Killing for Pleasure?

Beware of the Hunter Who Kills for the Pleasure of the Kill

I always will remember,
'Twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a morning bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

* * * *

The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,

And one of the hunters wasn't insured.

And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.  The Hunting Song by Tom Lehrer.

The “fun” of killing? Want to make hunting a “sport”? Arm the deer. Change the Second Amendment, N.R.A., to protect the right to arm bears. Make it a fair endeavor.

First of all, let me confess that I am not a hunter, don’t really know any hunters and my basic prejudices are drawn from the killing of Bambi’s mother.

I am, also, not a gun owner, although some of our 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.

I have no overwhelming 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 rare steak or hamburger, dripping with juice. I wear leather with no real thought 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.)