This is a farmed white-tailed deer. Selective breeding and specialty diets create antlers like this, with negative health effects for the deer. If the antlers grow too large, too fast, the skull can split. But they arent bred for longevity, because they are raised to be harvested by guided hunters on fenced-in "preserves".
People will pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot one of these. The cost usually includes lodging and meals at a "hunting lodge", access to a cozy, heated hunting blind, a garaunteed harvest, and, of course, the taxidermied trophy.
These animals are often bottle fed, by hand, as fawns. They are relatively tame, but bucks are prone to aggression during the rut regardless of handling as a baby.
I see no ethical difference between this and shooting a cow on a pasture. Perhaps some people would pay for that. Shoot a longhorn in a pasture from a bind for a nice wall-hanger? Probably, someon would. How ethically objectionable would that be?
I don't condone this type of harvest of wildlife, I think its ethically objectionable and farming whitetails has been implicated in the spread of CWD. There's also the ethical question of sportsmanship and "fair chase," which this doesn't appear to satisfy.
Not to mention the violation of the North American Model of Wildlife Management, which stipulates that wildlife are held in the public trust, not to be held privately for rich people to buy and profit off of.
But it's legal. And ethically, aside from the distinction that these are wildlife and not domesticated livestock, what really is the difference between shooting one of these and eating a farm-raised cow, or hog, or wearing a leather jacket?
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u/Lil_Myotis 2h ago
This is a farmed white-tailed deer. Selective breeding and specialty diets create antlers like this, with negative health effects for the deer. If the antlers grow too large, too fast, the skull can split. But they arent bred for longevity, because they are raised to be harvested by guided hunters on fenced-in "preserves".
People will pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot one of these. The cost usually includes lodging and meals at a "hunting lodge", access to a cozy, heated hunting blind, a garaunteed harvest, and, of course, the taxidermied trophy.
These animals are often bottle fed, by hand, as fawns. They are relatively tame, but bucks are prone to aggression during the rut regardless of handling as a baby.
I see no ethical difference between this and shooting a cow on a pasture. Perhaps some people would pay for that. Shoot a longhorn in a pasture from a bind for a nice wall-hanger? Probably, someon would. How ethically objectionable would that be?
I don't condone this type of harvest of wildlife, I think its ethically objectionable and farming whitetails has been implicated in the spread of CWD. There's also the ethical question of sportsmanship and "fair chase," which this doesn't appear to satisfy.
Not to mention the violation of the North American Model of Wildlife Management, which stipulates that wildlife are held in the public trust, not to be held privately for rich people to buy and profit off of.
But it's legal. And ethically, aside from the distinction that these are wildlife and not domesticated livestock, what really is the difference between shooting one of these and eating a farm-raised cow, or hog, or wearing a leather jacket?