The problem here is trying to make the other see things as you see them.

First thing I do is try to ascertain whether the person is a committed anti-hunting greenie "plastic monkey" sort. If they are I only argue for the pleasure not for any expectation of a result. If it isn't worth the time just walk away and refuse to debate.

If they appear to be reasonable, then it may be worth continuing.


***

I would also point out to that person being an Indian that India has not had sport hunting for several decades and yet the wildlife has continued to decline. The Gir lions are close to non-existent, the wildlife that doesn exist has no VALUE. The neighbouring people to parks get no BENEFIT from wildlife so poach it for meat or to save crops or event their lives,, eg poisoning a tiger kill for example.

On the other hand in Tanzania wildlife has a HIGH VALUE and lion still exist in sustainable numbers, there are close to 100,000 elephant (I believe??). Locals get jobs and income from hunting, meat for food, and also some infrastructure - roads, airstrips etc. The country collects taxes. If a country has or had such a scheme as the Zim CAMPFIRE scheme then local residents get a share of the fees from hunting.

If wildlife has NO VALUE it is worthless to the common man and it will be killed.

quote:

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:
I sent the link to Mohanjeet Brar's lion trophy picture to someone I know in India. The man owns a rifle and I thought he would be interested in seeing the results of a fantastic hunt. His first question was, "Why did that poor lion have to be shot?" Followed by "Couldn't it be relocated somewhere else if there are too many lions in Tanzania?"

My response was to ask him if he wanted lions relocated to his posh neighbourhood in India to roam about there and end the silly conversation. But, how does one talk to people as extreme as this?

I don't talk to them. It is a waste of my time. They are so closed minded.

I have one at work who tries to give me the business about hunting. I think the second day she worked here I asked her "So, how long have you had this compulsion to run other people's lives?"

Last week she was on about me deer hunting, through e-mails copied to the whole office! I suggested that it wasn't difficult to hunt for which package of fresh chicken she was going to buy at the grocery store. She said she didn't consider eating to be hunting. I simply pointed out that it doesn't take many brain cells to sneak up on a carrot. That pretty much ended the conversation.

Yet, she loves the moose hide moccasins that I had made for her last year.

But, when it comes right down to it, I've often told anti-hunters that they have every right to their opinion, and that while I don't agree with them, I respect their opinion. Then, I ask them to grant me the same courtesy and respect mine.

I have no problem with someone believing whatever the hell they want. Just as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on me.

As luck would have it,I live in a Pro-Hunting State.
Some counties close the schools the first few days of deer season.
Every now and then I'll run into a Anti-Hunter.These people come from sheltered lives and are usually educated out of State at 'Liberal' colleges or Universities.
Most have that 'nose in the air' attitude.
When they attack my sport of hunting,I tell them the monetary value hunters bring the State every year.It is three times what the skiers,white water rafters and other sportys spend.
It also lights em up when I ask how long have they been trying to run everyone elses life.*



*See Political Forum.

I read once that in the USA, 10% of the population are hunters, 10% are rabid antis and 80% could go either way.

In other words, our actions and words as hunters around this 80% are important.

I've found that if I am asked about my reasons for hunting, If I speak with a civil tougue in my mouth and try to answer their questions, most of them want to learn more.

I have invited some non hunting friends to the shooting range to plink with 22s and they had a blast.

Some had no interesting ever killing anything but they ALL sure liked shootin'

The key, I believe, is to get them thinking and get them interested in shooting sports in general.

They do not have to hunt to be a friend and ally against the Anti-hunting fanatics.

Thanks, everyone for the replies. When I was born in India, game was in plenty there and hunting was something that everyone accepted as a sport without the huge negative response that it elicits there these days. My question was meant to help me learn how to combat the antis, something that I think needs to be done as they do seem not only to be increasing in numbers everywhere, they also seem to be getting away with putting more and more restrictions on our sport. There is no option to remain silent and out of a debate - we are certain to lose. That is what happened in India and has been happening to a lesser extent in the UK considering how the British government rammed a ban on fox hunting recently. In the USA I lived in Wisconsin for about two years and it is a very hunting friendly state - it was refreshing to talk to old timers who told me how turkey and deer populations had increased in that state. For someone who saw Indian wildlife decimated to a point where there is little if any left, this was heartening in the extreme.

Some comments on the person with whom I had this conversation - yes, he is a Hindu, but I seriously doubt that that has anything to do with his anti hunting attitude. Only Johan on Ar and I know this man personally, and if anything, he has an American girlfriend, a Christian from Massachussetts, who is even more anti hunting than he is. The Maharajas of India were some of the keenest hunters in the past and it was they who set aside the preserves that later became India's wildlife reserves. Also, some of India's loudest campaigners, John Abraham (a former mdoel turned actor, considered India's Leonardo Caprio) is a devout Catholic and Jason Baker, an Australian transplant who heads PETA India is a Pentecostal. There are people like Gauhar Azeez (a Muslim) who are also at the forefront of this movement in India. I seriously doubt that religion has anything to do with it.

NitroX's comment on giving an economic value to the environment is something that I have been writing about for years and also arguing about though India's media is politically correct in the extreme for the major part and refuses to ever look at this argument. I know of very senior people in the Indian government who visit AR and who have corresponded with me and other members here who think the policies over there are utterly wrong, but they dare not say this in public. We had a Minister for the Environment who is a card carrying PETA activist and who has a reputation for vindictiveness which scares bureaucrats because their jobs and careers could be endangered by someone as powerful as this woman. That said, I have been told that there is a picture of her with a tiger that she shot in the days before hunting was banned, and I am looking for someone who would find it for me - I know where it could be promoted to discredit her and hit her hard.

Some years ago, I was invited to write an article by India Today Plus, India's best luxury magazine, on fine guns. At the time, I corresponded with several gunmakers in the USA, Europe and the UK and everyone was very interested in the project and gave me wholehearted support with the exception of Westley Richards whose Walter Clode sent me a fax telling me that he was not interested in sending any information for the article. This means that the history of Indian hunting is something that the world is still very interested in. The fact also is that Indian shooters who participate in International matches are considered national heroes, and this means that there is strong interest in the shooting sports. Mohanjeet's pictures were of an Indian hunting in Africa - a little bird also tells me that after Holland and Holland started opffering consignment services to hold guns for customers who could not take them back to their country, an Indian placed an order for a four rifle set with them recently. There will be more.

I hope that this would be a beginning in putting together arguments to fight the antis not just in India but everywhere. I am hoping to write an article on this for a major Indian newspaper or magazine - there is one more member who could do this in a way that influences authorities in India over here - and I have openly requested Mohanjeet to send pictures to India Today Plus for them to think about a future article about Indians on safari in Africa. I know that if someone does this, Dilip Bobb, the editor in Chief, and Joanna Farnworth, his very beautiful assistant, are certain to publish it. When I wrote for him, the issue sold out much faster than previous ones had and he followed it up with issues on Gun Dogs and Fly fishing. That was 1998 - seven years hence, it is certainly time to start a debate. I am sure that there would be a myriad responses from the antis - and a very good opportunity to take them on in public. The suggestions that I have received here are certain to help.

I have also received several eprsonal suggestions in the past from Nickudu and NitroX on whose forums I am a moderator now to keep me going in what I thought was a hopeless task only two or three years ago. There is now an Indian hunting forum as well and though it is small, it is a beginning. Hopefully, we shall succeed in changing perceptions and attitudes not just in India but other places as well.

Best wishes, thanks and especially Good hunting everyone!

Mehul, I am delighted to hear that there is an effort to trying and change people’s perspectives on hunting in India.

I for one grew up reading Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson and have never been able to shake the romance of hunting the game animals of India. I hope that one day I could go into one of the many beautiful Indian forests and hunt a Sambar or better still hunt the foothills of the Himalayas for Goral.

Enough dreaming, keep the good work up.As far as anti hunters are concerned most people will listen to and understand the fact that if there is financial benefit to the local people in an area because of hunting they will better conserve the animals because they now have a financial stake in keeping their numbers up, so the game animals can be looked at as a renewable resource for an impoverished community. These facts are very relevant for countries like India and Pakistan. This also ensures that the animals will be conserved for all to enjoy.

Some people don’t like hunting period and they can go to hell for all I care. I just don’t want to loose the support of people who have no strong feelings one way or another, and those are the people one would want to target in India.

In Pakistan implementation of these hunting programs in Baluchistan for the Suleiman Markhor and in the Gilgit and Hunza area for the Himalayan Ibex has revived their populations along with the populations of Blue Sheep and Afghan Urial, and has the full support of the local communities so politicians are reluctant to implement any anti hunting policies that may be generated by the “ know all animal lover elite of the citiesâ€


Regards
Aziz

Arguing to win the argument doesn't get you anything... except possibly for a bystander.

Arguing to change emotional feelings -- particularly that the hunter victimizes a victim (whom an anti might feel strong identification with) -- is not something that logic will win on.

Dan

I think the the best things one can do is NOT prove to these people that their image of hunters is correct. They expect huntersto be jerks, to have no respect for the natural world, or for thier fellow man. Many of these antis only know what they have been feed by PETAphiles.

Don't concern yourself with changing thier mind. Do enlighten them. Some will realize that they are being used as pawns.

If the anti is a major whack job, I just smile and look at her chest, or his wife's chest, as appropriate. One of my sisters is a major ding dong. I avoid even talking to her. When her kids reach the rebellious stage I will take them shooting, and buy them a target rifle each to keep at my place. By the time they are out of college they will be coming on hunting trips with me every vacation.

The true antis are a lost cause. Pull their kids over to shooting, fishing and hunting from the dark side of being anti-fun Nazi's. Kids like to have fun. Ain't nothing more fun (or wholesome) than hunting and killing quail, pheasant, deer, boar or kudu.
lawndart.

When I first met Lois she really hadn't done any hunting. I took her out to the local ground squirrel theme park in early May. At first she said, "I can't kill those little things, they're too cute." I said, "aw shucks, just shoot one." Then it was, "well, why don't you use the rest of the rounds in that magazine on the squirrels, and I'll stop bothering you." Needless to say, she now mows them down by the score, and cackles happily when she gets good hang time.

I am willing to bet good money that I could get a New York socialite out drilling any of God's creatures you might name. Like any other seduction, it just takes time, attention and a knowledge of when you have reached the tipping point for any given phase of the conquest.

lawndart

Well you dont ! you just solve their lead deficiency problem by a sudden overdose of it, by a fat needle called a rifle barrel .Most of these people, and i have argued with plenty of them are city people ,who are so narrow minded its unbelieable !!!!! they are like kids who can only see a simplistic view of life, the universe and everything ,They cant cope with the fact that Everything Dies eventually ,animals ,plants ,people ,its all based on a childish emotion which they cant grow out of .The thing that amazes me most is that these people especially women!! and many i have known,have absolutely no qualms whatsover of using ,cheating ,ripping off,stealing from their fellow man, but have so much sympathy for dumb animals and cant bear to see them killed ,but will cheat you and laugh about it and relish in it.Then get pregnant and kill off their unborn child like it was some hurdle to their Brilliant career ! like it says in the Bible somewhere ,what a twisted generation

Gents, don't throw up your hands and decide anti-hunters can't be persuaded. It is true that a few are heavily committed and unreachable. The majority though, especially those who grew up in major cities, really haven't put a lot of thought into their position. They are heavily propogandized and pressured socially into having outlooks that, they are told, all intelligent people share. And they never have encountered any reason to shake their simple faith in these unreasoned positions.

If in the past you haven't been able to persuade an anti-hunter then that's for one of two reasons:

a. They can't be argued with.

b. They can be reached, but you weren't up to the job.

That's not a criticism directed at anyone in particular, as I haven't always been able to pull it off either. This is a skill and like any other skill it can be improved with practice. It is a skill which we should all work on, though, because only a small percentage of any country's population hunts. If we want to continue doing so we need allies. Otherwise we could all go the way of India or Kenya.

CFS...i agree with you. if a person is willing to discuss this subject with me, i'm willing to have an civil discussion with them. i actually enjoy it and if they have a logical head on their shoulders they usually will at least admit that hunting is not the evil bloodsport that they were raised to think it is. it's the ones who aren't reachable that i figure i might as well have a little fun with

Most people just don't hunt and are pretty receptive to it's idea once I explain my reasoning. Right now my Africa photo album is at my ladies-only gym and it is getting looked over real hard. I worte an intoductory piece for it explaining the good hunting does for the people of Africa as well as it's game. Many people do get very curious and ask a lot of positive questions once they thumb through the photos.

I am a farm girl and go into some details about the things they eat. Like not wanting to eat all that chemically enhanced cancer stuff on the store shelves...

I have yet to meet an anti-hunter who did not live in some smarmy, well appointed, expensive subdivision. I only do this to vehemently militant antis and icky vegans.

So I do a kind of reverse guilt trip on them that sorta goes like this:

Me: So you don't think I should hunt and kill animals for meat?

Anti- No way, it is so wrong! etc, etc, etc...

Me: OK but how can you justify your existance when the house and neighborhood you live in killed umpteen millions of life forms under a bull dozer's tread just to MAKE ROOM FOR YOU?

Anti- giant blank stare and instant guilt trip. Personally I wish they would just implode or spontaniously ignite and leave more air for the rest of us.

Pretty much shuts them up.

Time to go hunting!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fischer:
I suggested that it wasn't difficult to hunt for which package of fresh chicken she was going to buy at the grocery store. She said she didn't consider eating to be hunting. QUOTE]

Fischer:

Ask her why she eats meat at all. Answer: for her own pleasure, the same reason you hunt. There is nothing morally superior about eating meat vs hunting. In the end, animals die.

The ones who are willing to listen aren't anti-hunters... at least not in the sense I meant it.

The place I'm most likely to encounter an anti-hunter is in a hunter safety course when an anti shows up to sabotage it. More often, they register for a position, and then don't show up at all -- blocking a seat for someone who needed the course for their certification. People sufficiently committed to do that kind of thing are not worth arguing with. The others who show up usually have enough of an open mind to want to get a certificate to hunt -- and they want it badly enough to sit through a 10 hour course (minimum -- its been a long time since I saw a course take only 10 hrs in NY State).

Other opportunities for encounters occur when people write on our course announcement posters that they thing we should be killed. One of my co-instructors talked about one encounter where one guy thanked him for a course his son took, and a woman who overheard said we were abusing children and should be locked up and/or executed. I figure it isn't worth trying to change their minds, either.

Dan

quote:

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:

I sent the link to Mohanjeet Brar's lion trophy picture to someone I know in India. The man owns a rifle and I thought he would be interested in seeing the results of a fantastic hunt. His first question was, "Why did that poor lion have to be shot?"

I heard a lecture on this by senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming at the Cato Foundation in Washington, DC a number of years ago. He mentioned African elephants. How do you preserve them and have them flourish? By allowing hunting of them and charging a large license fee to hunters to kill them. Then the elephants become valuable and local African people will prize and keep them. But if you do not allow hunting, the elephants are worthless pests that trample and otherwise harm the crops of African farmers, so then the local people have an incentive to have the elephants disappear.

Or take fish in English streams. How do you preserve them? By having fishing clubs own or control the rivers. Then the fishing clubs will take an interest in having the fish grow, prosper, reproduce, be healthy, etc. But if these streams are open to the public and not controlled by private interests, there is far less incentive to have the fish grow and prosper.

Today there are a lot of wild turkeys thriving in the forests of the Eastern part of the US, but when I was a kid there were very few of them. How did this change come about? Mostly by the conscious and concerted action of hunting-conservation groups, who worked to bring back the turkeys and have their populations grow and thrive so they would be able to hunt them.

The hunters and fishermen have been in the forefront of animal conservation in this country for as far back as I can remember. I began reading hunting and fishing magazines when I was about 10 or 12 years old (mid 1950s) and they all emphasized conservation and animal welfare. Hunters and fishermen are the real animal lovers and animal preservationists; not the liberal anti-hunting animal activist types.

______________

Question. How do you talk to anti hunters?

Answer. I don't.

quote:

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:
.... In the USA I lived in Wisconsin for about two years and it is a very hunting friendly state - it was refreshing to talk to old timers who told me how turkey and deer populations had increased in that state. For someone who saw Indian wildlife decimated to a point where there is little if any left, this was heartening in the extreme.

.... The Maharajas of India were some of the keenest hunters in the past and it was they who set aside the preserves that later became India's wildlife reserves.

....

This means that the history of Indian hunting is something that the world is still very interested in. The fact also is that Indian shooters who participate in International matches are considered national heroes, and this means that there is strong interest in the shooting sports.

.....

One hopes oneday India couldn't again be a hunting destination to rival say Tanzania. If population densities, wildlife management, "enlightened" attitudes to sporting conservation and legal frameworks, value adding to wildlife, all could managed or overcome.

My first visit to India is in a month. Hopefully oneday a first hunting safari too.