The ‘sport’ of hunting: Why I don’t call it that

This topic was the focus of an Orion Think Tank several years ago.

From A Mindful Carnivore:

by Tovar on August 18, 2011 · 11 comments

For some people, hunting for “sport” implies frivolity: killing for fun.
For some, it suggests wastefulness and a lack of respect for animals: taking a whitetail’s antlers and cape for a trophy mount, and leaving the meat to rot.
Those are two reasons I don’t call hunting a “sport.”
When I talk or write about hunting and why I do it, I want people to understand what it’s like for me to take a deer’s life. I want my words to bring them to where I kneel beside the fallen animal, my hand on his still-warm shoulder. I want them to feel some faint ripple of the soul-deep wave that shudders through me.
I want my words to bring them to where I stand in the kitchen, separating muscle from bone and, later, sautéing tender slices of backstrap. I want them to sense what that venison means to me, taken so close to home, from woods I know.
I don’t want them thinking I get my jollies through a rifle scope.
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