Hunting and Imperialism

(lyrics here)

One of my best friends has a ranch up by Kerrville, and every holiday, our group caravans to this home away from home. Upon entering the cabin, one can always expect to be greeted with the heads of various deer and even a moose, all mounted proudly and grotesquely above fireplaces and headboards. The specific reason this ranch was purchased was for hunting, and many of the animals on their property are simply waiting to die.

A scene from the movie version of The Most Dangerous Game, a short story by Richard Connell.
I see hunting as essentially killing animals for fun. There are cases in which hunting is “crucial to survive” (X170B), but the majority of North Americans hunt for recreational purposes, unless they live in places like Alaska or the northern parts of Canada. Personally, I have never agreed with hunting. It is a sport—A SPORT—to seek to end the life of something. “Pain and pleasure [are] the springs of human action” (X170H), and for those who derive pleasure from such a sick spectacle, I harbor nothing but disgust. Even more sickening to me are those who have hunted animals to the point of extinction. Perhaps a good dose of a real life The Most Dangerous Game scenario is required for humans to fully understand the monstrous absurdity they call a sport.

Pleasure and a photograph, in exchange for a life.

A large part of sports is involved with winning, but what are we winning when we hunt? Is it truly the head of an animal, “the appeal of such trophy” (X197) mounted above our fireplaces that causes us pleasure, or the knowledge that we conquered something greater than ourselves, that immeasurable greatness of nature? For many hunters, compassion for the animal is nonexistent; meanwhile, the animal itself has “nothing left but unable misery” (X215), and for what: as a new addition to the family den? A great commemorative photograph as it bleeds in the hands of its proud killer?

Tarzan: the idol of my childhood. The villain of this movie wishes not only to dominate the land, but to capture the silverback gorillas (one of them being Tarzan’s father).

The hunter’s tendency to glorify conquest and domination over an animal can be closely linked to that of one empire defeating another. “Triumphing over a dangerous animal and subduing unwilling natives” (X200) often exhibits the same attitudes towards those being conquered, such as in the case of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism in Latin America. Even Disney was able to see the connection between domination of a culture and that of an animal, as seen by the movie Tarzan (I highly recommend this movie, if not for the catchy songs, then for the awesome way in which Tarzan surfs the trees). And in Africa and Asia, natives were, “in addition to laziness and insubordination…frequently accused of cowardice” (X204).

A depiction of the Portuguese enslavement in the 18th century

The common thought of these natives as a lesser species or race, which thus justified the imperialist countries to treat them as such, is reflected in the way people treat animals. We often see them as less intelligent, less able, and on the whole less deserving at life than us, thus treating them with disrespect and cruelty. We validate hunting animals because “it’s all in good fun” and because we think they are here to serve us, just as Portugal rationalized the enslavement of a society because of differences.