Mary Allen
A hunter goes into the wilderness to kill or capture animals. He usually does this to get meat that he sells or eats himself. Today, hunting is considered a sport or a hobby. But they are also needed to prevent individual wild animals from multiplying too much and damaging the forest or fields. What a hunter does is called “hunting”.
Every country today has laws about hunting. They regulate who is allowed to hunt and where. Anyone who wants to hunt must have a permit from the state. But they also regulate which animals may be killed and how many of them. Anyone who breaks these laws is a poacher. What he’s doing is poaching.
What is the hunt for?
In the Stone Age, people lived largely from hunting. So they not only got food, but also skins for clothing, sinew, and intestines for bows, bones, horns, and antlers for their tools or for jewelry and other things.
Hunting has become less important since people began to feed themselves more from their fields and raise animals themselves. In the Middle Ages, hunting became a hobby for the nobility and other wealthy people. If hungry people who were not nobles killed an animal in the forest out of necessity and were caught doing so, they were severely punished.
Even today there are hunters who see it as a hobby. They eat the meat or sell it to restaurants. Many hunters hang the head of a killed animal or the skull with the antlers on the wall. Then everyone who visits his home can marvel at what a large animal the hunter has killed.
Do we still need hunters today?
Today, however, hunting has a completely different purpose: many wild animals no longer have any natural enemies. Bears, wolves, and lynxes were wiped out and today there are very few of them. This allowed chamois, ibex, red deer, roe deer, and wild boar to reproduce unhindered.
While the red deer and roe deer eat young shoots and the bark of trees, the wild boars dig up whole fields. Without the hunters, there would always be more of these wild animals and therefore more damage. So human hunters have taken over the job of natural hunters to keep nature reasonably in balance. Foresters and other people who have been given this task by the state do that.
Why are some people against hunting?
Some people want to ban hunting altogether. They think primarily of animal welfare. In their opinion, hunters often do not hit the animal properly, but only shoot it. The animal then suffers a slow, agonizing death. In addition, shot, i.e. small metal balls from a shotgun, also hits birds, cats, dogs, and other animals.
Animal rights activists also say: Some hunters feed animals extra so that they reproduce. Then you have many animals to shoot again. For animal rights activists, many hunters are just rich people who like to kill and show off their prey.