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Old 07-29-2014, 04:49 AM   #15
Faramir Jones
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1420! Yes

As others have pointed out, Brego, the answer to your question is 'Yes', there being the example of Sam cooking the rabbits caught by Gollum for himself and Frodo.

There's also the issue of what the Shire was based on. Tolkien did so, as he said, on a village in the English Midlands c.1897, like the one in which he spent part of his childhood.

The inhabitants of such a village, like the hobbits based on them, were not vegetarian. However, Tolkien did qualify this a little in one of his letters, as William Cloud Hicklin said, saying that hobbits did not practise blood sports, and had a greater empathy with wild creatures than the villagers he based them on.

It seems reasonable to say that Sam, like any other hobbit, would have no problems with killing wild animals for food, or raising tame ones for the same purpose. But he would not kill any for sport. As denethorthefirst said, a hobbit would see no contradiction in this attitude.

It's interesting about Tolkien's attitude towards blood sports; because of what has happened since his death regarding hunting in Great Britain. The hunting of wild mammals with a dog was, with some qualifications, banned in Scotland in 2002, and then in England and Wales in 2004, the legislation in the latter part being enforced from 2005. Perhaps, considering his stated attitude in his Letters, he might have been sympathetic to such a ban.
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