Aggression: Better Understanding Hobby Hunters

Over time, however, the justification for hunting has changed significantly.

Hunting activities once served as a means for food, clothing, economic necessity, pleasure, and ritual. Today, recreational hunting serves hobby hunters as an outlet for aggression and a way to slow down in nature.

The IG Wild beim Wild focuses in particular on animal cruelty in recreational hunting as a hobby or leisure activity — that is, on what has become an increasingly controversial pastime that is no longer unconditionally supported by the majority of the population.

Today, practically no one can recall positive hunting incidents that, for the most part, would reinforce the image of the hobby hunter as a helper.

Once, hunting was a matter of course in public life and held in high esteem. But that was over 100 years ago. With the rapid urbanisation of society and the rise of animal welfare advocacy some decades ago, recreational hunting was increasingly pushed into an unwanted, outdated corner. The hunting and exploitation of wildlife by hobby hunters came to be seen as a thorn in the side of animal welfare and nature conservation alike. Had the public been allowed to vote on the existence of recreational hunting as we know it, it would long since have been abolished — at least in those countries where the urban population predominates.

Professor Friedrich Reimoser, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Every two weeks, a woman in Switzerland is killed by her partner or ex-partner. This is barely discussed. One wonders how many violent hobby hunters are involved. Figures — not only from Germany — give little cause for optimism. And when the topic does make it into the media, it is not referred to as murder, but as a family tragedy.

This implies that the woman shares some of the blame for her own death. Yet she was killed because a man refused to accept that his wife would not obey him. But politics does not address this. Parliament would rather debate wolves that have killed a few sheep.

Not only among academics has there been speculation and diagnosis in recent times that contemporary hunting can be motivated by violent male aggression and domination, derived from social aggression and predatory, aggressive instincts as well as other psychological deficiencies. Studies also consistently show that hobby hunters are more physically and verbally aggressive and hostile than non-hunters. Hobby hunters even employ their own primitive language. The hunters’ jargon is irrelevant both in everyday use and in a scientific context. It is nothing other than a disfigurement of the German language.

The base impulses that drive people to kill are unleashed in the hobby hunter. Aggression can take various forms. It is most often triggered by negative emotions, including fear of a threat or hatred. People respond by repelling the source of the threat. That is one side of the coin. The other is so-called appetitive violence. There is evidence that people who kill do not merely grow accustomed to it, but also learn to take pleasure in it.

«Once you have been killing and hunting for a while, positive feelings begin to emerge — even in perfectly ordinary people».

Researcher Thomas Elbert.

Adrenaline, cortisol and endorphins are released. Pain is suppressed. A kind of bloodlust sets in. Going out to hunt and to kill can be enjoyable — and not only because prey or victory is in prospect. At least for many young men. At 16 or 17, adolescents are at their most vulnerable. At that age, young men do not yet have a clear understanding of how life works. The older people become, the lower the risk of succumbing to this craving.

The hunt or the act of killing itself is the source of pleasure. All the privations and dangers of a hunt are rewarded by the release of neurotransmitters that activate the brain's reward center. Hunting becomes an exciting pleasure. One kills, therefore, without reason. Merely following an urge that must be satisfied. Even the preparation of the weapon arouses a positive feeling. These are so-called appetitive stimuli. We encounter these in other areas as well. When a woman comes near a man, the release of endogenous substances that activate the reward centers increases in him. Weapons can have a similar effect. This is why many fighters say the weapon is their lover. This experience later becomes embedded within a person like an addiction. And when hunters have no other sources of pleasure, this becomes highly seductive and dangerous.

We also recognize this appetitive aggression in sports and in playing violent video games on the computer. But a functioning society regulates aggression through learned norms, Thomas Elbert further explains.

Men are far more positively disposed toward hobby hunting than women. Women are generally drawn to animal welfare-related fields and professions. Damaged men, on the other hand, are more enthusiastic about forms of animal abuse, such as dogfighting, hunting, bullfighting, and so on.

Time and again, people with severe psychiatric disorders are welcomed with open arms by hunting clubs and hunting associations. In their wretched company, they are subsequently conditioned in unchristian ways and adorned with weapons.

Both the serial killer and the hunter believe they are participating in something important. Brain anomalies are found with striking frequency in serial killers. Violence leaves traces in the brain after a short time. Neuropsychologists confirm: the amygdala, a core region of the brain, is noticeably underdeveloped or impaired in violent offenders. When this central part of the brain is defective, among other things the sense of disgust is switched off.

When problems arise in the areas of aggression and hunting behavior in adults, the deficits are usually found in inadequate upbringing, bad company, or uncontrolled impulses. When adults behave inappropriately aggressively toward living beings, or fail to keep their hunting impulses under control, life with the hunter is predominantly very stressful and accompanied by emotional burdens.

Dear readers, ask yourself the following:

Have you ever heard that hares, which are under species protection due to their rarity but are bizarrely still shot by hunters, cause immense damage to nature?

No?

That foxes are killed en masse, even though they are important forest protectors and health officers, because they keep voles away from tree seedlings, for example?

No?

That hobby hunters are the biggest crybabies the moment natural regulation through foxes, lynxes, wolves and the like takes effect somewhere?

No?

By now it should dawn on you what to make of all this hunters' yarn — absolutely nothing!

Hobby hunting is a bizarre «hobby» in which the aim is to kill wildlife in an unfair manner. Nothing more, nothing less. With great zeal, these two-legged substitute wolves ensure ecological imbalance.

The cruel driven hunts also make a clean shot impossible; wounded animals frequently continue running for a long time with fatal or very painful injuries. The follow-up search is not always carried out properly, and the killing that follows is often brutal — akin to ritual slaughter, i.e., the slaughter of animals without prior stunning.

Animals exposed to such stress release large quantities of adrenaline and other substances that trigger a kind of decomposition even before death. This would also be a case for consumer protection, which is otherwise held in such high regard. In practically every canton in Switzerland, driven hunts are regularly conducted. They are just mostly no longer called that. Today they go by names such as “moving hunt,” “social hunt,” “pushing hunt,” or “special hunt.” The inferior meat obtained in this way is foisted on the public by these hobby hunters, who pocket the money.

If one still foolishly believes today that animals must be hunted for nutritional purposes, the killing must absolutely occur without any fear or pain whatsoever. Otherwise, the flesh of the animals will contain an above-normal concentration of stress hormones that are harmful and pathogenic to humans, in addition to the chemical and pesticidal substances from feed or ammunition that are detectable at any time and are likewise harmful to health. Game meat makes you sick!

Of course, animal populations regulate themselves better without hunting in nature than when kilograms of lead are blasted across the landscape, contaminating not only the soil. The shooting apart of social groups even leads to overpopulation of many animal species.

Environmental damage caused by wildlife would hardly be greater without hunting if all species were left undisturbed in their natural habitat. Roe deer and red deer, for example, are neither nocturnal animals nor forest animals. In the forest they consume bark or twigs, but this is not their natural food. Only under hunting pressure across generations have roe deer and red deer become nocturnal forest animals.

The primary food source of foxes is mice. Of course, foxes will occasionally take a ground-nesting bird, but no animal species has ever wiped out another — though recreational hunters do so regularly. Foxes are not the great carriers of disease. Terrestrial rabies has been eradicated. The chance of becoming infected with fox tapeworm is lower than that of a roof tile falling on one’s head. Foxes are normally monogamous and their offspring numbers depend on the productivity of their habitat. When hunting occurs indiscriminately and social groups are shot apart, foxes under stress undertake migrations (which helps spread diseases, as rabies did in the past) and birth rates increase. This is well known even to hobby hunters, but is not accepted. After all, one needs an enemy.

Where foxes are heavily hunted, mice overrun the fields, and farmers — who are often hobby hunters themselves — respond with expensive poisons that harm other animals and humans.

How disturbed must one be to proudly lay out a «haul» from animal carcasses as a hunter and have oneself photographed salivating over them? Or is there anything more cruel than hanging the heads of one’s treacherously shot carcasses in the living room, simply to show the world what a wretched, cowardly creature one is?

Hunting is not nature conservation – the good Lord needs no sect-like and militant accomplices; the devil, however, is quite another matter. Nature conservation works differently. Hobby hunting belongs, if necessary at all, in the hands of people of integrity such as wildlife rangers. Unfortunately, hobby hunting has degenerated into a social game in which, more often than not, the old guard conducts business and indulges in alcohol. This is not only dangerous for wildlife, but for all fellow citizens, as the green-coats are brutal weapon-carriers who do not always have their emotions under control. Countless times a year, hunting accidents, family tragedies, animal cruelty, animal massacres, and so on occur.

Yes, today's hobby hunters produce more victims — both human and non-human — than ISIS, biker gangs, the mafia, and others combined.

The state must regain the monopoly on the use of force. At present, this is nearly impossible. Many politicians are simply unaware of this senseless desire of hunters to kill. Yet there is not a single scientific piece of evidence that hunting in its current form is necessary.

Every soldier is discharged the moment it becomes apparent that he enjoys killing. Why is this not also the case with hobby hunters?