Sure. I don't disagree that hunting can be a positive and spiritual experience for the hunter. But divorced from a "need" motive, it no longer works for the integration of one's humanity, but instead divorces the killing instinct from good reasons to kill.
If pleasure alone is the goal, then there is ample sport that does not end life that can satisfy it.
My argument is that life is always more complex than that, with the exception of stone sociopaths, of course.
For many, in this modern and soft culture, a vital part of hunting is the unique set of emotions and motives and reactions knit inextricably with killing a large warm blooded animal in cold blood.
Killing, either in hunting for food or other product (leather, etc) or in husbandry or in mercy, INVARIABLY makes me feel very peculiarly awful - in all senses of that word.
In discussing this with other hunters, cattlemen, and mercy-killers, I have found that this emotional reaction is actually the rule rather than the exception.
It is not a set of feelings I enjoy or wish to experience.
Yet, on the other hand, I stongly believe that it is of vital importance - for the sanity of a culture and for that culture's survival in a world that is not uniformly soft and cuddly - for a large percentage of that culture's population to be able to force themselves to set passion aside and force themselves to commit this particular act.
In this world, one must be able to govern one's self, and kill without hesitance or excitement in the act, enduring the ride which comes with it.
To be otherwise is to be a slave to one's feelings, and a prey-animal to harder, fiercer elements of reality.
Any thoughts?