Long-range hunting: is it sporting?

"adjective: sporting"

1. Connected with or interested in sport.

Yes it is.

"adjective: ethical"

1. relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these.

Any type of hunting is sporting or ethical providing the individual is utilising the weapon or method of killing on the game intended with the proportionate level of skill and force to administer a clean and as painless as possible death on said animal.

I have personally not seen any long range hunters fu*k up a shot on live game, but I have seen a few punters with bore-sighted rifles or incorrect ammo / zero fudge close shots...

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Originally Posted by Pengy

We should all take up paintball, as apparently that is now a sport.

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I love paintball (not the getting hit thou) but now i'm getting older and wiser and forgetting the wisdom I am meant to have learnt.......I look at my kids and see the violent shit they play, the shit on TV and think these kids have no idea at what happens if you point something at someone. How far do you go I spose......water pistols, etc.

I like the idea of long range shooting, I'm under no allusions that it is harder than it may seem but I'm looking forward to shooting my first animal at 800+ meters. Is it sporting / hunting?? I don't fuckin care, I only like taking meat animals for the freezer, as it is I could sell all my guns and shit and use the money to buy venison for the rest of my life! It's still going to be the same amount of animals killed. The same really goes for fishing.
Go and buy a $50k boat and all the fuel and shit, we soon realize the fish are the smarter species:wtfsmilie: YES I can say that now as I've owned a boat.

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"adjective: sporting"

1. Connected with or interested in sport.

Yes it is.

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Well that is a poorly constructed argument. The noun has to apply to the activity before you can make the adjective apply.

from Wiki...

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The precise definition of what separates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources. The closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by SportAccord, which is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, athletics, cycling, tennis, equestrian sports, and more), and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport.

SportAccord uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:[1]

have an element of competition
be in no way harmful to any living creature
not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)
not rely on any "luck" element specifically designed into the sport.

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Try telling the duck thats shitting itself whilst leaving as fast as possible after have very recently recieved 2 hot pellets up his rectal canal, that the arsehole with the 12 gauge is only interested in a sporting contest with a legitimate opponent...

Sport my arse.....

"be in no way harmful to any living creature"

Well, given that humans are living creatures, that rules out rugby, basketball, martial arts, cycling, motor racing and pretty much anything else with a significant rate of injury. Not to mention the disciplines where top athletes basically ruin their bodies for life in order to be the best for 5-10 years.

Good catch... I do get the feeling its about a primary intent to cause harm though... which of course still leaves boxing/martial arts with a big question mark...

Informed consent may play a part as well... animals don't give that.. to engage in sport is a concious decision by all parties..

Of course having a sporting contest with your mate while duckshooting is perfectly possible... its just that the ducks aren't actually in that contest...

isn't this fun...:D

I'm not sure that hunting is best thought of as a sport. If you recover the meat and eat it it's possibly best thought of as a unique category of human activity closely linked to food gathering as in hunter-gatherer. We might have alternative sources of meat today but that needn't change anything. We might practice it today as a recreation - maybe a bit like a life style farmer who grows a bit of something and keeps a couple of sheep. In both cases it's practicing an ancient economic activity not because it's essential to survival but for its own sake. Because it's challenging and satisfying. Maybe trophy hunting is a sport. It's competitive.

This thread is great. Problem is now I agree with everyone on some level. For me I'm thinking this, "how fouled is my barrel". Because if it's too clean and there's a bit of wind about, will my windage be .5mils or .8 at 800y? That's the difference between a nice neck shot, a shitty broken shoulder blade shot, a miss or worse. Even at an NRA range with a flag every 100y I can't anticipate that degree of windage yet in my mind so I can't ethically shoot animals at 800y (yet).
As for sport, if you want that watch the cricket. Unless it's Australia playing then it's not really sport either haha.

Didn't the Aussies just get a drubbing from India?

Yeah that too. I'm more referring to how bad Australia looks internationally because of this sledging bullshit. It's gotten out of control.

I'm inclined to agree with Sidney - to me hunting is definatley not a "sport".
So far as long ranging, I was brought up with the imperative to get as close as it took for the safest cleanest shot. Just how close that is depends on where I am (Tahr hunting vs bush stalking etc) and probably my experience in knowing if the shot is within the limits of me and my gear mostly with good gear my limit is me and human fallibility.
Now days we have better and more specialised gear allowing the potential to take shots at even longer range than before.
Just because the gear can do it doesnt mean the hunter is up to it. I feel a lot of the long range hunting drive is commercial- selling gear as part of a trend, Im not sure there would be enough people spending enough time at the range to use that gear to its potential.
What Im trying to say is by all means get the best latest gear to improve range and accuracy but i dont think its necessarily healthy to encourage a "mainstream" to be attemting very long shots without encouraging the experience to back it up.
There are lots of theoretical maximum effective ranges for different calibres all over the internet but bugger all (zip) to back up who hits what at what range how often and how cleanly.