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Hunting is the practice of pursuing animals for food, recreation, trade or for their products. In modern use, the term refers to regulated and legal hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of animals contrary to law. Hunted animals are referred to as game animals, and are usually large mammals or migratory birds.
By definition, hunting strictly speaking, excludes the killing - though similar techniques may be used - of individual protected animals, such as bears which have become dangerous to humans, as well as the killing of non-game animals, domestic animals, or vermin as a means of pest control. Hunting can be a component of modern wildlife management, for example to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity.
In the United States, wildlife managers are frequently part of hunting regulatory and licensing bodies, where they help to set rules on the number, manner and conditions in which game may be selected for culling.
The pursuit, capture and release, or capture to eat of fish is called fishing, which is not commonly categorized as a kind of hunting, although many hunters may also fish.
Trapping is also usually considered a separate activity. Neither is it considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to take them, as in wildlife photography or birdwatching. The practice of hunting for plants or mushrooms is a colloquial term for gathering.
In addition to positive portrayals of hunting and hunters on television shows aimed at hunters, hunting is also frequently portrayed in movies and popular culture as part of a broader social commentary, such as in the Michael Cimino film, The Deer Hunter, where it takes on psychological symbolism as a prelude to war.
Some of the most widespread depictions of hunting have been through animation, particularly in feature-length movies such as the 1942 film Bambi and shorter Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Such anthropomorphism of prey animals or "varmints" is frequently used as social satire, with the audience intended to sympathize with the hunted animal and the socially powerful hunter portrayed as incompetent or a macho buffoon.
At the other end of the spectrum Ted Nugent portrays the hunter as a rock and roll iconoclast.
Hunting may also be depicted in a matter-of-fact way, as in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves or the 1970 Little Big Man which contrast modern hunters with a romantic noble savage.
Filmed depictions of hunting by aboriginal cultures like American Indians tend to be more sympathetic. Hunting is portrayed as necessary subsistence, as is the case in many Inuit and Alaskan Bush communities today.
Varmint hunting of prairie dogs is depicted in John Ross' novel Unintended Consequences. A favorable depiction of hunting is found in L. Neil Smith's science fiction novel Pallas. Hunting is central to many works by Ernest Hemingway and even used as an extended metaphor in the new age self-help fiction of Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan.
Many books or short stories and films also depict hunting. For example, The Most Dangerous Game features a man who, after becoming shipwrecked on a trip to South America to hunt jaguars, is himself hunted by another man. Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder features people traveling back in time to hunt a Tyrannosaurus. The Lost World: Jurassic Park has a character named Roland Tembo who goes to Isla Sorna with Peter Ludlow to hunt a T. rex.
By definition, hunting strictly speaking, excludes the killing - though similar techniques may be used - of individual protected animals, such as bears which have become dangerous to humans, as well as the killing of non-game animals, domestic animals, or vermin as a means of pest control. Hunting can be a component of modern wildlife management, for example to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity.
In the United States, wildlife managers are frequently part of hunting regulatory and licensing bodies, where they help to set rules on the number, manner and conditions in which game may be selected for culling.
The pursuit, capture and release, or capture to eat of fish is called fishing, which is not commonly categorized as a kind of hunting, although many hunters may also fish.
Trapping is also usually considered a separate activity. Neither is it considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to take them, as in wildlife photography or birdwatching. The practice of hunting for plants or mushrooms is a colloquial term for gathering.
In addition to positive portrayals of hunting and hunters on television shows aimed at hunters, hunting is also frequently portrayed in movies and popular culture as part of a broader social commentary, such as in the Michael Cimino film, The Deer Hunter, where it takes on psychological symbolism as a prelude to war.
Some of the most widespread depictions of hunting have been through animation, particularly in feature-length movies such as the 1942 film Bambi and shorter Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Such anthropomorphism of prey animals or "varmints" is frequently used as social satire, with the audience intended to sympathize with the hunted animal and the socially powerful hunter portrayed as incompetent or a macho buffoon.
At the other end of the spectrum Ted Nugent portrays the hunter as a rock and roll iconoclast.
Hunting may also be depicted in a matter-of-fact way, as in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves or the 1970 Little Big Man which contrast modern hunters with a romantic noble savage.
Filmed depictions of hunting by aboriginal cultures like American Indians tend to be more sympathetic. Hunting is portrayed as necessary subsistence, as is the case in many Inuit and Alaskan Bush communities today.
Varmint hunting of prairie dogs is depicted in John Ross' novel Unintended Consequences. A favorable depiction of hunting is found in L. Neil Smith's science fiction novel Pallas. Hunting is central to many works by Ernest Hemingway and even used as an extended metaphor in the new age self-help fiction of Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan.
Many books or short stories and films also depict hunting. For example, The Most Dangerous Game features a man who, after becoming shipwrecked on a trip to South America to hunt jaguars, is himself hunted by another man. Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder features people traveling back in time to hunt a Tyrannosaurus. The Lost World: Jurassic Park has a character named Roland Tembo who goes to Isla Sorna with Peter Ludlow to hunt a T. rex.
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