This essay argues that hunting animals purely for sport, as generally conducted, is unsportsmanlike and morally and philosophically indefensible.
Target shooting is a lifelong hobby of mine. I enjoy the intellectual aspects of the Constitutional law of the Second Amendment, as well as the practical, fun aspects of the exercise of that guarantee -- shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns.
I am not addressing here the issue of animal “rights” from a legal or a philosophical perspective.* I stipulate that animals have no formal “rights.”
It is a classic Libertarian view that people should be free to do what they want to do as long as what they do does not injure anyone else or create a negative externality. Without wading into the issue of whether or not animals have rights Libertarians can agree that people should never knowingly cause unnecessary or gratuitous suffering -- whether to other humans or to non-human animals -- unless such suffering may be justified on some utilitarian basis to aid or to protect humans.
Animals in the wild are subject to predation and violent death by other non-human animals trying to survive. Hunting to control animal populations which have become unbalanced due to human intrusion upon, or disruption of, wildlife habitats or ecology also does not trouble me. (There we are simply trying to restore the original, natural ecological balance.) If someone hunts for food and skins the animal and eats the meat that is perfectly consistent with Darwinian survival along the food chain. But each of these reasons for hunting involves more than killing just for fun and challenge.
Animals of all varieties and sizes, other than humans, spend their lives foraging for food, sleeping, taking care of their offspring, playing and relaxing. Animals are (with certain particular species excepted) innocent.
While dolphins, elephants and monkeys are self-aware,** other non-human animals may not be self-aware, but, as we know from our pets, they have things to do, toys to play with and places to go. They search for food; they play; they manifest concern about their relatives; they give and receive attention and affection; they show emotion; they communicate. Day by day they go about their lives. There is much formal evidence and innumerable anecdotes of dogs taking deliberate action to assist or defend their owners. While dogs are not self-aware, they certainly are sentient.*** Dolphins, monkeys, pigs, elephants and dogs also display some of the elements of reason.****
What is the analytically principled rationale for making animals suffer and die purely for hunters’ fun? On utilitarian grounds one can argue reasonably that medical and product testing is better conducted on animals than on people. But what is the basis for believing that a human’s enjoyment of hunting for fun justifies the physical pain and suffering visited upon the target animals?
Not infrequently a wounded animal escapes the hunter’s scope reticle and is left to die a slow, torturous death. How can the balance of equities between hunting for fun versus extreme suffering by innocent animals be decided in favor of hunting on moral or on utilitarian or on Libertarian grounds?
If outer space aliens invaded the Earth and hunted humans for sport would you not be upset if your wife or daughter or mother were shot dead on the front lawn of your house because an alien wanted to challenge himself for fun to see if he could make the shot from his hovering spacecraft? Is Mike Tyson engaged in the sport of boxing if he punches an unsuspecting man in an alleyway? Is the driver of a Lamborghini beating you in a automobile race on the highway if he is speeds by your Porsche at 150 mph while you are on your way to meet your in-laws for dinner?
Any hunter hunting at night with a rifle and aiming with an infrared or thermal imaging scope should be ashamed of himself, I think. Is it possible to imagine a more cowardly or unsportsmanlike strategy?
We should reform hunting for sport by requiring the hunter to exhibit at lease an iota of sportsmanlike behavior. To afford the activity of hunting any semblance of being a sport the hunter, at the very least, should be obliged to alert his intended prey that the prey is about to participate in a game. The hunter should fire two unsuppressed warning shots in close proximity to the target animal. If the target animal does not take evasive action in response to the warning shots then the hunter should feel in reasonable conscience that he or she may proceed. Hunting would remain, in my opinion, a morally and philosophically indefensible activity, but let us cloak it with at least the thinnest veil of sportsmanship.
It isn't a sport if the other guy doesn't know he's playing a game.
* The Argument from Marginal Cases is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognitively disabled have direct moral status, animals must have a similar status, since there is no known morally relevant ability that those marginal-case humans have that animals lack. (“Direct moral status” here means the possession of some basic right, such as the right not to be killed or the right not to be made to suffer.) This must be more true, proponents argue, for non-human animals manifesting greater intelligence and decision-making capacity than marginal case humans.
A counter-argument is the Argument from Species Normality. Proponents of this view hold that if most of a species' members have direct moral status then any member has the same rights and protections as the species, even if that particular member is mentally disabled or comatose or less intelligent than some non-human animals. The moral status of an individual depends on what is normal for that individual's species. So the fact that some dogs are more intelligent than some humans does not endow all dogs with direct moral status because most humans are much more intelligent and capable than most dogs.
** Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Studies testing the self-awareness of non-human animals have been done mainly on primates. Apes, monkeys, elephants, and dolphins have been studied most frequently.
Self-awareness in animals is tested through mirror self recognition. Animals who show mirror self recognition go through four stages 1) social response, 2) physical mirror inspection, 3) repetitive mirror testing behavior, and 4) the mark test -- which involves the animals spontaneously touching a mark on their body which would have been difficult to see without the mirror.
*** Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.
**** Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.
(All footnotes are from Wikipedia.)
Target shooting is a lifelong hobby of mine. I enjoy the intellectual aspects of the Constitutional law of the Second Amendment, as well as the practical, fun aspects of the exercise of that guarantee -- shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns.
I am not addressing here the issue of animal “rights” from a legal or a philosophical perspective.* I stipulate that animals have no formal “rights.”
It is a classic Libertarian view that people should be free to do what they want to do as long as what they do does not injure anyone else or create a negative externality. Without wading into the issue of whether or not animals have rights Libertarians can agree that people should never knowingly cause unnecessary or gratuitous suffering -- whether to other humans or to non-human animals -- unless such suffering may be justified on some utilitarian basis to aid or to protect humans.
Animals in the wild are subject to predation and violent death by other non-human animals trying to survive. Hunting to control animal populations which have become unbalanced due to human intrusion upon, or disruption of, wildlife habitats or ecology also does not trouble me. (There we are simply trying to restore the original, natural ecological balance.) If someone hunts for food and skins the animal and eats the meat that is perfectly consistent with Darwinian survival along the food chain. But each of these reasons for hunting involves more than killing just for fun and challenge.
Animals of all varieties and sizes, other than humans, spend their lives foraging for food, sleeping, taking care of their offspring, playing and relaxing. Animals are (with certain particular species excepted) innocent.
While dolphins, elephants and monkeys are self-aware,** other non-human animals may not be self-aware, but, as we know from our pets, they have things to do, toys to play with and places to go. They search for food; they play; they manifest concern about their relatives; they give and receive attention and affection; they show emotion; they communicate. Day by day they go about their lives. There is much formal evidence and innumerable anecdotes of dogs taking deliberate action to assist or defend their owners. While dogs are not self-aware, they certainly are sentient.*** Dolphins, monkeys, pigs, elephants and dogs also display some of the elements of reason.****
What is the analytically principled rationale for making animals suffer and die purely for hunters’ fun? On utilitarian grounds one can argue reasonably that medical and product testing is better conducted on animals than on people. But what is the basis for believing that a human’s enjoyment of hunting for fun justifies the physical pain and suffering visited upon the target animals?
Not infrequently a wounded animal escapes the hunter’s scope reticle and is left to die a slow, torturous death. How can the balance of equities between hunting for fun versus extreme suffering by innocent animals be decided in favor of hunting on moral or on utilitarian or on Libertarian grounds?
If outer space aliens invaded the Earth and hunted humans for sport would you not be upset if your wife or daughter or mother were shot dead on the front lawn of your house because an alien wanted to challenge himself for fun to see if he could make the shot from his hovering spacecraft? Is Mike Tyson engaged in the sport of boxing if he punches an unsuspecting man in an alleyway? Is the driver of a Lamborghini beating you in a automobile race on the highway if he is speeds by your Porsche at 150 mph while you are on your way to meet your in-laws for dinner?
Any hunter hunting at night with a rifle and aiming with an infrared or thermal imaging scope should be ashamed of himself, I think. Is it possible to imagine a more cowardly or unsportsmanlike strategy?
We should reform hunting for sport by requiring the hunter to exhibit at lease an iota of sportsmanlike behavior. To afford the activity of hunting any semblance of being a sport the hunter, at the very least, should be obliged to alert his intended prey that the prey is about to participate in a game. The hunter should fire two unsuppressed warning shots in close proximity to the target animal. If the target animal does not take evasive action in response to the warning shots then the hunter should feel in reasonable conscience that he or she may proceed. Hunting would remain, in my opinion, a morally and philosophically indefensible activity, but let us cloak it with at least the thinnest veil of sportsmanship.
It isn't a sport if the other guy doesn't know he's playing a game.
* The Argument from Marginal Cases is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognitively disabled have direct moral status, animals must have a similar status, since there is no known morally relevant ability that those marginal-case humans have that animals lack. (“Direct moral status” here means the possession of some basic right, such as the right not to be killed or the right not to be made to suffer.) This must be more true, proponents argue, for non-human animals manifesting greater intelligence and decision-making capacity than marginal case humans.
A counter-argument is the Argument from Species Normality. Proponents of this view hold that if most of a species' members have direct moral status then any member has the same rights and protections as the species, even if that particular member is mentally disabled or comatose or less intelligent than some non-human animals. The moral status of an individual depends on what is normal for that individual's species. So the fact that some dogs are more intelligent than some humans does not endow all dogs with direct moral status because most humans are much more intelligent and capable than most dogs.
** Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Studies testing the self-awareness of non-human animals have been done mainly on primates. Apes, monkeys, elephants, and dolphins have been studied most frequently.
Self-awareness in animals is tested through mirror self recognition. Animals who show mirror self recognition go through four stages 1) social response, 2) physical mirror inspection, 3) repetitive mirror testing behavior, and 4) the mark test -- which involves the animals spontaneously touching a mark on their body which would have been difficult to see without the mirror.
*** Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.
**** Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.
(All footnotes are from Wikipedia.)
