Using Animals in the Pursuit of Human Flourishing through Sport

Sport provides an arena for human flourishing. For some, this pursuit of a meaningful life through sport involves the use of non-human animals, not least of all through sport hunting. This paper will take seriously that sport – including sport hunting – can provide a meaningful arena for human flourishing. Additionally, it will accept for present purposes that animals are of less moral value than humans. This paper will show that, even accepting these premises, much use of animals for sport – including sport hunting – is unacceptable. Nonetheless it will show that there can be acceptable ways of using animals as part of a human’s meaningful life pursuits through sport, albeit in a more limited fashion than many sportspersons currently accept.

Educate Kermit Roosevelt Through Sport Hunting and Train Him for Government Missions. Roosevelt Scientific Mission to English Equatorial Africa in 1909

The practice of sport hunting in colonized areas presents a set of knowledge and techniques indispensable to self-control and the domination of territories elsewhere by colonial empires, by their leaders and, more generally, by the political elites of the Northern states. During his scientific mission to English Equatorial Africa in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt responded to a double commission from the Smithsonian Institute and the American Museum in Washington. In this African mission, he brought and trained his youngest son Kermit, aged 20, in an initiatory journey. This article proposes to study this ritual of passage and the practice of sport hunting in the English colonial space as a revelation of the socio-racial hierarchies at work in the territories dominated by the English Empire.

The Gun before the Lyre

This chapter explores the three most prevalent kinds of sport hunting pursued in nineteenth-century Russia — coursing, hounding, shooting — and suggests that their essential differences pointed to very distinct modes of interacting with nature. Illustrative examples of Ivan Turgenev's zealous devotion to shooting are taken from memoir accounts of his actual hunting praxis. The chapter discusses Turgenev's hunting experience and proclivities. Hunting became one of the most important aspects of Turgenev's existence, even an obsession. The chapter mentions Turgenev's close friend Dmitrii Iakovlevich Kolbasin's memoir, which gives us a glimpse of Turgenev as a hunting tutor. It also discusses Turgenev's afield in memoirs and letters.

Defining the True Hunter: Big Game Hunting, Moral Distinction, and Virtuosity in French Colonial Indochina

This article examines the concept of the “true hunter” (vrai chasseur) among big game hunters in French colonial Indochina. Drawing primarily on French language texts published by highly experienced European hunters between 1910 and 1950, it first examines in detail the true hunter ethic, which required hunters to hunt and kill their prey in a “sporting” (sportif) manner. This ethic involved adherence to an expansive and complicated set of rules related to stalking, marksmanship, knowledge possession, restraint, prey selection, choice of firearms and ammunition, and others. True hunting was regarded as by definition difficult and, as is argued, the practical realization of the true hunter ideal entailed not simply engaging in hunting as an activity, but instead successfully performing a very difficult but specific type of killing. The article's second purpose is to engage a paradox associated with the texts, their authors, and the ethic. While critical of other hunters for “unnecessary slaughter,” many killed staggering numbers of animals. This paradox is accounted for by placing the true hunters in the broader social context of colonial Indochina. Both their type of sport hunting and the virtuosity of their killing distinguished them from the indigenous populations that served their hunts and other European hunters. This virtuosity also legitimized the scale of their killing and placed these hunters into a distinctive social and moral community.