Andrew Tyler Broadway

SAEL 200
12/4/15
Addressing Ethical Controversy
In my last paper, I made numerous claims based on assumptions that pragmatic
utilitarianism and egalitarianism should be prioritized as an ethical value when examining the
issue of hunting. In this paper, I aim to reiterate and elaborate on my reasoning and address
opposing arguments within the confines of these ethical theories. I will later examine entirely
different views on ethics, such as animal liberation ethics and address these as well.
As with my previous paper, this one will explain the environmental situation in South
Carolina that allows for hunting to be ethically sound and pragmatic, but will attempt to have
more emphasis on clarity and presenting context. Much of the midlands in South Carolina, is
rural and forested. Where my parents grew up, in Sumter, there are forests and agricultural land
for dozens of miles with limited city development. Around the urban development area of
Columbia, there are vast forests in nearly every direction. This allows for the plausibility of
hunting as a population control method for deer populations. A largely urban environment would
work as an impediment to conventional wildlife control, as, in general, people are concerned or
annoyed by the sound of gunfire near their homes. There are also alternatives to hunting that will
be discussed later in the paper.
In the midlands of South Carolina, the only native large size game animal is the white tail
deer. As such, it tends to be the most popular game animal; this is due to our hunting culture,
long seasons, and the ubiquitous presence of deer in the midlands. Additionally, there is no

common predatory population. This, in particular, ensures that the population, without human
intervention, would substantially increase over time. In short, deer in South Carolina are not only
the typical population hunted in my region, they are ideal as a population that suits my argument
of hunting as a best case scenario. As such, and given my first-hand experience in deer hunting,
this makes for my population of interest. So, in short, I am conceptualizing to hunting not as a
perfectly moral act, but the best solution for the given situation.
One might ask how we got into this situation to begin with. According to an article by the
Weather Channel, in the early 20th century, state and local governments were prone to offer
bounties on wolves which were native to these regions. This started because they had the tenacity
to attack wild stock, likely due to familiarity with humans and encroachment upon the
wilderness. This drove the population down to the point of extinction. As a result, we have no
natural predators for white tailed deer in this state. Coyotes, which are an invasive canine species
from the southwest, are prone to attack fawns(young deer) who are not being attended but do not
prey upon older deer in general. As such, the deer population is bolstered by widespread
agriculture and forests and temperate weather and are, of yet, only substantially mitigated
through starvation, disease and hunting.
It is fairly well established at this point that most Americans cannot do the reverse of
Henry David Thoreau and retreat from the wild; it surrounds us, particularly individuals in rural
areas. In my vaguely suburban hometown of Anderson, every night I come home, I drive
carefully watching for deer, and see a herd of them near the road frequently, sometimes half of
the nights of the week. They are ubiquitous in this region. In fact, according to a report by ABC
news, 1 in 137 drivers in South Carolina will hit a deer at some point in the year. Some states
have three times the rate of accidents. With the increase in urban sprawl, and the decrease of deer
habitats, crashes have increased. Simply put, deer populations are an increasingly troublesome

issue.
Now how is this related to ethics? All solutions to the deer population problem entail
ethical questions that there are no easy solutions to. Hunting entails killing, which in this case is
the deprivation of a deers life by a person, typically by bow or firearm. Anti-hunting activists
who believe in intervention frequently espouse several alternatives including sterilizing the deer
population, which entails using surgery or chemicals to destroy the deers reproductive system.
With both of these solutions, there is human imposition on the deer, they are being deprived of
autonomy for the greater good. The solution of reintroducing wolves is imposition by proxy,
since we introduce the wolves with the intention of killing deer. The primary difference in this is
that humans are indirectly instead of directly involved with the killing; the method and outcome
are the same. Some individuals, mostly within the animal liberation movement support total nonimposition. this removes the human culpability through action, but not culpability through
inaction. Inaction runs the risk of damaging not only human livelihood, but the deer population
as well, as a wild population over carrying capacity tends to collapse with substantial rates of
death.
Despite there being no perfect ethically sound solutions, there are many different
approaches to how people look at the issue that is largely determined by their individual
approach to ethics. In the context of this situation, most people would approach it from a type of
normative ethics. These range from a deontological perspective (Killing is always wrong), to
utilitarianism, (What has the most utility?), to pragmatic ethics(What is morally acceptable
evolves over time based on outcomes) to consequentialism, (What are the consequences of
killing?), egalitarianism(What is fair and promotes equality?) and even rational egoism (Whats
in it for me?). In many cases, you could argue for or against hunting from either side of these
ethical principles.

My approach to this topic is consequentialist and utilitarian with some emphasis on

egalitarianism, (though they are interrelated and complement each other). My reasoning is not
quite a syllogism, but is thus; given that we have a situation where there is a probable need to
intervene in wildlife, and because the hunted deer population provides easy access to fresh meat
for a lot of the population while preventing the population from increasing, and given the
alternatives are similar but provide less utility, hunting can be said to be the most ethical current
option for dealing with short term maintenance of the deer population. Unfortunately, this
argument only works if the reader is operating to people under similar ethical priorities, views
about what constitutes ethical action, with regards to animals, tend to vary wildly as a spectrum.
A key example of this is the controversy between the Connecticut based animal rights
organization called Friends of Animals and their challenge of Texan ranchers. The scimitar oryx,
is a large mammal that is similar to a deer, and is extinct in the wild in Africa. As of around
2000, all of the animals of this species currently alive are in captivity. In response the US
Wildlife and Fishing Service allowed exemptions for the controlled hunting of endangered
species that are raised in a ranch, and this policy was extremely successful, and there were
11,000 scimitar oryxs reportedly in captivity in Texas in early 2012. Friends of Animals pushed
for a challenge to the law and in 2013 the regulations increased heavily. As a result, many
ranches have not only stopped hunting them but have stopped breeding them. When the president
of Friends of Animals was interviewed, she stated that she would rather not have them exist at all
in Texas than to have them be hunted there. This position is indicative of an ethical foundation
that is built on specific moral principles of duty; FOA is against all hunting, regardless of
whether it achieves a higher purpose. I would argue that this is position is arbitrary, and
furthermore inconsistent with the present notions of conservationism, at least wildlife

conservationism. A person can be a conservationist without directly killing, you can breed
animals on a ranch and release them into the wilderness, but if the ecosystem is balanced, the
animals released are bound to be prey, and thus you contribute to their death (or if predators, the
death of other animals), if the ecosystem is not balanced, then without intervention there will be
population explosions and crashes. In the former case, biggest difference between hunting and
this is the predator not being human, in the latter case, theres nothing being conserved in any
meaningful sense. In any case, animal liberationist ethics can stray far from my conception of the
ethics of hunting.
As I hinted at in previous papers I view the hunting debate as a largely rural vs. urban
issue. This needs to be taken into consideration with regards to both cultural considerations in as
utility in utilitarianism. There are also interesting issues in egalitarianism, namely that, if I am
correct that hunting is predominantly supported in rural areas and more strongly opposed in
urban areas, then the opposition to hunting may work as a form of cultural imposition. Rural
areas, particularly in the south, are a culturally distinct region. Hunting symbols are ubiquitous
on cars, people wear camouflage to the store, and many people have guns, at least for hunting or
varmints. Many of these characteristics are used to stereotype rural people as being backward,
poor, or uneducated. Meanwhile city dwellers and suburban people are seen in a much more
advanced and sophisticated than rural people. Depending on the city or urban region they may
have access to more services and more money. When a substantial portion of the population lives
in cities or highly developed areas, this lifestyle becomes the norm, and political opinions
develop around this norm. As such, the culture of middle class urban/suburban living is imposed
upon rural areas. Its worth noting that, ironically, poor urban areas in huge cities suffer from

similar struggles to rural areas, the most accessible store for food may be a gas station.
The stereotype about rural people being more impoverished isnt entirely without merit
according to a report by the council of economic advisors of the Obama Administration,
rural areas account for 17% of the population, and have, on average an issue with lower incomes
and higher rates of poverty than the nation on average. Low quality ground beef from
Bi-Lo is currently $5.00/lb on special, and this is a best case scenario; meat from Whole Foods at
game quality can be over $10.00/lb. After an initial investment in equipment, hunting
several deer a year, each weighing 66-200lbs can save families potentially hundreds of dollars a
year in food costs, and increasing access to higher quality meats. This is not
this is not simply food to people who have land and the ability to hunt; the organization SC
Hunters for the Hungry donated over 30,000 lbs of venison to various homeless shelters and
churches across South Carolina. This solidifies hunting as a concept that has a large degree of
practical utility and allows for ethical egalitarian outcomes as a result. It is therefore reasonable
to claim that hunting benefits not only hunters, but people across SC as a whole.
The common rebuttal to this, from a utilitarian perspective, would be that the animals
right to life supersedes that of the hunters need for cheap food. I think this is a worthwhile
ethical concept that is rarely if ever addressed sufficiently. I actually see a high degree of validity
to this claim in the context of factory farming, demand for factory farmed meat in a vegetarian
society would be nonexistent, however deer populations would still have to be controlled through
either culling or sterilization. If culling were the option, then meat would still be useful to
utilize for hungry people. Typically speaking, the rebuttal to my rebuttal would be that extra food
would be unnecessary because wed produce enough food for everybody to eat. Except the

problem isnt production, its logistics, cost of distribution and consumer preferences. Its
unlikely that the supply of food will ever decrease to the point where someone who is truly
destitute can afford to eat three full meals a day regularly. Until then, the utility and egalitarian
benefit of hunting is a valid and relevant point.
If we are to assume that the world should allow omnivorous diets, hunting is the one of
the best ethical options for meat, deer are free range; they live natural lives where theyre free to
run and breed, which is a superior alternative to the typical practices of the meat industry,
particularly for poultry and pigs. Even grass fed cattle is in captivity to some extent. In either
case, the animals are processed into food, but the main difference is that the hunter is less
removed from the source of his or her meat. Someone who consumes meat he or she doesnt
kill cannot rationally be assumed to be on a moral high ground, as they simply have effectively
paid to have that responsibility placed on a corporate employee. This is actually a fairly similar
ethical dilemma to the solution of reintroducing wolves to the environment, in that the burden of
the killing is placed on a third party, in this case, a wolf.
If we are take the opposing side that killing is wrong, but if killing needs to occur, and it
should occur ethically, it does not make sense to reintroduce wolves into the wild.
Wolves hunt as a pack, their prey is warm and can kill and they dont have any real reason to kill
efficiently. There is plenty of documented evidence that suggests wolves will start eating their
prey alive which can be found with a cursory search on the internet. It is by no means an ethical
alternative to hunting. I suspect that this option is popular because we view the wolf as having no
regard for ethics, killing is in its nature.
We expect man to be above killing, to move past the a trend developed in the past

100,000 years of our evolution, in our modern civilized society; its quite a shock for some to
have to face the reality of being personally involved with killing. By intervening and putting the
responsibility of killing on another, we can absolve ourselves of responsibility, with the wolves
or with the slaughterhouse employees. If someone were to bring in a cat to
fix a rat problem, its the same consequence and intent as hitting the rat with a hammer. The
main different is the extent in which you can believe you were removed from what you did..
With that in mind, if we assume the deer can suffer, shouldnt we minimize it, and if we dont
believe it can suffer, why bother?
Reintroduction does however restore a degree of equilibrium to the ecosystem and deer
population. It does put it more in its primal state, but this presents another issue, theres not
really such thing as true wilderness for South Carolina. The solution of reintroduction disregards
the nature of wolves and the ubiquity of humans. Wolves who have not been habituated to
humans are prone to eat smaller animals, such as pets, chicken and sheep, and wolves who have
been habituated to humans can be dangerous. The reason that the wolf population in the
southeast is negligible was in part demand by humans to stop having wolves messing with pets
and livestock, and this situation seems very likely to reoccur, predators that arent cats tend to be
disliked by humans. As such reintroduction presents a potential problem where hunting still
occurs, but also the hunting of wolves still occurs as well.
One of the other very predominant positions on hunting and wildlife populations, in my
experience, is the non-intervention approach common with animal liberationists , would it not be
simply better to just remove the human element entirely? If the priority concern is the
minimization of harm to the population, no. One of the first things the SCDNR online hunters

education course(which can be taken for free) teaches you is about seasonal population growth.
We have abundant food for deer in the summers, huge farms, temperate weather, vast
forests. This allows for large populations to emerge. In the fall, without hunting, the population
would stay roughly the same, in the winter, a large proportion tends to die out from starvation,
because nearly all of the agriculture is harvested at this point. If the population does not die out
in sufficient numbers in the winter and has steady growth, inevitably, the population will
eventually reach a point where the population collapses due to Bouldings dismal theorem. As
previously referenced, the consequence of action or inaction is roughly the same for the deer
population, but inaction comes at a lack of utility, and doesnt aid people who are greatly helped
as the result of the availability of hunting.
In conclusion the approach to the ethical issues of hunting is determined by how one sets
their moral priorities, and what ethical framework theyre using. If you view game hunting with
an egalitarian or utilitarian ethical framework, it can be a very ethically valid alternative, but this
relies on what you consider a moral imperative. If youre on the wellbeing of the deer population
as a whole, or the people who are helped by hunting, it is a completely valid practice. If you
focus on the individual act of killing that hunting entails, you have a lot of questions you cant
answer so easily, what is the value of the life of one deer versus the utility of one family? You
cant know for sure, and any claims about this are hard to substantiate. Ive based the crux of my
argument around the community or deer populations these interventions affect and have
ultimately focused on what provides the best outcomes for the most entities. Hunting may
eventually become unnecessary, maybe because the country produces and redistributes food to
the population adequately so that all wants are relatively met. Maybe there will be a method that

passively reduces the deer population without active intervention being a necessity. Maybe there
will be an effort to separate the environment from people. Maybe land management will fail and
the deer population becomes endangered. Until then, hunting remains the best
intervention as far as providing utility and population control, and will likely be around for
decades and decades to come.

Reference Page
"SC Hunters for the Hungry : Feeding the Truly Hungry of South Carolina." SC Hunters for the
Hungry. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.

"Red Alert. Mysterious Deaths Leave Red Wolves on the Brink of Extinction The Weather
Channel. 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 5 Dec. 2015. http://stories.weather.com/story/8795
"Hunting of Rare, Exotic Antelopes Now Limited under New U.S. Rule." Scientific American
Blog Network. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.
" Factors That Affect Surplus of Game Animals." South Carolina Hunter's Ed Course. Web. 5
Dec. 2015.
"Wildlife - 2014 Deer Harvest Report." SCDNR. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.
State of the Rural Economy The White House. Web. 5/ Dec 2015