What's Wrong with Hunting?
Arguments Against Hunting
Hunting may have played an important role, next to plant gathering and scavenging for human survival in prehistoric times, on the other hand the modern "sportsman" usually stalks and kills animals for recreation.The majority of the people find hunting cruel and lack of repect to nature and its animals because if hunters are careless and act in a negligent way they may cause injuries, pain and suffering to defenseless animals.
Hunting may disrupt migration and hibernation patterns and can destroy animal families like, for example wolves, who mate for life and live in close family units, the effects hunting can devastate its entire community. Hunter's arguments focus on animal population control without considering that this strategy does not help because nature normally takes the weak and unhealthy members on each herd naturally.
In some cases hunting can occur on private lands where laws that protect wildlife are often inapplicable or difficult to enforce. Animals on canned-hunting ranches are often accustomed to humans and are usually unable to escape from the enclosures that they are confined to. Some hunting reserves or game ranches owners profit from hunters that are willing to pay to kill native and exotic species for sport.
Writers such as Glenn Kirk from the organization "The Animals Voice" present an interesting perspective about hunting. He said, hunting “causes immense suffering to individual wild animals…” and is “gratuitously cruel because unlike natural predation hunters kill for pleasure…” He adds that, despite hunters’ claims that hunting keeps wildlife populations in balance, hunters’ license fees are used to “manipulate a few game [target] species into overpopulation at the expense of a much larger number of non-game species, resulting in the loss of biological diversity, genetic integrity and ecological balance.” cited in: "Does Hunting Help or Hurt the Environment?" Scientific American. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2016. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-hunting/>.
In sport hunting, animals are killed for recreational purposes and not out of necessity. The goal is often a trophy, generally the largest racked males.
Research in psychology and criminology shows that often violence against animals may also trigger violence to other humans.
There are several organisations that try to prevent and reduce the amount of animal deaths.
Here are some of the well known organisations against hunting: Peta and IDA.
