“The Patriot” takes an inside look at hunting and reflects on the positive and negative effects it has. Here is the con side to hunting. To read the pro side, click here.

What did those poor animals ever do to you? Most likely, nothing.

The “sport” of hunting has been around for a long time and personally, I have no idea why. I don’t consider  it to be morally right, and I also don’t see how it can be considered a fun activity.

The two different branches of hunting are recreational hunting and the sport of hunting, both equally wrong in their premises.

The definition of hunting is the sport or practice of pursuing and killing or capturing wild animals. According to www.idausa.org, more than 200 million animals are killed each year by hunters, including geese, deer, squirrels, and ducks. This statistic doesn’t include the animals that are crippled and injured because hunters shot them but did not succeed in killing them.

That’s an outrageous number. The main reason I’ve heard for justifying recreational hunting is that the population needs to be managed. So, if a person was trying to manage the animal population, wouldn’t one shoot the weakest and most frail ones?

One would think that would be the case.  But no, they go for the biggest animals in order to bring home the biggest meal. What’s the prize? “Congratulations, you just killed the strongest deer in the field and ruined the deer’s family.” What a great honor.

Okay, so maybe the animals don’t matter to some people.

Killing something as innocent as an animal shouldn’t bring any normal human being any kind of satisfaction. I suggest taking up a kind of sport that would give you the same amount of enjoyment.

Maybe take up football or another contact sport that gets the energy up. I don’t see any animals just killing humans for fun.

Stephanie Laird is a Sports Editor for “The Patriot” and jcpatriot.com.