I have a problem with people that hunt for fun. I am not a vegetarian and I have no problem eating meat but I know I could not look at a helpless animal and kill it for fun.
I can understand some people have a passion for playing with guns. I was in the army for 3 years and had an M4 that was on me 24/7 and I saw many people that really liked holding, cleaning and shooting guns.
I can understand the excitement of the adrenaline stalking a prey, keeping your body and mind relaxed so you can aim well, anticipating the next step your target will take and taking into account wind, distance and other factors to make a small metal mass travel very fast for a few hundred meters and hit something.
The part I don’t like is that this game kills the other player.
If someone loves to hunt he will not stop unless he or she finds something with equal pleasure or better.
I tried to come up with a few alternatives for people to have fun but without killing anything.
This is what I came up with:
- Full Contact Martial Arts – problem for couch potatoes but you can do it relatively safely even if you are not a master with a good teacher and people at your level… I did this for years and it is great and keeps you fit.
- Kendo, Fencing – like martial arts but less painful and more about speed and technique. Can be very hot wearing the protective suit. Reminded me the drills we did in the army running around wearing a gas mask.
- Paintball – does not look very impressive at first but when you actually try it feels very real.
- Photography – one of my favorites!, I take my Nikon with a telephoto lens, find a spot and hunt for expressions and unique moments. You can do it in an urban setting with people or in the wild with animals. If you have people that can appreciate your work it is a great activity.
- Helping a local veterinary or wildlife official to shoot animals with tranquilizer darts.
- Shooting down radio controlled planes. I know they are expensive so it is a great motivation for the pilot to fly well… They can each bring a gun and a plane and take turns flying and shooting. Just be careful not to shoot each other… safety rules etc.
- Hunting real animals with paintballs. This is not very nice to the animals but it is better than killing them… The paint can have a unique pattern for each “Hunter”.
- Creating a special shotgun cartridge that shoots a thin nylon net. This way you can shoot at something and capture it in the net without killing it and then you can let it go and let your friend have a go at it. This lets you compare skill as you compete against the same animal. Will probably work best for smaller animals.
- Create in a wild area several target circles and you have to influence an animal with lights, sounds etc. to go there and stay there until its picture is automatically taken by a camera mounted next to the target.
