Let me preface this by saying I gave up hunting a long time ago and traded up to some nice camera gear. I keep photographic trophies now instead of animals. Having said that I have a duality of interests when it comes to hunting for sport. Many times hunting for sport is actually doing a specific area or animal population a great service. Where I live, if deer or turkey hunting was outlawed or frowned upon so much, the respective populations would explode causing chaos to both humans and themselves. In cases like this I like the idea of sport hunting to keep population control in check.
In other areas where sport hunting means killing a lion or elephant for nothing more than sport, looking for a trophy to brag about, is not my thing. It does not ruffle my feathers but I would not do it. I see no real reason to hunt down a lion or an elephant other than the ability to say "I killed a ...".
In a perfect world we would only hunt and/or kill what we needed to, but that's not the real world. I have no real problem with hunting for sport, I just prefer not to.
As a bit of a back story, the reason I gave up hunting is because of a specific moment. Years ago I was on a typical early winter hunt with some friends and I spotted a monster buck about 80 yards away in a open field. It was a 10 pointer and just a truly majestic specimen. I had all the time in the world, sighted him in and squeezed. Dead on heart shot that dropped him on the spot. When I got about 10 yards from it he jumped up and sprinted in to the tree line, disappearing. I was shocked, but I could not give up, I needed to put him down. I was able to track him down several times but each time I got within 20 or so yards he would get back up and sprint away again.
it was getting dark and all I could think about was this poor deer suffering and I could not quit. I kept tracking him until I could see no more, in fact It was so dark I did not even try to find my way out of the woods. I just hunkered down right where I stood hoping I could find him in the morning light. What happened next literally changed my life.
Shortly after calling it quits, and sitting down I started to hear low groans and grunts off in the distance. I knew it was the deer in pain, dying. There was nothing I could do but just sit there and listen. For the next several hours the grunts and groans turned in to almost whaling cries of pain, high pitched and baby like so loud and chillingly piercing I cried like a baby listening to this deer whale out in horrid pain all night long as it lay dying.
Come first light I found it within minutes. I wound up missing the heard by less than a inch, and instead of bagging a buck I wounded it enough so all it could do was lay there and slowly die. I will never forget that night and the hellish whales of pain still haunt me to this day.