Taking out stress through hunting?

[oBakasan]

Before I begin telling this story, I like to point out that normally I'm an extremely non-violent person, I can't stand getting into fights, and I quite literaly can't hurt a fly (I sometimes spend a good ten-fifteen minutes trying to save the spiders and beetles that crawl into my house or are stuck on the pavement outside).

Anyway, with that said, a month or so ago I went hunting for the first time, and killed a bird. The whole thing was an extremely stressful endeavor, especially since I wasn't sure if killing that specific species was even legal around there.

However, somehow at the end of it all, I realized that I enjoyed the act of killing an animal. It wasn't even the act itself, but more of a prideful feeling at the end of it saying "Yeah, I've done it. It was hard to take a living beings life, but I was able to".

Now at first I thought that it was an interesting encounter and that's it, but lately I've been feeling extremely agitated and dissatisfied with my life and in all of this stress I was thinking of going hunting again, just so I could release my stress and get that pleasurable boost in my emotions again.

Is that a bad thing? Am I wrong in wanting to kill an animal just so I could let my stress out? I recall reading a novel where one of the characters was manic depressive and freqently let out his anger by bringing in cats home and butchering them. Am I becoming just like that?

Also, I am concerned that if I look at this from the perspective of Oneness (the bird is me, and I am the bird) then doesn't the act of killing the bird symbolyse an act of killing myself? Can it be that subconsciously I am so dissatsifed with everything that I want to destroy my own self?

What do you guys think?

[Revolution]

I'm not going to rave on here - I'm just simply going to say that I definately don't recommend that sort of thing to feel better. I would say that it would be bad karma for sure.

[Calvan]

That looks like a very bad road to go down. Life is precious even though it seems to be in great abundance here on earth. This is the ONLY place we know for fact that life exists. In the whole universe you cannot point to another place and say there is anything there but minerals and molecules. As humans it could well be that we are the only things in existence that can recognize this. Being so it's something of a duty for us not to squander it for pleasure or pride. So don't go trying to improve something as ephemeral as your mood by destroying something so precious that may be unique in the universe. That of course is just MHO and your mileage may vary.

As for the feeling you got from the kill... I't could be the glow of achievement. You said yourself "yeah Ive done it".. well there's other things that are hard to do that you can take pride in accomplishing. Or it could be the joy of the slaughter. You are mammal. All mammals go on killing sprees. There is something apparently deep inside our mamalian brain that causes this. Dogs, chimps,bears and even skunks go on killing sprees. You may just have experienced that primal emotion that causes these behaviors. As an enlightened human though you can control it Kill if you must eat. Kill if you must protect. Don't do it for sport or therapy though. It sounds like this would be going against your nature and will eventually cause you much internal turmoil. Good luck and enjoy

[Jarrod]

If I were to guess, there are a set of emotions that come into play when hunting/killing.

Emotions have a certain compulsive nature to them, we are attracted to a desire to feel emotions that felt good before so we seek out the activities that produced them.

I think you should investigate the real cause of your stress. Don't let yourself live a never ending cycle of stress and pleasure.

[ChaosKiwi]

It sounds to me like you enjoyed overcoming a stressful experience more than the act of killing. This sense of accomplishment may be the reason your feeling dissatisfied as you now feel you can achieve more (this is more a guess on my part than anything else).

I would recommend trying to figure out why you are feeling agitated and dissatisfied and focusing on overcoming those obstacles. If they are stressful to overcome, then you might get that sense of accomplishment again in a more positive way.

Or you could go hunt and kill some pest animals in your area (like rabbits maybe). To be honest I don't think it will be all that enjoyable as you come across as conflicted on such an act, but it might be worth testing again.

[jokerman]

I think it's repulsive to kill living beings for sport, or therapeutic reasons. But I think it's great fun, and healthy, to shoot video game characters, or to pummel an opponent with boxing gloves. In short, I believe that expressing violent energy is fine, but taking it to the level of damaging another being is a fatal error. You have to be more skillful to get along in this world, it's that simple.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Take your gun, put on a jacket, a hat, and go out and shoot those animals.

Don't forget your an animal yourself. Your just smarter, and better equipped.

Don't worry about all this talk of negative karma, I kill hundreds of bugs all the time and I honestly haven't been smote down. I have never actually been hunting, mostly because its not very easy to do in England! But I sure would love to.

Just make sure you don't start people hunting because then you can get into all sorts of bothersome legal trouble.

[poochiegirl]

i think killing an animal is cruel. friend your not far from killing a human, please dont step over that line. get some help you desperatly need some like yesterday.

[Akashic_Librarian]

I am sorry but to suggest someone who goes hunting is one step off being a killer of humans is wrong.

A conscious person can still kill animals and not wish to kill humans.

[ar81]

I would advice to play a videogame, instead of venting your stress on living creatures. I find hunting particularly disturbing. We humans are animals.



Look how disturbing I see mistreatment of animals (image is a bit disturbing IMHO, not recommendable for kids or sensitive people, bit it shows the cruelty of human mistreatment of animals).
http://frazer.rice.edu/~erkan/blog/a...ullfight-2.jpg