Fox-hunting I disapproved strongly of, partly because it was cruel and pointless (especially as there's a bloodless alternative), and partly because the people that indulged in it had to keep coming up with increasingly desperate excuses of why they did it instead of just saying "it's a fun ride across the countryside".
I don't mind game shooting so long as the shooter is going to eat the animal - unlike the big pheasant shoots around where I live, where they shoot so damn many birds they have to incinerate or bury most of them. That's after they've decimated the local predator population to PROTECT the birds they're not going to eat. That's what I don't get about a lot of bloodsports - they kill off the predators to protect the prey, then cook up an excuse of having to shoot the prey because there's too many of them?
What I don't understand is why some people think it's FUN to kill the animal, like I don't understand why some people think it's FUN to trap an animal for its fur and stamp it to death either - I guess in game hunting it's the whole "thrill of the chase" thing? Being out in the wilderness, the act of stalking the animal... I mean, *I* enjoy doing the latter, but for me it's to try and get close enough to watch whatever animal it is without disturbing it.
"Canned hunting" is the one I find most distasteful - where they release a rare animal like a big cat or a rhino into an enclosure, and charge a fortune for a "hunter" to go and shoot it. The animal can't escape, and is sometimes even drugged so it's less dangerous, so it's a fairly guaranteed kill - just so someone can boast of their "bravery" at killing a lion.
Fishing? Well, I'm kinda ambivalent on that one, especially if people eat what they catch - after all, I used to do a bit of fishing myself, when I was a lot younger (read: about 10, 15 years ago). The fact I never caught anything is partly why I stopped going, and of course I didn't like the idea of trying to retrieve a hook from a fish's throat (because I'm such a "liberal leftie" I didn't even like the idea of sticking a hook through a maggot. Didn't mind the maggots, just didn't want to skewer them.) Since science has acknowledged the fish (probably) suffer when they're caught makes me disinclined to start again. But then, so many people just sit there and don't catch anything, so...
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