Want to make hunting a "sport"? Arm the deer.

I am not a hunter and my prejudices are partially drawn from the killing that left Bambi motherless. I am, also, not a gun owner, although some friends carry a pistol with them wherever they go and others own rifles and other weapons used in target shooting and the occasional hunting for skeet.  (Skeet being a rather docile creature is endangered and deserving of protection.  That’s a discussion for another day.)

I have no argument against hunting animals for food or their pelts, this practice being affirmed by most of mainstream religions and value systems. I am, moreover, a passionate advocate of a very rare steak or hamburger, dripping with juice. I wear leather with no real thought or concern of from where it comes. As far as I know, tuna is born, lives and dies of natural causes in a small can.

Nor am I in the group of people who decry the use of animals in medical experiments and testing. If one human life can be saved through the death of a hundred animals, then I am supportive. (I have some qualms over the use of animals in testing cosmetics or for some other less worthy aim than saving human life or alleviating human disease.)

As an attorney in the distant past, I represented a man who worked in an abattoir, killing cattle, an honest and hardworking man who did his job without getting a thrill, an arousal if you will, over the act of the killing.  While I am perfectly content to eat animals that have been slaughtered by others, I assume that those so engaged do their jobs without getting exhilaration over the kill. It is that aspect of hunting that I find abhorrent.

I am bothered by those who get enjoyment out killing animals. I cannot conceive of the utility or morality of "sport hunting", which implies some sort of contest between competitively matched opponents; deer haven't started carrying high-powered rifles, or even wearing bullet-proof vests. In today's world, hunting is nothing more than ritualized killing.
Slaughter for pleasure.
 Some years ago, then Vice-President Chaney made the news “hunting” in an area where animals were pen-raised and hand-fed, sometimes drugged or disabled for the marksman-hunter to demonstrate his prowess.

I admit that I am somewhat inconsistent. However, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."