The unpopular opinions thread.

But poaching is traditionally defined as illegal hunting. So, what term does that leave for legal trophy hunting?

So all the elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers and cheetahs go extinct. 

Not to mention you believe ethics is subjective. Just because it's wrong for you doesn't mean it's wrong for other people. For a big game hunter, it could be absolutely ethical for them to gun down animals for their heads.

Either there are no absolutes or there are. You can not have it both ways.

The trick about subjectivity is that you can also have your opinion and feelings about issues. You should know that better than most. Subjectivity isn't just 'there are no laws or right or wrong'. It's that all our laws and morals and ethics have no greater construction or mandate than what we as humans come to consensus on. The universe is inherently amoral. We as humans are not. 

I can state a position and feeling on a topic or issue, and recognize that it has no bearing on the natural state of the universe. But I can advocate that position and make arguments for it. It doesn't mean a law or morality created by constructed by humans is necessarily wrong, but that it's just that; a construction by humans, and, depending on the amount of zeal behind it, it can be particularly malleable or rigid.

Also, you missed the part where I differentiated my feelings on what should be from my acknowledgement of what is.

I don't have a very high opinion of Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

Of course anyone may say anything. That doesn't make it right or even coherent. Altering the meaning of words only muddies the waters and deprives people of the ability to discuss things rationally. Which is of course the point of such an Orwellian maneuver.

Poaching is hunting animals illegally. What you are trying to argue is that all trophy hunting should be illegal, for no adequately explained reason and therefore it ought to be poaching. Saying that does not mean that it is currently.

And please do not try tell me what I am thinking. You really have no idea.

Lastly, the universe is very much moral. People have the choice not to be.

Wait, so you care enough about animals being killed to warrant you wanting to enact legislature but you don't care all that much about bestiality?

And, apologies for the smug attitude. Irritation affects us all differently. I just didn't realize my unpopular opinions would be so ground-breakingly unpopular.

I do care about bestiality. I don't care about zoophilia. 

I heard Ostriches taste good.

I don't like trophy hunting either. If you're hunting for food, that's fine but hunting for the sake of putting an animals head on a wall is just stupid and unnecessary to me. People pay a lot of money to hunt too but some of these organizations that claim that the money goes back into "conservation" isn't always true.

I shot a deer and mounted its head on my wall this season. Thoughts? 

if you ate the meat or sold it on to someone who would eat it and used the skin or sold it to someone who would use it I don't care what you do with the head,

killing something just to have the head is dumb and problematic for the future survival not just of that animal species but also for humans in the area, sure we can eat most animals on the planet but a varied diet based on local flora and fauna is better than a fixed diet across the planet based on a narrow selection of farmed produce....

keeping a momento of a kill and putting it on display isn't really a problem, I even agree that paid for hunts in the savanah or national parks are a good thing so long as the licences fund the parks work and do not endanger populations being kept there.

every now and then some group like "born free foundation" pops up and wastes its entire capital reserves trying to do something that ultimately fails due to lack of funding and narrow-mindedness, had that group understood from the off that allowing a couple of kills of their herds a year for a high price would of let them grow faster do more and made them self funding instead of reliant on donations that will always eventually dry up and ultimately mean their long term failure then despite their illogical stand point they would of survived and might even have achieved greatness, something that some places have realised much earlier on, of course that would also need to be coupled with proper security measures to prevent poachers, indeed an area the size of the masai mara could be totally poacher free had they a sustainable policy but instead they prefer to burn everything that wasn't a licenced kill and still sell permits for trophies and burn the meat..... illegal meat will always be produced from illegal kills, so logic dictates that they should control the culled numbers and allow people to buy licences to take part in the cull and ultimately make money from selling the produce, be that the trophy head or the meat taken from the kill.... but no they prefer short sighted measures designed ot ensure the highest price for the poachers from those stolen items....

much better to make all travel through a zone only legal where you have a licence tag, make it an rfid tag give different tags for each zone and send up drones armed with machine guns to kill anyone that doesn't have a tag who's in the zone, and bingo there will be no unlicenced killing or trade of stuff, no more problems because the rangers cant cover such a large area with so few people, and bingo the problem of illegal hunting disappears