1) Hunting likely imposes far less suffering on an animal than it would incur during its "natural death." The same types of things that kill people kill animals (viruses, bacteria, cancer, etc.) but wild animals have no access to healthcare. They likely die a slow, shitty death, that very well could end up with them starving to death or being torn apart by carnivores and scavengers. And to that end, being young, healthy, and well aware that a mountain lion or bear has your leg and is going to eat you probably also sucks a lot more than being shot, having zero idea what just happened, and quickly expiring. Getting shot by anything probably hurts like shit, but all the other ways an animal can go seem equally, if not more shitty. 2) You absolutely need to eat meat. Sure, you can live as a vegan with all kinds of supplements and whatnot, but that seems paradoxical to the entire "naturalness" of being vegan. Or I guess you could eat like 600 berries and a bushel of wheat but idk if thats gluten free. A couple grams of meat can provide key nutrients that are elsewhere sparse in nature. The problem is most of us eat quarter-pounders with cheese rather than rationing meat appropriately or eating quality produce. 3) Hunting promotes conservation. It's a simple principle in economics that goes like this: Make hunting illegal, landowners have no desire to protect the animals because they cannot profit from them, poachers kill the animals illegally anyways. Or, legalize hunting, landowners promote the species on their lands and actively seek to reduce poaching in order to make money by selling permits to hunt the animals. This has been demonstrated in Africa for a number of different animals/countries. It makes sense when you can charge literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to hunt some of these animals. Hunting can also reduce disease in animals by controlling population levels. 4) People kill a fuck-ton of animals in labs everyday researching things that will keep your lazy ass alive longer. I don't see why we would give animals rights, quit eating meat, and oh but keep guillotining Pinky over here and growing Brain with fucked up ass genes that have legs coming out where eyes should be. That's bullshit. Seriously, you can't say we should give animals rights but still do research on the ones that will help cure human disease. And the stuff that happens to many lab animals is way worse than natural predators, human hunters, or even shitty factory farm conditions can produce. I'm a huge proponent of research, but could see how it would suck to literally be grown up to have cystic fibrosis, fucked with a little to see how some drugs worked, then killed after a couple miserable weeks of life. 5) Pain is essential to higher order animals that have well developed pain pathways. When animals are grown without pain receptors, they usually die. Since pain is basically our way of saying, "Hey, don't do that because this is damaging things that you need, and if we damage enough things we will die, and the ultimate goal is survival," it kind of goes to show that pain is sort of an inevitable part of death. Obviously there are exceptions, but usually you have to experience pain somewhere during the gross experience of death. This just kind of goes back to the whole idea of centering our idea of animal rights around pain, and how death, regardless of whether it be by predator, disease, or overcrowded and stressful conditions, always involves some component of pain. It just seems like a flawed way to form the foundation for animal rights.

Thoughts anyone?