Originally posted by SimbaTheLion
In my eyes, all three of those points are true, for many hunters, and for almost all hunters.
Do you personally know any hunters, allowing yourself to have an informed opinion on this matter? My grandfather used to hunt. He most certainly did not fit -any- of those descriptions. He's a very nice humble man, with great respect for living things.

Sidenote: It's actually false that animals do not have the ability to care about members of other species. Anyone ever owned a dog? There have also been several incidents of animals adopting orphaned young of another species, even in predator-prey relationships (the lioness and the...I believe it was, gazelle story anyone?)

Not really. Sure, I probably wouldn't get a buzz out of watching it, but I'd rather that happen since it's necessary, instead of other animals being killed unnecessarily as well...
Which part is necessary? Cattle being stuffed into little boxes? Chickens force-fed grain? Is that what you're saying is necessary? Or just that we need to have some source of meat for food? If it's the latter, wouldn't it be better to go about this in a more natural way, rather than breeding hordes of animals that spend their entire lives suffering?

I disagree on both points. If you've ever taken a decent biology class, you will have studied predator-prey cycles.

Basically, for those who haven't:

1) The predator population is less than the prey's population.
2) The prey population increases because there aren't many predators.
3) The predator population increases because of the excess of prey.
4) The prey population starts to decline because there are more predators.
5) The predator's population declines because there is less prey.

And back to step 1. Humans disrupt that; that's how it works perfectly naturally and would continue to do so if humans didn't interfere!
If you've ever taken a decent biology class, you should also understand that humans are part of this chain. What we do affects the rest of the cycle. We cannot remove ourselves from it so long as we reside on this planet. Cattle require vast amounts of land to graze on. When using farm-raised meat, you have two options: Keep the animals in small, inhumane conditions, or destroy natural land in order to create more comfortable conditions for the livestock. Granted, with human populations at the size they are, we do need to produce more animals for food, but perhaps we wouldn't need to produce quite so many if we relied on natural populations to a degree.

Additionally, nature does not always work in perfect cycles. You should have also learned that in a decent biology class. Sometimes the top predator species is wiped out, sometimes naturally, sometimes because of us. The problem Yellowstone has been having for quite some time was initially our fault. Humans wiped out the wolf populations and deer populations skyrocketed. Deer began dying of disease and starvation because their environment could not maintain such a large population increase. We had to thin out the population via hunting to prevent the -entire- population from dying out. We have been reintroducing wolves to the area, but this is a slow and difficult process and in order to keep the deer population stable, hunting is required.

And, no, as for being a hypocrite, that's a load of rubbish; I condone hunting much more than animals being raised for meat. That is necessary; hunting is not (usually).
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here because you just contradicted yourself. You just said you condone hunting more than factory farming. But you said factory farming is necessary whereas hunting is not. Hunting is not "necessary" only because factory farms exist. If you condone hunting over factory farming, then why are you condemning hunting? Wouldn't it make more sense to condone it? If more people hunted, less meat would come from factory farms. If you agree that factory farming is more cruel than hunting, but choose factory farmed meat over hunted meat, then you're just proving my point that typically, grocery-meat consumers have less respect for the circumstances that brought them their food because it's easy for them to ignore and forget what it took to get that meat. If you cared about animals as much as you claim, and honestly did not condone factory farming, then I would expect you to either 1-Not eat meat or 2-Turn to hunting for your food so that you're not supporting such a cruel system.