Hunting as a religious or spiritual thing? ?

Question

My family pretty much eats what we hunt and grow, and for us, hunting is a very serious and spiritual thing. I used the last of the venison from last year and decided to ask if anyone else here viewed hunting as either religious or spiritual or how people here saw it.

For anyone who is against hunting, I'm sorry if this offends I certainly do not mean to, but this is how we survive.

Answer 1

nothing wrong with hunting, as long as you use as much of the animal as you can.  i personally do not see a spiritual connection though.

will you give me the skulls?  lol

Answer 2

Without saying to much, yes I think it can be a spiritual experience if you have to hunt to sustain you self.

Answer 3

I hunt and the only thing spiritual is I respest the life i have taken, if i dont eat it I dont kill it.

tGod bless

Answer 4

Yes, it is be spiritual. You should honor the creature whose life force is taken to sustain your own.

I don't hunt, but I don't take offense.

Well, actually, that's not quite true. I have no respect for trophy hunters. I hate finding out some jerk trespassed, killed something, and left the mess for me to deal with.

Answer 5

I hunt and fish and to me both are very spiritual.  I love being out on the ocean, in the woods, or on the lake.  Nature has always held a spiritual allure for me.  Another reason I find hunting and fishing as something spiritual is my ancestors had to hunt and fish to eat.  Because this is something we share, I will often share some of the prepared food with them.  

I wish I had more time to fiddle with my garden.  I never did anything with it this year.  I've never had much luck beyond squash and green beans.  I don't do well with things that require constant maintenance.  

Answer 6

I don't see it either as a religious or a spiritual thing but I would never discredit how anyone else feels about that aspect of hunting.   The food is there to eat when we are hungry.  God said the flesh of animals is for us to eat, but if we chose not to eat animal flesh, that's fine.  If we are going to hunt it is with the intention strictly for the food we need and not for the sake of being a great hunter.  Some anti hunters seem to think it is cruel to kill wild animals but when we look at the facts the deer population in many areas would be out of control or they would die of hunger.

Answer 7

If my family hunted, I would eat meat.

I don't eat meat, because I think it is sick the way that we disrespect animals, and make out like their just little critters put here by some god, ready and willing to jump on our plates and tell us where they are most tasty.

They are not - they don't want to die.

The best way, the only way in my opinion, to eat meat, is to hunt it.  If you have to kill that animal, you probably have a great deal more respect for it as a living creature, and have a great deal more appreciation for its sacrifice for you.  You probably have a greater appreciation for how an animal feels and thinks if you hunt it, rather than if you bought it in the grocery store on a cute little white foam tray all pre-killed and pre-chopped up.

That's where the spiritual element in eating an animal comes in, for me. It can't be spiritual, if it's factory farmed. It can't. If it was hunted, killed, and thanked for its sacrifice by the community, that is spiritual.  

Answer 8

Personally, I don't hunt.  More a matter of preference than opinion, since I'm no vegetarian, and the animals are gonna die one way or the other.  If an animal's got to die, it seems a better thing that the death has meaning to someone outside of the $$$ the meat represents.

If only we all saw the spirituality in EVERYTHING we do!  Our world would be a vastly different place.

Answer 9

I don't think it should offend people because God created certain animals to eat, and it says somewhere in the bible that we are above animals. But anyway, I think of it as spiritual....

Answer 10

I'm a vegetarian but if you are hunting to eat and not for pleasure, than I don't see a problem with it. It is the way of our ancestors after all. It  was a survival mechanism, and the spirit of the animal was honoured.

What I do have issues with is the millions of animals slaughtered worldwide on a daily basis, more than enough to supply the worlds market, and so much of it thrown away.

Answer 11

Certainly hunting people is a common religious practice.

Sorry I didn't mean to offend you personally. I don't find hunting animals to be religious or spiritual but only a personal hoby or preference.

Answer 12

I currently don't hunt but my husband is talking about getting back into it soon.  He grew up hunting.  He also fishes.

I'm all for hunting, as well as farming, raising your own animals and killing them.  The way I see it animals that you kill yourself no doubt had happier lives and were killed more humanely than most factory-farmed animals so it is more ethical in my view.  The more meat you hunt and kill yourself, that means less money going towards supporting factory-farms and mainline slaughterhouses.

I can see how it can be a spiritual thing.  You kill the animal yourself, cut it up, clean it, you tend to appreciate more where your food comes from and how much is sacrificed so you can eat.  The average person who orders a McNugget meal at McDonald's doesn't think about that.  It's a better appreciation for the cycle of things.