by Scott Allison

Created on: December 05, 2008

Is hunting animals a legitimate sport? How could I vote on that? It was either yes or no. What I was looking for was a "maybe" vote. I don't hunt anymore partly because I have arthritis in my neck and putting a twelve guage to it and pulling the trigger would kill me well before I missed the deer I was shooting at and partly because I don't own a gun anymore. I got rid of my last one several years ago when I found out how well my ex-wife could shoot one. She's almost legally blind without glasses but can knock a tick off a boars behind at fifty yards.

I'd like to use the maybe button as there are two different types of hunting. I believe one to be a sport and one to be a useless killing of a wild animal. Let me explain.

I was taught that if you hunted wild game and killed it, you ate it. That was the sport of it. Wild animals are far more intelligent than some folks give them credit for. There is a sport in it to outthink the game you are hunting. And when you killed it, you had to have the knowledge of how to clean it, cook it and eat it. At least that's how we did it as I grew up in rural Florida. I know alot of hunters will kill deer and just dump it off at a meathouse to have it cleaned and processed and that's okay. I hunted with some friends that had their own meathouse. And we did it all ourselves. That gave me the feeling of the "sport" of hunting. Then you have to take into consideration the time and knowledge it takes to find the right place to hunt. You don't just park on the side of the road and wait for a deer to walk by. If you've practiced what you've been taught about hunting you'll be in their element. That's another part of the "sport". As hunters age and teach their children the correct way of hunting is yet one more example of the "sport" of hunting. I have an eleven year old son the lives and breathes to go hunting. Because I can't hunt anymore he goes with his Uncle Ray who's an outstanding sportsman when it comes to hunting. He understands all to well if he kills something in the woods he has to get it out of the woods so it can be cleaned and cut to eat, not an easy project for an eleven year old. But he'll do it because that is what makes it a "sport".

The flipside of the coin is the useless killing of wild game for trophy. If I was to walk into someone's home and see a zebra head mounted on the wall I'd have to ask myself why this person doesn't just go shoot his neighbors horse and have it stuffed. There doesn't seem to be much sport in that to me. I can hear the boos coming from some reading this already in knowing that a deer hunter will mount a large deer head and hang it on the wall. To that I say there is very little, if any, edible meat in the head of a deer. What's not on the wall is in the freezer. Where is the rest of the zebra?

To me, hunting is alot like painting a house. You either love it or you can't stand it at all. There's not too much "middle of the road" discussion that's going to happen. But, even if you hate it doesn't make it not a sport. Where you draw the line between sport and waste is something totally different. If you teach a hunter to respect the sport he or she will respect the hunted as well. That's what makes the difference.

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