Hunting is a sport now?

As I was doing my weekly browsing through flyers I saw an add for ammunition at a popular “big box” store. Underneath the add the caption said something along the line of “Canadian Tire sells ammunition for sporting puposes only…” As if they knew you were going to use the ammunition for “sporting purposes” only. Then I thought to myself, why is hunting classified a sport? What’s so athletic about taking a gun and shooting down some birds?

I understand that humans long to their ancient history as cavemen. The average person finds pleasure in camping outdoors, making a fire, fishing etc. After all, humans lived in the outdoors for a good part of our existence on the planet. Having said that, I still don’t understand the joy in shooting a bird, or a deer, and I especially cannot understand how such an activity can be categorized as a sport.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but sport hunting consists mainly of a bunch of ignorant middle aged men, walking through some sort of a forest with the company of a few hunting dogs. One person spots a prey, shoots at it from 300 yards or more, and then the rest shoot in the general direction of the prey. The dog then runs to retrieve the dead animal. It takes quite an athlete to see something and shoot at it, doesn’t it?

In my opinion, for hunting to be called a sport, it must involve strenuous physical activity, combined with primeval weapons. You know… caveman style. The men would go into a forest equipped with nothing but knives, and stone tools. They would actually follow ancient hunting strategies, and work as a team to execute them. Then after a few kills, the men would start a fire and have a feast in the middle of the woods. Oh yeah, and the animals hunted should be categorized as beasts. None of that sissy bird shooting action.

So until I start hearing of people going out to hunt cave man style, I will not recognize hunting as a sport.

technorati tags: hunting, sport, critique, culture, ignorance, animal, rights