this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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Does anyone find it a little psychopathic that there are people who enjoy killing animals?
I'll say this first, because I know this is a whopper of a comment from me, but it's stuff you might not encounter otherwise: your perspective matters in this thread, and overall. I deeply understand the place your comment comes from, for real. We need people like you, and people like you have caused me several times in my life to examine what I'm doing and change my behavior. I will not call you extreme, because, honestly, it is not, and I will make every effort to engage in good faith, with you and others. I expect the same in return though.
I know a lot of hunters and do some hunting myself. In my area, hunting is an old tradition and, though I feel it's on the decline, everyone knows someone who hunts, and (if they eat meat) has eaten wild deer or turkey or fish that's been harvested locally.
"Enjoyment" over killing animals is something I've never heard expressed by any hunter. If someone did (and I can only speak for myself and my community) they would be treated with immense suspicion and shunned. If I can be blunt and frank, it is a shallow and ignorant take on the activity. I'm not trying to put you down by saying that, but it is true. I would encourage further examination of what you think you know of this topic. I can't force it though. You retain the sovereign right to remain ignorant, it's fine, for real, but that will cause people like me to disengage and we'll go our separate ways. You will have more success advancing your view if you choose to learn more, though. But again, I get it, that is the more challenging route and I wouldn't blame you one bit for choosing not to. No harm, no foul, for real.
That actually may be the one part of hunting that we don't enjoy.
I enjoy being in the woods.
I enjoy hiking into the woods while it's dark, and witnessing the changes as the sun comes up and the animals awake.
I enjoy the exercise aspect, and also nerding out over gear.
I experience satisfaction over being able to feed myself and people I care about in this way. This is related to the closeness to this food, being able to close that loop myself without any help from a middleman or needing to ship bananas 3000 miles and what have you. Knowing and participating first hand in the entire process of getting that to the plate satisfies the "sustainable foodie" part of my brain. There is also connection to the land on which you live, which is hard to explain and must be experienced.
The actual killing of the animal produces complicated emotions. "Enjoyment" isn't one of them. It's also .001% of the process. Regardless, I go to tremendous lengths to ensure that the process goes as quickly, smoothly, and painlessly as possible, and other hunters I know also do this. This is heavily pushed. Ideally, when that moment comes, the animal does not detect you at all and it happens so quickly they do not even clock what happened. They experience no suffering or even discomfort, that is the goal, and that is what modern, humane hunting is. It's many times more humane than anything that happens every day in nature. Mistakes unfortunately do happen sometimes, that is an unfortunate reality, so we must plan for that too, have backup plans and backups for the backups, and the tools to do so. This activity requires a certain level of maturity and thought which is not for everyone.
In my state, hunting regulations are informed by the science of wildlife biologists, and limits and rules are designed to enhance the animal populations they apply to. All healthy, reasonable people who spend time in the woods love wildlife on a very deep level, and we all do what we can to protect that natural resource, so they are there for generations to come, hunter or not. It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes this includes population control. Bag limits and dates change year to year, and we do our best to follow the rules, keep up with new information, and understand the consequences of everything we do, the tools we use, every decision. The ethical modern hunter is a partner to the conservationist and the wildlife biologist, and is an important part (but not the only part) of keeping wild ecosystems alive and in balance, in spite of humanity.
This perspective is likely different from your own - I'm well aware of that. Hopefully you can take something from it. Hunters are not all elmer fudd. Those types do exist, and we hate it, because they give us a bad name. There are thousands more people like me, but you won't hear about us. Doing things the right way is relatively uninteresting.
You may have seen those images of the mountains of buffalo skulls made by white colonial settlers as they raped and killed their way through the West. That is also not hunting - not as I know it, not as even my grandfather knew it. It is barbarism in its purest form, basically genocidal and psychopathic, disgusting, a black mark in history, and the American buffalo is still struggling to this day because of these horrendous acts that only humans are capable of at scale.
A more uplifting story I would encourage anyone to look into is that of the Wild Turkey in America, and how they were brought back from the brink, thanks to the cooperation and ingenuity of wildlife biologists in most of the 50 states. That one was mostly due to habitat loss rather than overhunting. (A surprising number of people don't know this, but nearly the entire Eastern half of the US's forests (like 90%+) have been subject to deforestation at least twice during our history, for industry. You can find pictures of the denuded landscapes - places that are now protected, healthy forests - and it is distressing.) Anyway, the wild turkey program was so successful, hunting is now part of that story.
https://www.audubon.org/new-york/news/how-wild-turkeys-made-49-state-comeback
What a great explanation, thank you for taking the time to write it. I’m not the OP, but…
I’m involved every year in a large charity auction/party which includes the Dept of Natural Resources, lots of hunting guns, and trips to go hunting in different areas. As a basic bitch treehugger, I personally have no desire to hunt. But I definitely understand those who do. At the end of the day, treehuggers and responsible hunters want the same thing, and hunting is a valuable tool in maintaining an ecosystem’s balance. I’m glad I don’t have to do it, but if they want to that’s cool. I’ll also gladly take their venison jerky when offered.
You seem to have never met the type "German pensioner with a hunting license". It appears most of them are sadistic fucks who get drunk in their watchtowers and then blast away.
Not to confuse with legitimate forest keepers / rangers.
For everything Europe does 10x better than us, conservation of wilderness doesn't seem terribly high on the list. I know it's a mixed bag, attitudes are bound to vary, and there must be efforts, but it seems for the few countries I've visited the opportunity has come and gone. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Conservation is one of just a few unifying issues for everyone in the States, regardless of political persuasion. It's a good litmus test for identifying the true psychos vs those who are just ignorant or misled, and also one of the few good things we actually have license to brag about as a country. We've done reasonably well for a very long time.
Now, though, the game has changed, and the forest service along with everything else is being gutted. I believe most won't stand for it. It will be interesting as summer is starting, when the suburbanites can't get their usual camp sites.
I find it a lot psychopathic. I'd kill to feed my children but I would never enjoy it.
I think anyone that enjoys eating meat should have to kill the animal the meat comes from atleast once in their life.
It's seems psychopathic to never think about the animal their meat used to be or the life they lived before they were your food.
I've killed my own chickens for meat. I cared for them since they hatched and made sure they had a great life. Killing them was not fun, but I made sure to do it with as little suffering as possible.
I just saw the last meal episode with Alton Brown, he had a bit where he echoed pretty much exactly this. He went to work as a lamb slaughterer for 3 days, and hasn't eaten any lamb since until that last meal episode, and he also says lamb is the best meat in the world.
I enjoy eating meat,
I could also enjoy the natural balance of having to kill my own food rather then relying on the industrial grinder.
I could definitely enjoy the thrill and sport of the hunt.
I could never enjoy killing an animal,
trying to make it as quick and painless is an essential part of hunting.
Luring a deer with frozen corn and then sledgehammer to the head is a psychotic and has nothing to do with hunting for food unless your actually starving and there is no other way.
Roofing hammer is probably as close to the bolt guns they in slaughter houses use to kill cows as painlessly as possible.
They are pointy and would go right into the brain, not butch like a sledge hammer at all.
However wheee I live it’s illegal to hunt deer with bait. So oddly, giving them a last meal before death is illegal.
Also we have a massive deer overpopulation and it’s killing off Moose because of the spread of ticks. We really need more coyotes and wolves, and less warm winters, but the fucking Republicans won’t let us fix those things.
So what happened to trying to make it as quick and painless is an essential part of hunting.?
Apparently the kind of hammer used would be a quick…
It feels to me like there are cleaner, more efficient way to kill for food but i guess its plausible that this really was the best way?
So your gut tells you the killing part is a problem
A melancholic reality, the act of life is inherently destructive, not really a problem in a technical sense.
"I've tried literally nothing and there's nothing left to try"
It's not a reality, it's a choice.
Trying to reach what goal?
“Life inherently is a destructive action”
What i mean to say with that is not that life (or eating meat) is immoral, but that the result of simply living is destruction to nature and other life is a normal part of the cyclus.. Its way more then just animals, its also the plants, the air you consume, the ant that happens to end under the leg of your chair…
The only way any being could ever to get a “neutral footprint” is to never get born to begin with.
I am perfectly happy with my meat consumption, but i do wish it was normal in my society to be more personally involved in what the natural costs is of what we have on our plates.
Sure. If you assign a zero value to consciousness, what you say makes sense.
I, personally, value consciousness very highly. Call it bias, but I think consciousness is worth more than the sum of its parts.
You lost me on assuming i don’t value consciousness but i read that you agree that is moral to live even knowing that doing so is an act of destruction?
Then i think we are in agreement?
I disagree that eating plants is destruction in any way that requires a moral valuation. Destroying a consciousness is morally problematic. But shuffling around nonconscious energy and matter into various states isn't a moral issue.
I guess you can call eating plants "destroying" if you like. Just like I can say I murdered iron ore to forge it into a hammer. But both of those are just dramatic phrasing. if consciousness isn't involved then morality isn't either.
Its not just eating plants i am talking about but the grand total of destruction.
Every breath of air you take, every sip of water, every footprint in the dirt. It is impossible for any being, herbivorous or not to live with no ecological cost. Every fart is methane. Your housing takes space other life could claim. Your body blocks light to reach the fungal spores behind you and your lungs convert oxygen to co2 as we speak.
My philosophy is to personally measure the cost where i am aware, lower it where i can but accept that there will always be a cost. Enjoy life regardless so that costs is not wasted.
Were speaking on completely spiritual different levels it seems. I am not religious but to me system of nature itself is a bigger consciousness with other life (like us) just sub parts of it, harming another being equals harming myself. Not wrong on itself but an important part of what makes life what it is.
The keyword is balance and awareness. Life requires destruction to persist and continue but to much destruction and it seizes to be also.
You are part of that ecology and that's ok.
You're doing your job. You breathe the air. That creates co2 for the plants to eat.
But let's cut to the heart of it. What is the value of the ecology If not it's ability to support consciousness? Do you think the universe, in all its chaos and meaningless motion, has some balance that has value?
I think the universe itself is the value that ecology and nature sustains.
But this subject is stretching what i can articulate in words without sounding like a religious nutjob. (Re reading post script, this was foreshadowing)
Consciousness is an emergent property of natural dynamics in the universe. ~~The universe is some sort of contrast complexity between nothing exists and everything exists. Similar to light/dark either both exist or neither does.~~
Without universe to act as the natural wealth of physical interactions there is no stage for consciousness to form.
Without universe where things we judge as “immoral” “bad” can occur normally there is no universe where things that we judge “moral” “good” can occure. This is a step to say morality in nature does not actually exist.
The system of nature is destructive, it is finite. Bleak as we pay perceive it is is part of its complexe beauty. For everything we use we work towards destroying ourself conceptually.
So many words to actually say that isolated from context “acts of killing and eating of animals/others cannot be considered “wrong” trough any logical reasoning.
It is not the killing part that is “bad” to reference the earlier question.
But what we can conclude trough logical reasoning is that if we want to appreciate this insane universe we can instead of wailing in the (optimistic) nihilism of possibilities and inability to eliminate the inherent self destruction of what your kind emerged from. You can prolong its existence, strech it on more time by simply being mindful not to waste, to respect the values of nature around you and to use them to mindfully, optimally enriching the experience of the life that is now as it lives.
I agree with you because I know if I had to do it, I'd never eat meat again. I think about their life all the time, I just feel guilty when I'm eating them, so probably a little psychopathic.
Nah, psychopaths didn't feel guilty. You just lack conviction.
I'm about to go down this journey myself. I've decided that if I can't do it then I have to stop eating meet. I won't let someone else do my dirty work.
I'm going to stick to animals that will kill / hunt other animals under normal conditions even if not directly apart of their diet.
So like turkey, fish, chicken, squirrels, rabbit
All on the table.
Idk how I feel about deer yet. I know they will eat small rodents and insects on purpose sometimes but from what I've read it's a lot less then the other animals I've mentioned and not normally under standard conditions.
Maybe consider the balance of the ecosystem you live in. Sometimes overpopulation of deer could be really detrimental to other species. So while they're not directly killing other animals, they are indirectly doing so.
Opportunistic predators still "hunt" for their own survival. Even if they were intelligent enough to consider the morality of that, their need would likely justify it. The idea of targeting them specifically doesn't make sense if it's intended to be some sort of punishment.
Its not a punishment, it's the idea that they at some levels understand and have made the same sacrifice.
Squirrels and rabbits hunt other animals??
Rabbits no, they're typically herbivores unless starving. Some ground squirrels have been shown to hunt and eat voles, and I know that squirrels are essentially fluffy rats.
Here's an image of a squirrel eating a dead bird carcass.
They'll eat their own young and the young of competing animals, so it counts. Both will also eat insects as well which I feel counts
Yeah. Humans are naturally hunter-gatherers, so anyone who says killing animals is psychopathic is probably more likely to be a psychopath (in the true sense of the word) than someone who appreciates how it's unpleasant but also no worse than what happens in factory farms or in the wild.
They said enjoying killing animals is psychopathic. That doesn't even seem controversial.
Almost anything is better than what happens in factory farms.
Yeah, I'm not sure whether to place wild animals wounding prey and using them to teach their young to hunt as worse it better, but if you are going to eat meat then I don't think there's many more ethical ways to do it than have them live a good life up until seconds before they die, then make killing them as fast as possible.
In a lot of places hunting is good for the environment too, not only because the fees from licences generally goes to wildlife management, but also humans have killed a bunch of their predators and so there'd be even more damage to the ecosystem if you don't introduce another predator to manage numbers (although it would be preferable to not let it get to that stage at all, it's too late in a lot of Europe and I believe other places too)
Hopefully by "a good life" you're referring to wild animals, not power farmed ones?
Because I agree with hunting as deer management is necessary, but factory farming is bullshit and the regulations are just garbage. Animals live in cages where they don't have the room to turn around, much less moving about and socialising. And you know cows don't produce milk unless they've calfed recently, so they just keep inseminating them as fast as possible after a pregnancy.
When my grandma was small and tended cows on a rural farm, the cows lived to like 20. Factory farmed cows just keel over on the factory about after five years.
So idk, if you'd consider being like a child chimney sweep in London 150 years ago to be a good life, then perhaps you can make an argument for factory farming?
I was referring to animals in the wild and on small farms, yes
Good. Just making sure.
No, humans are designed to kill animals, eat their meat, and use other parts for clothing and more.
Hey that's fine but I don't have a problem with killing animals to survive. It's the enjoyment of doing so that gets me. Hunting for sport, for example. Or even hunting for food. It's not necessary in the modern era. Nobody has to hunt. They do it for fun, and that's psychopathic to me.
Evolution has given us dopamine receptors that reward hunting. It’s not as necessary in modern society, but nevertheless, our ancestors needed it.
For the record, I don’t hunt. I was forced to as a kid, but I’m disabled and I couldn’t really do it. It was a horrible experience and I don’t want to hurt anything.
That doesn’t mean I don’t understand that others are different. I accept them.
I think the hunting part is kind of fun. Going camping, learning the habits of the animals nearby, finding a place to take advantage of those habits, etc.
It's the actual killing part I wouldn't be able to do. But since I do eat meat I can't fault hunters. In fact, I suspect a lot of hunters who do eat the animal actually have a lot of respect and sadness for the actual kill, and try hard to make it as humane as possible.
'I pretend to feel sad about doing this thing that I spent lots of time, money, and effort to do' is perhaps even more unhinged than the people who are honest about enjoying killing for fun.
*I could see it for people who are exclusively hunting CWD deer.
You're killing either way. Buying it from a grocery store just insulates you from having to psychologically deal with that. At least with a hunter the animal has a chance. Can't say the same about livestock.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how this relates to anything I said.
How does someone elses unrelated mental gymnastics justify the mental gymnastics of a shoot and cry pervert.
Humans aren't designed
I never said they were intelligently designed. Evolution is an iterative, stochastic design process that produced a bunch of badass motherfuckers that stunt on everything else on this planet- us. Our ancestors needed dopamine reward systems to encourage them to hunt and to kill. It is how they survived to produce us. It is baked into our DNA.
I do not hunt, personally. I am disabled. However, I respect those that do. It’s in their blood. Who are we to judge? No one is perfect, and that’s the whole point.
That's very speculative, and indistinguishable from the texas sharpshoorter fallacy.
Humans are opportunistic omnivores, first and foremost, and gained a huge advantage being able to do endurance hunting. We have better energy management and less prone to overheating. Which means it's equally (if not more) valid to say that humans were designed to eat roadkill that we find on the side of the road. Doesn't sound as badass now.
But since people notoriously can't survive on meat alone, but can survive and thrive on plant-based diet, walking around and picking everything that smells good is in our blood, if there is anything there at all
Humans are also designed to kill other humans, rape their family, and take their resources. But that's not considered polite anymore.