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Hunters Remorse After the hunt

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posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 11:33 AM
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Originally posted by g146541
reply to post by camaro68ss
 


I'm curious, what is a "squeal" that you speak of?
I have hunted quite a few things and when first read, I ignored it as maybe a typo.
But on more than one occasion you have typed "squeal" is this a software glitch?


squirrels, ground squirrel. I pre wrote everything on word and it auto corrected wrong. sorry.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 11:34 AM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 


hunger is the only incentive you need my friend.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 11:38 AM
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Originally posted by camaro68ss

Originally posted by g146541
reply to post by camaro68ss
 


I'm curious, what is a "squeal" that you speak of?
I have hunted quite a few things and when first read, I ignored it as maybe a typo.
But on more than one occasion you have typed "squeal" is this a software glitch?


squirrels, ground squirrel. I pre wrote everything on word and it auto corrected wrong. sorry.

Ahhhh, gotcha.
The remorse you are feeling is your own mortality passing you by, you never notice it with bugs and such but, the first time you take a warm blooded life it is a normal thing to feel remorse.
Be glad you feel that, it is a connection between you and all living things.
Never take a life for trivial reasons, and if you must, eat it.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 11:46 AM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 


Might I suggest you were born of the spirit and you didn't realise it?

This seems to be a time where many people are waking up to realise who they are...

When one brings harm to others the heart aches... IF one destroys another life, the action can make you sick

I assume you're also very empathetic towards the suffering of others?

Time to welcome yourself into your own...

Who Am I?


edit on 17-6-2013 by Akragon because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 12:21 PM
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I happen to know you would be quite surprised at what you can do when you have to.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 12:39 PM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 



can cats even kill ground squirrels?


Oh yeah. My (now 19yrs old) cat, 2 years ago, killed one and brought it into our bedroom as a "present"....

If you mean the larger marmots or prairie dogs though...no, more for dogs then. The term "ground squirrel" is pretty encompassing.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 07:39 PM
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I am not a priest or a psychologist. I do not claim to know what it is all about. But...

I always feel like I leave a hole in the world when I kill something. In Iraq I felt the same way when people got killed, Americans or Iraqis.

Being a part of the hole making is a huge pill to swallow. Everybody does it, but most just by proxy so they never feel it, never learn, never see life for what it is - fleeting.

It's all part of being a real human, a part of the real world, - the good - the bad - the ugly. I have found sometimes it is just plain ugly...still searching for the good.

With hunting animals I really believe if you utilize them, that ugly side of it truly lessens as there is purpose. You learn you are the same as the squirrel, a part of the big picture, and you do not make a hole for no reason. My death will come as surely as the squirrel's did and it is OK as I see that cycle in everything first hand.

Don't mean to creep ya' out, just some advice from a hole maker.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 07:50 PM
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I have gone full circle, one and a half times, in my life.

When I was young we went hunting after school; a big group of kids. We ate whatever we shot. Rattlesnakes, meadow larks, pigeons, turtles, prairie dogs. You name it, I've choked it down, usually boiled in an old coffee-can or roast over a fire.

When I became an urbanite in college, I would occasionally go home for a visit and go hunting with childhood friends. I personally felt what you described earlier in this thread.

Then I had a family. And all these kids. And hamburger is $4.50 a pound at the store, whereas venison works out to about $.90 a pound if I go hunting with my in-laws.

Now I hunt by traditional archery as well.

Originally, I didn't want to "target practice" on a live mammal. But a genuine back woodsman told me that the only thing even slightly near the difficulty of stalking a deer was stalking a cotton-tail. Both species are extremely wary in the wild, and both bob and weave in leaps when they flee---the moment when a traditional archer is most likely to get in his only shot.

In his mind, the life of 2, 3 or even 5 rabbits was less valuable than the single deer that he wanted to take painlessly.

I asked him about the pain of those rabbits, and this is what he says: (I've posted it on ATS before).

You never see a nursing home for rabbits or deer. There are no hospitals or hospice centers for them. There is a reason for that. Any deer that isn't hit by a car or felled by disease, only dies one way: It dies by being ripped to death by coyotes. That is the simple truth. Same with rabbits.

Which is a more humane death; allowing you to refine your skill so his brothers and friends go more quickly and with less agony, or being left to be ripped apart by coyotes, foxes, and stray dogs?

Which would you choose for yourself? A near-instant death, or being run down and torn to pieces?

People are a natural part of the cycle, too. Especially when it comes to archery, humans have been hunting game in America for 10,000 years. And you are NOT the worst thing that could ever happen to an animal.



posted on Jun, 17 2013 @ 07:59 PM
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Originally posted by camaro68ss
Have you ever had hunters’ remorse? How do you get over it?

God forbid if you had to make the call to end another person’s life that’s trying to kill you or a loved one in a survival situation. I don’t know how I would deal this that after. I want to throw up thinking about it.


Tough one to answer without coming off looking like an arrogant ass, but in all honesty, I haven't ever felt that. I've felt bad about having to put down sick or injured barn cats as a kid, as well as any time I lost a quail or dove after shooting it. I've shot plenty of "varmints" that I absolutely had no intention of eating or doing much of anything with like Coyotes, skunks, prarie dogs, and jack rabbits. I guess I grew up with the passage about man being dominant over all of the animal kingdom being burned into my thought patterns.



posted on Jun, 18 2013 @ 08:35 AM
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You may be just like me, and classify animals in different ways. Some are pets, some are food, some are pests (like bugs) and some are just wild. I don't kill pets of course, but no problem with food animals or pests. I'd only kill a wild animal if I felt endangered.



posted on Jun, 18 2013 @ 08:53 AM
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I wouldn't call it remorse so much as a realization of a mastery over life and death. That realization carries acceptance of that responsibility, which can be a very sobering feeling as you weight that the ground squirrel could have easily been something else. Something valued and cherished like a pet. Part of that realization is that you are now responsible for what happens. The fact that you followed up with a second shot after wounding was good. That you had to track it down a bit was even better as it shows that you do take responsibility for your action and do not allow needless suffering.

Hunting for food versus killing for sport or need (pests in this case) is a different situation and has different feelings attached. Having feelings about it is actually good stewardship.



posted on Jun, 21 2013 @ 09:53 PM
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I would be kinda worried if the act of killing did not bother you, i think its a normal human response to feel some remorse. As a hunter i can tell you it does get easier to process and move foward.
edit on 21-6-2013 by noclearance because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 12:51 AM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 


I can't speak for other hunters and won't, But I will speak for myself.
I hunt big game every year and have for 34 years. Every time I kill an large animal like an Elk or Deer I feel something....remorse? It is sad to kill a large animal and you should have respect for what you have done in taking it's life. The animal is used for food for my family and I never trophy hunt.

It is the same way if you ever have to kill a human being in self defense but worse, I know.
(the story is on here somewhere and I won't go into it again, if you need to know that bad search it out.)

Bottom line is, you to do what you have to do to survive and deal with the emotions later.

I believe in not killing anything your not going to eat.....unless it's a self defense scenario.



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 01:09 AM
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Just ran into the remorse thing for a minute while fishing for northern pike today...I was trying to get a three treble hook Rapala out of a 5 pounder's mouth and get it on the stringer without hurting it...

Untill it did a little flip in the bottom of the boat and wound up tangled in my favourite boating jacket, hooks and all...I had to carve up the liner of the jacket to get the rapala and the pike free...

then it became HULK SMASH


Pike fillets for supper tonight


its them or us I tells ya



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 01:33 AM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 


I know the feeling you felt on that day all too well. I was about 11 or 12 and I had gotten my first air rifle for Christmas and was told by my father not to shoot any living thing and only to shoot at targets with it. I was raised around guns and at that age was already very familiar with guns and gun safety. However my father still wouldn't allow me to have the gun without him or one of my much older brothers being with me for quite some time, but eventually after 7 or 8 months of proving to him that I was responsible he would let me take it out on my own while he was working around the farm.

Well one day I was out shooting targets when a dove landed near me and I shot it. I instantly realized that I had taken the life of a living creature and that what I had done could never be taken back. I was raised around hunting and fishing but that was the first time I had ever killed anything myself. I felt nauseous and cried because of what I had done and wouldn't you know it, my dad came around behind the barn just as I was crying over the dove I had killed.

He told me then that you never kill any animal unless you plan on eating it and he showed me how to clean the dove and made me do most of it, then he had me take it to the house to have my mom cook it along with dinner and made me eat it. He told me when we were cleaning the bird that I had to give thanks to the bird for dying so that I may eat and told me to always give thanks to the spirit of an animal I killed for food and to never waste what that animal gave me. He said it was the natural order of life and that though we may live in houses and drive cars, we are still a predatory animal and that our survival depends on the taking of another animals life, sort of the circle of the food chain.

To this day his statements that day have stayed with me, and when my sons and I are out hunting we still thank the spirit of the animal for the sustenance it provides for us the moment we kill it or remove it from our traps. However to shoot or kill an animal indiscriminately and for no more reason than "fun" or because it is a nuisance is, IMHO just plain wrong. I am not condemning you for what you did so please do not take offense to that statement, but that animals acts of nuisance in our eyes are nothing more than it trying to survive and live through the journey of life.

Here where we live we have plenty of prairie dogs as well as coyotes and even cougars and there are plenty of people here that will go out and kill 30 or even 50 prairie dogs in an afternoon or 10 or more coyotes in a night because they are nuisance animals. They will often say that "the foxes have to eat too" or something to that effect to make it seem okay to do that. To me, when people do things such as that they are interfering with the natural order of things, or the "fate of life" and that animals death serves no purpose.

There are other ways to deal with nuisance animals, yes it may be more time consuming but what is a life worth? That is what I tell my kids when I am setting up live traps for the coyotes or prarie dogs and transferring them to an area where they will not be a nuisance to anyone. I routinely trap them here at our place and release them out on some of the state management land where they can have a chance to live and enjoy the journey of life.

As far as hunters remorse, I have never had it after that first kill. I have always been thankful for the food that nature provides and in addition to performing my small ritual of thanks when I kill an animal for food, I make sure that when we sit down to eat our dinner of pheasant, duck, goose, elk, grouse, or deer, as a family we take a few moments to say a prayer to the spirit of life and nature and to give thanks for providing us with the sustenance we are about to receive.

I subscribe to a quasi Native American/Druidic religious belief and I feel that all creatures on this earth are intertwined on a spiritual level. Therefore I believe that the spirit of the earth provides for our needs by offering us the various animals and plants that we eat to survive and therefore to keep the spiritual balance we must not only take but give back to the spirit of earth or nature by being sincerely thankful for what it provides and have respect for all life.

That's just my 2 cents on the matter, and like I said I meant no offense towards you by saying it was wrong. I also don't believe it gets easier to deal with as you get more kills, I have found that as I have gotten older it is in fact harder to pull that trigger because my understanding of how short and special life is has become much greater with age.
edit on 23-6-2013 by Nucleardiver because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 01:38 AM
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reply to post by Danbones
 


Nothing like trying to get a treble hook out of their toothy mouths. I have quite a few scars on my fingers from exactly that.

How was your pike? We had the same thing for dinner tonight, some pike my boys caught yesterday and some Salmon I had caught Friday at Lake Sakakawea while coming home from the Bakken. Put them on the grill with some apple branch chips and a little honey and lemon sauce and smoked 'em up.

Nothing better than fresh caught fish on the grill.



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 02:12 AM
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reply to post by camaro68ss
 


try ferrets they will leave their scent behind and the squirrels will move away

im sure this will work



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 03:49 AM
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I'm really glad I came across this thread. I have been debating whether to get an air rifle to deal with the grey squirrel problem I have in my back garden. At the moment I've been using a sling shot, never hit a squirrel yet. I have never directly killed anything. So I was justifying the air rifle as a means to protect the survival of other species in the area. I hadn't really considered what I would do if I actually hit and killed one. I imagine I'd feel pretty bad. These squirrels are a pain in the ass though. Almost mocking me with their antics.



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 08:34 AM
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Originally posted by Nucleardiver
reply to post by Danbones
 


Nothing like trying to get a treble hook out of their toothy mouths. I have quite a few scars on my fingers from exactly that.

How was your pike? We had the same thing for dinner tonight, some pike my boys caught yesterday and some Salmon I had caught Friday at Lake Sakakawea while coming home from the Bakken. Put them on the grill with some apple branch chips and a little honey and lemon sauce and smoked 'em up.

Nothing better than fresh caught fish on the grill.



They tasted a lot better then the barn swallow I shot with my first pellet gun


I used milk/ flour /egg / "fish crisp" for coating and then fried them up...
the only trace of hunter's remorse at that point was that there wasn't any leftovers....

Moon's right today again...
the saga continues

Here's to boating, fresh fish, and good company:
Cheers!
Dan



posted on Jun, 23 2013 @ 08:42 AM
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Originally posted by TheRedneck
I am a big proponent of hunting; I love venison, and like about any kind of critter we have around here: rabbit, squirrel, turtle, snake, even possum and raccoon. But I don't think I have ever killed an animal without some part of me wishing it hadn't had to be. That doesn't stop me from killing it, if it must be killed, but even putting down a rogue dog that is attacking makes me somewhat sorrowful for the animal.




But you don't have to kill them?

You have stores/shops near you I'm guessing?

So you don't have to shoot any animal, saying that you wish it didn't have to be seems like lip service, it doesn't have to be, you're choosing to do it.
edit on 23/6/13 by blupblup because: (no reason given)




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