To me the eye. All those who find hunting a cruel, useless, anachronistic, or at least bizarre practice come and give me an eye. First I'll stick my finger in it and then I'll explain why 700 Italians, with good morals and immaculate criminal records, go hunting. Because, you see, if you're clean, you can go hunting. If you are not, you can sit in Parliament and make laws against hunting.
Some time ago, after having presented the last novel of a writer friend in the bookstore, when the public interventions - interventions, however, requested by me - arrived at the moment a woman no longer very young asked me with a question that was intended to be provocative, but of which I was happy because it allowed me to open a debate on a topic completely unrelated to that particular occasion.
Without getting up from her seat, the lady, who still showed the traces of a luminous beauty, asked me, without mincing words: "But how does a person like you, an esthete, a writer who says he is a lover of nature, for kill those poor boars? " I replied, with a hint of voluntary sarcasm: "You know, madam, live I still can't eat them!" There was a moment of frost. Then I infierii, opening my mouth: “Do you see madam? These are the canines. And they represent the clearest proof that I too, and certainly you and everyone present, are a predator! " Therefore, criminal record aside, I am legitimately authorized to go hunting, not only by the Police Commissioner, but by Nature. Then we, intelligent monkeys, only after having plundered the planet, have we imposed on ourselves an ethic of hunting (which predators have innate)
To me the eye and the ears. It seems that the two words "ethics" and "hunt" are in striking contradiction to each other, due to the idea, inherent in the word "hunt", of killing a creature. Can hunting be "ethical"? First of all, it is necessary to redefine the meaning of this word, which arouses so many passions.
What is hunting? Is it still a sport, a hobby, a use of free time? Is it a cultural response to the instinct of aggression? Is it the rational use of an economic and food resource, not in contrast with the maintenance and health of animal populations? Is it wildlife management and conservation? Is it a work that is carried out, in the interest of all, for the maintenance of the social structures of certain species in harmonious relationship with other wild species, with the territory and agricultural and forestry production? Is it something that reconnects us with our most ancestral instincts to which we can trace every stage of human progress, from the construction of language, to the creation of social communities, to the identification of roles and hierarchies within the group? Is it a way of feeling part of natural events, even the most dramatic ones? So does it represent the human condition? Could it also be a poetic metaphor of life and death?
Actually hunting is all of these things together. Each of us can, to varying degrees, choose the answers closest to his or her way of feeling.
It is clear that some of these reasons must be used, with appropriate publicistic interventions, to modernize the attitudes of the hunting world, but also to make the sense of our beloved, but also highly criticized activity, more acceptable to the outside world, which is often perceived as a gratuitous act of violence against animals.
In the most responsible strata of the world of environmentalists, many of the misunderstandings of the past are being overcome, also in light of the great changes that have occurred in recent years and that have seen, now in almost all of Italy, hunters carry out on behalf of the administrations provincial an irreplaceable role of control over the species of ungulates, now so widespread in the territory, as to constitute a serious problem for the environment, the crops, but also for the other less versatile species. The misunderstandings that in the past have opposed environmentalists, hunters and farmers are falling, precisely because of the new course of hunting activity that is increasingly understood as the management of wildlife.
There are continuous and frequent skirmishes, but often only on the facade. On the other hand, it is impossible - and always will be - any contact with the animal rights movement which, within it, sees the extreme, extremist and often violent fringes growing more and more. Animalism is a sort of inhuman modern religion, practiced by those who live in the city and have long since lost all relationship with natural facts. It is based on a false and idyllic image of nature, where instead everything is bloody conflict, where life is born from death, continuously, in a perpetual renewal. Apart from all other considerations, hunting is ethical when it is natural, when it is not waste, senseless consumption, gratuitous cruelty.
Interesting is the position of the different religions towards hunting. None of the big denominations forbid it. provided it is practiced in a natural way. The famous Italian footballer Baggio is a fervent Buddhist and a passionate hunter at the same time. The Zen monk Gigi Mario, who is in charge of a Buddhist monastery near Orvieto, asked me years ago if it was possible to cut down some of those wild boars that ravaged his garden. On the other hand, the distances from animalism are greater. Civiltà Cattolica, the authoritative magazine of the Jesuits, has for years declared war on these extreme fringes of the green utopia, underlining the risks of a philosophy that in order to raise the rights of animals reduces those of men. Making fun of the alleged rights of animals supported by the movement, the columnist of Civiltà Cattolica asked himself: “To defend the life of animals from other animals as well, should we all our life separate cats from mice? And how is it justified that they allow sheep to be eaten to feed Brother Wolf? "
Let's go back to the environmentalists or even to all those who, while not engaged in a "critical volunteer" activity, are simply bothered by the hunt, because they are now influenced by at least twenty years of contrary propaganda, or even just because of all the implications evocative of violence present even in the best and most "ethical" hunting activity.
Usually we give biological and economic answers:
1) the hunter performs the functions of the large predators that have now disappeared;
2) the hunter restores order in the social structure of the populations;
3) the hunter works throughout the year to help maintain and improve the environment and for this reason he is also willing to spend out of his own pocket (see what the CIC did in Senegal where it has recreated 52 hectares of wetlands);
4) where hunting has been prohibited, epidemics have exploded (as happened in the largest Italian parks); elsewhere some species have multiplied to the detriment of others that are less versatile and have proved to be a real scourge for crops. In the canton of Geneva, where hunting has been banned by a popular referendum, the military is often used to limit the number of supernumerary leaders;
5) wildlife is a good of the earth, like wheat, or better still, like a flock: if I have ten hectares of meadow and ten sheep, I will have to intervene in time to collect the annual increase, otherwise two or more three years will all die.
Faced with these arguments, a reasonable interlocutor will perhaps recognize that hunting is useful, that it is sometimes necessary, provided that all hunters behave well. But the reaction of "others" is often summed up in one sentence: "Yes, but you kill, you enjoy killing." This is the real ethical problem. It is true? And what answers to give?
The first: there are also just wars, defensive wars. Now hunting is like war: it is often necessary, regardless of whether a career soldier may find his or her satisfactions there. If your country is under threat, what do you do? Do you run away, take the side of the enemy, do you profess conscientious objection? Or more honestly do you risk your life for your own safety and that of your compatriots, to defend your values, your lifestyle, your culture, your religion, even your well-being? Or: if you have to have your arm cut off, do you prefer to undergo the scalpel of a surgeon who does his job with satisfaction, with a kind of professional pleasure, or by someone who doesn't like his bloody work? It is clear, in fact, that hunting, while having a biological, economic and even social function, must be practiced by those who intend to respond to an intimate and archaic drive, which we can call "pleasure", even if the act implies the death of living creatures. The "pleasure" of hunting is that instinct that has made an ape evolve into a man and the herd into an organized society. Just as the "pleasure of sex" has determined the immortality of the human species. At least so far. Both "pleasures" are therefore linked respectively to the evolution and conservation of man. But again, ethics can find solace in biology: in nature, every living species feeds on other living species. The fox kills, and it is natural. Ten thousand years ago, man learned to breed those animals he hunted and to sow those fruits he collected, in order to be able to eat them more easily, which he continues to do even today without raising excessive objections, except from the most extreme fringe of those who preach. an "innocent sharing of nature". Even if raised or cultivated for food reasons, chickens, turkeys, beans and aubergines are all living creatures (and it is not certain that vegetables do not have their own sensitivity, even if it is very rudimentary). Man, like any other being on this earth, feeds on living things, not minerals. Hunting (like slaughtering) uses a gory act to transform a protein into energy. There is nothing scandalous about this, because this is natural. It all depends on how it comes to a killing, a killing. And for this reason the hunter has given himself rules not to make the animal suffer, and not to harm the species. In addition, a series of rituals that give nobility to hunting have been invented over the centuries, such as the ceremonies that are done both to honor the killed animal and to exorcise the sense of guilt. And art (in the form of music, painting, literature) has always been a faithful witness to the act of hunting. As you can see, the discourse goes very far and can hardly be enclosed in the narrow grid of a formula. So, if you got it, fine. If not, give me your eye.