I’ve never had any interest in hunting. Among other things, I’m a terrible shot, but I have friends who hunt, and it appears to me to be a perfectly reasonable sports hobby — certainly every bit as honorable as fantasy football. Moreover, shooting a deer or a duck with a bullet seems to me no more inhuman than catching a trout or a marlin with a hook.
Oh, sometimes I get a little piqued that those who hunt and fish are ennobled as “sportsmen,” while people who play golf are just golfers and people who bowl are just bowlers. But then, that’s just me being picayune.
As the nation becomes less rural, there are, predictably, fewer sportsmen; but still, today, there are at least 13 million hunters in the United States. This is almost three times the number of Americans who are members of the National Rifle Association, and, of course, many members of the NRA are sportsmen.
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