Response: A Defense of Pluhar

Abstract

54 Taylor, op. cit., p. 179. In a different context, Vitali dismisses Taylor's claim by pointing out that animals practice deception, too (p. 74, note 9). However, it does not follow from this that moral agents should do the same, particularly when they do it for pleasure rather than necessity. Causey also discusses Taylor on the deception issue, misinterpreting him by implying that this is his sole reason for rejecting sport hunting. According to Causey, Taylor would have to hold that the bow who cleanly kills an animal after a necessarily deceptive stalk, afterwards making full, nonfrivolous use of the body, behaves more morally objectionably than the safari hunter who runs down the terrified prey in a Land Rover, shoots it with a semi-automatic weapon, and leaves the body to rot (except for the head). (Causey, op. cit., p. 340.) Taylor is committed to no such implication. His of fidelity (nondeception) to nature is only one of the duties he believes moral agents have to the wild. overriding duty we have to wild creatures, he holds, is respectful treatment. Taylor objects to sport hunting on the grounds that it shows a lack ofrespect to that which we ought to respect ([aylor, pp. 274-276), not just on the grounds that it is deceptive. Obviously, the Land Rover who uses heads for interior decoration shows less respect for wild creatures than Causey's highly idealized bow hunter. (Actual bow hunters don't measure up as well. In Texas, only half of all deer hit by arrows are retrieved by bow hunters. rate of crippling and septic infection among umecovered deer is high. Deer who are retrieved slowly bleed to death, apparently in great pain. See The American Hunter Under Fire, U. S. News and World Report, op. cit., p. 35, Bow Hunting: A Most Primitive Sport, Animals' Ageruia, May 1990, pp. 15-18, and Bowhunting Under Attack, Act'ionLine, Aprill May 1990, pp. 16-18.)