cause undue stress and suffering, but also traps designed to kill sometimes don't work properly or a larger animal than intended gets stuck in it.

Since you can't give the animal a quick and clean death, it's a morally wrong practice.

>>754686
Very rarely does death come quick in the wild. Animals don't just die of old age. They are torn apart by wolves, starve to death, etc. before that can happen. An animal that gets caught in a foothold trap (the modern ones don't break the animal's leg) and gets shot 24 hours later will experience a more painless death than the large majority of wild animals.

>>754704
holy contradictionary statement.
>rarely does death come quickly
>torn apart by wolves

>>754709
It isn't, unless you're talking about a rabbit, maybe. Wolves hunt larger prey by following it and tearing chunks of flesh off when they can until it succumbs to blood loss and exhaustion. It'd be an extremely painful way to die.

>>754733
>extremely painful

You're a big deer

>>754704
Nature being cruel does not make it morally acceptable to impose cruelty yourself.

I really wonder if people who do this lost some part of their empathy. It's really worrisome that people can justify to themselves that it's perfectly fine and dandy torturing animals like this routinely.

>>754686
>>754749
>muh cruelty
>muh morals
Nature is very cruel. A cat will toy with a bird or mouse for a while before actually killing it and then half the time dont even eat it and just leave it.
inb4
>THATS JUST THEIR NATURE HUMANS KNOW BETTER
Humans are a hunter/gatherer species so wouldn't it be fair to say hunting is in our nature?

>appeal to nature: the post

We now have the science to know that animals really suffer in traps and technology to get our food and resources by means that minimize suffering. It's time to join civilization, hunter/gatherer.

>>754760
>wouldn't it be fair to say hunting is in our nature?
You can say that
And you can feel respect, gratitude and empathy for the animal that you are killing to get it's body.
So you can make it your goal to make it as fast and painless as possible.

It's also human nature to kill one another
Should I come over and kill you in a slow and cruel way?
It's nature, right?

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>>752358
It's an ugly business, but so is farming. I wouldn't do it for fun, but fur is a wonderful material and I think a sustainable trapping for fur and/or meat is ethical.

>>752373
There are good reasons we don't eat predators. The higher up the food chain something is, the more nasty stuff accumulates in its tissues. Other animals, it's a bit up in the air whether it really matters if you eat them so long as the harvest is sustainable.

>>754686
All life begets suffering. If you think that cessation of suffering is the highest good, then get busy nuking the entire planet. If that's distasteful to you, then reconsider your values.

>>754749
What's the line between myself and "nature"? If I want fur coat, or to eat some wascally wabbits, what's the point of not just snagging some critters for my purposes?

>I really wonder if people who do this lost some part of their empathy. It's really worrisome that people can justify to themselves that it's perfectly fine and dandy torturing animals like this routinely.
Holy high horse, Batman. Some people have value systems different from yours. This doesn't make them sociopaths. People "torture animals" to get their carcasses for one purpose or another.

>>754766
>industrialization is morally superior to getting your hands dirty
wew lad

>>754767
>So you can make it your goal to make it as fast and painless as possible
Have fun shooting industrial numbers of furbearers. People don't just trap out of orneriness or sloth.

>It's also human nature to kill one another
Intraspecific violence pretty much only occurs when there are high stakes because it's both risky and potentially damaging to the fitness of one's own genetic material. Trapping is done when there are high stakes (economic) and is basically safe, so not the same thing at all.

>>754778
>If you think that cessation of suffering is the highest good, then get busy nuking the entire planet.

What's distasteful to me is propagating animal suffering. I'm sorry you don't think that minimizing pain and suffering is something we should strive for.

>>754783
I happen to think that creating a set of values and an environment in which humans can best realize their potential and live somewhat fulfilling and aesthetically pleasing lives is the highest good and a goal we should strive for. All other goals are secondary to that and should probably contribute to it. If trapping is sustainable and provides a source of aesthetic value to humans, then I don't see how it's a problem.

Please explain how minimizing pain felt by wild animals is either a higher or synergistic goal to that one.

>>754749
If you talked to most trappers about torturing animals, they'd have no idea what you're talking about. They have no malicious intent whatsoever. They respect animals a great deal, much more so than the average person who picks up beef mindlessly at the grocery store. It's just that for people who grow up living that sort of lifestyle, there is simply a very fine line between humans and animals.

I get where you're coming from a bit because I didn't grow up around hunting or trapping for the most part. My main exposure to animals were my pets, and that has a permanent psychological effect on you no matter how much philosophizing you do on what is or isn't moral. I still feel bad for animals I trap because I see my dog in the coyote or my ferret in the weasel. I can't help it. But for guys who have been doing it their whole lives, their first exposure to animals were wild ones, and that makes a huge difference. For the most part, domestic animals look to humans for help. Wild animals see humans as a threat, and so for most trappers or hunters raised around it, that personal connection to animals doesn't exist. They don't have empathy for them because most of the animals they grew up around never showed empathy for them.

>>754791
I don't think causing undue emotional and physical pain for aesthetic pleasure is just at all.

I think living harmoniously with nature is a paramount goal to the human experience, and part of that is realizing that we share the earth with other beings called animals that can feel just as much pain as we do.

>>754792
It's not too late to realize that trapping is wrong and to discontinue.

>>754799
>harmony with nature
I agree. I just don't see how not killing wild animals contributes to that when very nearly all of those animals die of painful causes anyway. Starvation, disease and predation are pretty much the only ways they go out, and often enough it's one of those leading to another.

Literally everything we do destroys some life. Building, farming, pest control. There is no hands-off harmony, only sustainability.

>>754809
Because sustainability isn't the end all, be all. Fur-farms where animals are kept in tiny cages and killed by anal electrocution are also sustainable, but horribly cruel.

I think part of harmony means respect and empathy in addition to sustainability. Yes, we do destroy life, and it is pretty much necessary for progress, but we dutifully can and do strive to reduce suffering. That includes ethical killing of animals, whether it's in laboratories, in farms or wild game animals.

Animals don't know any better, so they are cruel to each other, but since we've unlocked the ability to realize the consequences of our actions, we should not cause cruelty.

>>754821
Concentrated farming is pretty much always a bigger toll on the environment than hunting or trapping at sustainable rates, so I'd prefer the trapping to the farm for that reason.

>we've unlocked the ability to realize the consequences of our actions
What are those consequences, in the context of trapping? Do you think animals don't realize that their prey would rather not die?

>dutifully
Duty to what? Trapping animals doesn't cause harm to humans in any way I can think of, and we don't have pacts with animals.

>I think part of harmony means respect and empathy in addition to sustainability
That's an entirely aesthetic value though. All someone has to say to justify violating that is that they have a different aesthetic value.

>>754829
> All someone has to say to justify violating that is that they have a different aesthetic value.

Sure, but if you purposely choose to kill animals in a painful way, you can't say you respect animals. You value disrespecting and disregarding their life.

Why do you think there is legislation restricting jawed leg-hold traps and neck snares? Society is progressing towards respecting the life of animals.

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>>754849
>You value disrespecting and disregarding their life.
No, trappers (I don't do it myself) value the carcasses more than they value the suffering. For someone who prides themselves on empathy with animals you're sure having a hard time understanding people.

>Why do you think there is legislation restricting jawed leg-hold traps and neck snares?
You really, really don't want to go using legislation as your moral authority.

>Society is progressing towards respecting the life of animals.
For what purpose? Politicians kow-tow to fools all the time.

If everyone else jumps off a bridge, does that mean it's a good idea?

I personally go out of my way to avoid causing suffering to animals I deal with, but that's just an aesthetic value, and I'm not arrogant enough to claim it's a universal good.

>>754686
I don't really wish to argue about if its humane or not because it doesn't make the animal suffer. I watched a beaver get hit by my old 330's guess what happened? It got its back snapped and it locked up and it died in under 20 seconds. Watched another one which yes it did take longer around 45 seconds but it drowned to death. Thats faster then a deer dying by a rifle getting shot in the heart.

>>754749
I do agree yes you shouldn't inflect unneeded pain to a animal but what I do isn't nearly as bad as what a wolf will do to a moose. I saw a moose get killed by a wolf and they tore the animals stomach out and let it bleed to death. It suffered for 3 hours and I came along and shot it. Took the meat as it wasn't going to go to waste.

>>754778
someone who agrees. I never over trapped on average where I lived (alot of beaver) I would take ~15 or so beaver out of the lake but the dams between them all they had upwards to 100 beaver. meaning I took around 15% per year.

>>754863
Why not just shoot it and slink away unseen if you're going to get involved at all? Animals that have been wounded like that are chock-full of hormones and such that foul the meat.

It's not like the wolves were going to let it rot.

I took the moose home for supper (all of it expect for the stomach area as they had chewed at it when they were taking it down also a couple of other spots) I shot it because the thing wasn't going down without a fight when they were attacking it (it lasted for a good hour) and when they finally got it down to the ground they were tearing out its guts so I shot it in the head from a good distance missing about 4 times. Didn't let it go to waste. What about the hormone part? I don't understand what you are saying sorry.

>>754873
I'm saying I would expect the meat to not be very good to eat because wounded and stressed animals dump a lot of strong-tasting stress hormones and endorphins into their tissues, which also toughen the meat.

I'm saying the meat wouldn't go to waste anyway because the wolves would eat it later.

>>754876
without me sound insane it tasted very good it was a little bit more tough then normal but tasted fine and was good. (made alot in jerky and alot into stews as I LOVE ME SOME STEWS!) Nothing went to waste expect maybe 2 to 3 pounds worth as I was afraid of diseases in my meat by their teeth.

What projects are you guys working on to get ready for season?

>>754760
>Nature
>A cat
Choose one
We bred cats to their current state.
We wanted them to keep killing and killing to protect our stored grain from rodents, so we used artificial selection to create an animal that would

>>755005
I dunno. Lions will torture and kill hyenas for fun and not eat them. People should keep their cats inside, but that behavior isn't unique to humans and their pets.