Originally posted by: Tiptup

Originally posted by: C3PX
I am completely against pointless killing of animals, or merely killing them for sport.

"Merely" killing for sport, cruelly or unwisely ignoring other proper concerns is definitely wrong, but I would like to clarify that killing animals for sport is not wrong by itself in every instance. There are honorable and wise approaches to killing animals for sport, and we simply have to keep them in mind if we engage in such sport. (I personally don't hunt animals and never have, but I respect the tradition.)

By "merely killing them for sport" I meant to say, hunting and not taking, or wasteful and reckless hunting habits. I met a guy once who bragged about shooting over 150 small game birds in a day. He proudly showed me a picture of himself proudly holding his shotgun surrounded by dead birds. If you shoot a few of them you can go home and pluck them and cook them fair enough, but he kept going merely because he was enjoying himself, and he went way too far. The majority of those birds ended up being thrown away, if any were used for food at all. They are a pain to pluck so it is not like you can call up your friends and say I got a few two many do you want some? Because very few people are willing to do all that work for such a tiny amount of meat. You have guys who will hunt deer, and when they make a kill they will just leave it. You are only allowed a certain number a deer every year, by abandoning them and pretending you didn't get anything allows you to get a better deer later and lets you kill more. These types of hunters are reckless. You have a lot of guys who do things like this and it makes hunters in general look bad. Both of these examples are illegal and if somebody doing either of them were to get caught he would have a hefty fine and possible jail time, but you would be surprised how many people get away with things like this. By "merely killing them for sport" this is what type of behavior I was referring too.