Just Where Is the ‘Joy’ in Killing?

On Dec. 31, you featured “The Joy Hunt Club” concerning the supposed virtues of bowhunting the tiny sika deer.

Washington Post writer Phil McCombs devoted his obvious talent to extolling the wonder and glory of coldblooded butchery disguised as tradition.

We are also supposed to enjoy this slaughter in the context of great American literature as indicated by the numerous references to James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Deerslayer.” What we are not supposed to remember is that “The Deerslayer” is set in a time and a place where hunting was a necessity to survive.

DAVID McINTIRE

Gardena

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The account of a bowhunter’s stalking and killing of a doe was certainly an uplifting article for year’s end. The multiple comments justifying the killing of other creatures were nonsense: “Completing a primitive communion with nature . . . meditative, spiritual dimension . . . .”

Yet, the hunters use such telling phrases as “Whack ‘em and stack ‘em.” Rampant spirituality, this?

MARGE HACKETT

Ojai

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Deer hunter Timothy Forster has me confused. He says “I don’t just kill things for fun.” And yet the article states, “In his hunting Forster has found great joy . . . a powerful sensation . . . a dizzying thrill.”

To demonstrate his compassion for the deer, Forster, finds “always a little remorse when an animal loses its life. . . . They’re like anything else--you know it hurts when you spine-shoot them.”

If Forster feels remorse when an animal is suffering or dying, why does he shoot them?

Environmental biologist Ann Causey says in the article that killing game animals is “not a moral issue at all because the urge itself is an instinct.”

I’m glad I was born without that “instinct.”

GEORGE WOOD

Malibu