Recreational Hunting: An immoral Violation of Animal Rights - Essay Example

ins that recreational hunting is little other than a cruel blood sport which is ultimately predicated on the erroneous assumption of man's dominion over nature, on the one hand, and the fact that animals do not have rights, on the other. The proponents of recreational hunting contend that this particular activity emanates from man's instinctual hunter and survivalist nature.5 As a species, man has survived because of an innately instinctual capacity to live by the land and to function as predator, rather than prey.

Had primitive, or pre-historic man not hunted, not only would he have been transformed into a prey for wildlife but he would not have survived.6 In other words, man is a natural hunter and predator and this characteristic is immediately responsible for both the survival of the species and the evolution of civilisations.While not denying the core claim expressed in the above cited defence of hunting, the opponents of the practice contend that it is irrelevant to recreational hunting. As this camp emphasises, from the utilitarian philosophical perspective, hunting for purposes of survival is incontrovertibly ethical, insofar as the activity has a specified purpose which, more importantly, satisfies a greater good.

7 Hunting, in other words, is defendable only if it occurs within the contextual matrix of survivalist dictates. However, if it is devoid of that particular motivation and does not satisfy any discernible utilitarian purpose or fulfil any concretely identifiable greater good, it is morally indefensible.8 In other words, the opponents of the practice may concede that hunting is not consistently unethical but maintain that recreational hunting is, insofar as it lacks a utilitarian purpose.In further defence of the practice, the proponents of recreational hunting maintain that their pursuit of this particular sport unfolds within the parameters of stringently defined ethical precepts, ultimately guided by the imperatives of preventing undue suffering to the prey.

9 Such ethics guidelines dictate that hunters shoot to kill and take every precaution possible to ensure that animals are not wounded and then abandoned to a slow and agonising death. In addition, the more professional of the recreational hunters insist that strict quotas on the number of animals killed by each hunter be applied and respected as a strategy for the voidance of indiscriminate killing, culminating in the outright and unapologetic slaughter of wildlife by man.10 In other words, the recreational hunting community perceives of its hobby as being an ethical one insofar as it eschews the