Hunting, along with gathering, is one of the oldest methods of subsistence known to humankind and, as such, has accompanied humanity through most of its history. Yet as human civilization progressed, the role and place of the hunt in society gradually began to change. As the new ways of finding sustenance – including those that do not include killing animals – became common knowledge and spread across human societies, hunting ceased to be the primary way of obtaining food. What was previously the means of survival became an entertainment – or, as it often called, a bloody sport. Yet since hunting is not crucial to survival anymore, it raises pertinent moral questions about its very nature. There is no denying that the bloody sport is cruel, as it invariably involves killing animals and experiencing elation at the fact of besting the hunted animal as an opponent. Due to this cruelty, hunting should be excluded from sports because it devalues the suffering of conscious creatures, promotes a mindset that endorses discriminatory hierarchies, and the hunters’ arguments in favor of their sport do not stand up to a thorough enough logical examination.
If one sets to discuss the morality of sport hunting and whether it should be ethically acceptable, one inevitably has to consider the fundamental question of morality as a whole. This question is which groups of creatures should be regarded as a part of the moral community and which should not – in other words, who deserves moral consideration and who does not. The vast majority of people, including most hunters, would undoubtedly agree that hunting human beings for sport would be immoral and inexcusable even if the hunters took all the steps to deliver “clean kills” and cause as little suffering as possible (Wade 17). Therefore, if one rejects killing people for sport but endorses killing other animals, one should exclude them from the moral community or at least paint them as less deserving of moral consideration than humans. As a result, the mindset behind sport hunting requires assuming that there is a “morally relevant empirical difference between all humans on the one hand and all nonhuman animals on the other” (Wade 18). To put it simply, hunting rests on the premise that nonhuman animals are less capable of suffering.
However, this line of reasoning is faulty at best, as it does not bode well with scientific evidence or logical reasoning. Indeed, psychological research suggests that “an animal’s perceived capacity to experience pain was strongly related to its perceived similarity to humans” (Loughnan et al. 3). It means that, as long as animals are not too similar to humans in their physical appearance, it is easier for people to perceive them as less capable of experiencing pain and suffering. Still, psychology aside, there are no reasons to assume that non-human like animals are less equipped to feel pain and suffer than humanlike apes or humans themselves. The hunted animals have central nervous systems similar to those of the primates, so it is quite likely that they may relay similar sensations. Additionally, animals can demonstrate the same reactions to painful stimuli that humans do, such as crying, twitching, or trying to get away from the source of pain. Considering this, it is entirely logical to assume that many of the more developed animals are just as capable of suffering as humans themselves.
Moreover, the aforementioned psychological perception of animals has a reverse effect as well. If one thinks of a creature capable of suffering, one perceives it as more akin to humans. According to Feinberg et al., highlighting the suffering experienced by butchered animals contributes to the higher degree of empathy toward them. This effect may be a crucial element of the process of moralization – that is, when something hitherto morally neutral acquires moral significance (Feinberg et al. 50). This emotional regard for animal well-being is the main reason why people refrain from eating meat (Hölker et al. 2). Yet empathizing with the animals killed in sports hunting would run contrary to its purpose, which is unachievable without killing the prey. As a result, the hunting mindset not merely ignores the ample evidence of animals’ ability to suffer – it has to actively suppress such thoughts to avoid humanizing it. In short, the cruelty of hunting is a fact so plain that a hunter has to circumvent science, philosophy, and psychology all at once to ignore the cruelty of the bloody sport.
Apart from that, even if one does not endorse fundamental ethical equality between humans and nonhuman animals, it does not mean that one may deal with them as one pleases with no moral obligations involved. Even anthropocentric philosophers who attribute greater moral significance to human than all other living creatures still recognize that people do not have an unquestionable and unlimited moral authority over nonhuman animals. One of the most notable proponents of this perspective was a famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Developing his ethical theory, Kant introduced a concept of “indirect duties towards animals” (Hölker 3). It means that humans have the right to use animals for their own purpose, but should also uphold the obligation to treat them without cruelty while doing so (Hölker 3). Killing a living creature for no other purpose than entertainment, which is the case with sport hunting, may serve as a textbook example of cruelty even if the hunters attempt to minimize the animal’s physical pain. Thus, even if one holds anthropocentric views and perceives animals as morally unequal to humans, it still does not give one the freedom to treat them cruelly.
Another reason why hunting should be banned from sports is that it may promote potentially harmful qualities in those who actively participate in it. In particular, there is a correlation between interest in sports hunting and endorsement of inequality. As noted by Loughnan et al., the people who have less or no qualms about causing animals to suffer are also more likely to endorse “social dominance orientation” and “the endorsement of social hierarchy and inequality” (2). As mentioned above, creating an ethical distinction – however imaginary – between humans and nonhuman animals lies at the core of hunting, so the idea of inequality is inseparable from the bloody sport. Thus, psychology suggests that this propensity for inequality may potentially transfer into relations with other humans as well.
Admittedly, the correlation is not the same thing as the causal connection. It would be too far-fetched to portray all hunters as authoritarian proponents of strict social hierarchy: a statistical concurrence does not mean that hunters endorse inequality because they hunt. Still, one should be aware that those who assign less value to animal suffering may be statistically less likely to hold egalitarian views and toward their fellow human beings, and there are examples to back this observation up.
A fitting example to illustrate how the hunting mindset, with its disregard for animals, may promote a similar disregard to other people would be the history of fox-hunting in Britain. This activity emerged at the end of the 18th century and was “firmly established as England’s national sport” by the 19th (May 1). The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sought ways to eliminate it since as early as the 1920s (Tichelaar 90). Yet the difficulty with fox hunting lay in the fact that it was an upper-class pastime and, as such, remained beyond the reach of animal rights activism for a long time. As long as aristocrats and royalty dominated the leadership of the Society, it made the abolition of such “upper-class sports reserved exclusively for royalty and landowners” nigh impossible (Tichelar 90). Only in 1976, when this grip loosened, the Society was able to put forth a policy opposing fox hunting. Hence, the history of this sport illustrates how the support of hunting and upper-class privileges, and how a small privileged minority of hunters may demonstrate a consistent tendency to ignore other people’s opinions.
An attempt to cover the morality of hunting without including the other side of the debate would be fundamentally incomplete, which is why it is necessary to briefly address the arguments in favor of hunting. The proponents of the bloody sport have a broad range of arguments in support of their pastime, and these deserve due consideration. For instance, professional hunters aim to cause as little suffering as possible when killing their prey and would rather not shoot if there is no certainty of a “clean kill” (Wade 17). Following this code of ethics distinguishes “true” hunters from “slob” hunters whose goal is to simply kill the animal, and professional hunters look down upon those (Wade 17). Additionally, hunters maintain that the purpose of the bloody sport is not to kill the animal, but to prove oneself its superior in a competition, and killing the prey is merely a byproduct (Wade 15-16). Considering this, hunters may claim that banning their sport on the grounds of cruelty is unfair, as they consciously strive to deliver as little suffering when hunting as possible and only deliver quick and painless death.
Yet this objection, while relatively solid at first sight, does not hold up to logical analysis. One of the reasons why professional hunters despise “slob” hunters is that the latter will take every opportunity to kill the prey, even if the kill will be messy. Professionals base their claim to superiority on the fact that they will “forego the opportunity to kill when the clean kill is unlikely” (Wade 17). This assumption means that a professional hunter may always distinguish whether the clean kill is possible of not. If the true purpose of the bloody sport was proving one’s skill rather than killing, as the hunters claim, then lining up a clear shot with a guarantee of a clean kill would be as satisfactory as killing the animal with this shot. However, hunters maintain that the victory in sport hunting invariably means killing the animal (Wade 16). It appears that the bloody sport, despite the claims of its proponents, is still about killing rather than merely proving oneself superior to the hunted animal. As such, sport hunting, as any other activity that involves unnecessary killing, deserves to be banned.
To summarize, there are numerous reasons why an activity as cruel as hunting should be banned from sports. The hunted animals are similar enough to humans to be reasonably sure that they are just as capable of feeling pain and suffering as those who hunt them, meaning there is no overwhelming ethical difference between the two. Moreover, an understanding of a creature’s ability to suffer makes people more likely to empathize with this creature. As a result, the hunters who deny the cruelty of their sport have to circumvent biological facts and their own psychology simultaneously. Apart from that, a hunting mindset correlates with the support for strict hierarchies that may potentially transfer to social relations as well. While this is only a correlation rather than direct causality, the history of fox hunting in Britain shows that disregard for animals and other people may accompany each other consistently. Finally, the counterarguments that try to portray sport hunting as not cruel do not hold up to logic. At its core, hunting is about killing, and taking a life for no other reason than entertainment will always be cruel and immoral.
Works Cited
Feinberg, Matthew, et al. “Understanding the Process of Moralization: How Eating Meat Becomes a Moral Issue.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol.117, no. 1, 2019, pp. 50–72.
Hölker, Sarah, et al. “Animal Ethics and Eating Animals: Consumer Segmentation Based on Domain-Specific Values.” Sustainability, vol. 11, 2019, 3907.
Loughnan, Steve, et al. “The Psychology of Eating Animals.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 23, no. 2, 2014, pp.104-108.
May, Allison N. The Fox-Hunting Controversy, 1781-2004: Class and Cruelty. Routledge, 2013.
Tichelar, Michael. “‘A blow to the men in Pink’: The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Opposition to Hunting in the Twentieth Century.” Rural History, vol. 22, no. 1, 2011, pp. 89–113.
Wade, Maurice L. “Animal Liberationism, Ecocentrism, and the Morality of Sport Hunting.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, vol. 17, no. 1, 1990. Pp. 15-27.