"DuncanHynes"Teddy Roosevelt may have said that of dog hunting methods at one time but he was one of the most accomplished modern hunters around. He thought the hunt itself was an experience like non other, connecting man to nature in a sacred-like manner. He did kill for sport but said " The chase is among the best of all national pastimes..."
Your point is valid, we do easily defend what we see as right. And we should strive for clean kills always. But President Roosevelt would not consider hunting as 'shameful' so long as it wasnt the needless slaughter of animals. I am not a historian but I imagine the majestic buffalo shot only for their skin by the thousands would be one example of such.
I could very likely see Teddy Roosevelt (were he to magically appear in our time) coming around to our way of thinking about hunting. Nonetheless, in his time, our style of ambush hunting was shameful, especially when hunting animals over a food source. Here's what he had to say about it: in the context of whitetail deer:
"It [the whitetail] is a shrewd, wary, knowing beast; but it owes its prolonged stay in the land chiefly to the fact that it is an inveterate skulker, and fond of the thickest cover. Accordingly it usually
has to be killed by stealth and stratagem, and not by fair, manly hunting; being quite easily slain in any one of half a dozen unsportsmanlike ways. In consequence, I care less for its chase than for the chase of any other kind of American big game. Yet in a few places where it dwells in open, hilly forests and can be killed by still-hunting ["still hunting" means spot-and-stalk in this era] as if it were a blacktail ["blacktail" means mule deer in this era], or better still, where the nature of the ground is such that it can be run down in fair chase on horseback, either with grey-hounds, or with a pack of trackhounds, it yields splendid sport. Killing a deer from a boat while the poor animal is swimming in the water, or on snow-shoes as it flounders helplessly in the deep drifts, can only be justified on the plea of hunger.
This is also true of lying in wait on a lick. Whoever indulges in any of these methods save from necessity, is a butcher, pure and simple, and has no business in the company of true sportsmen. Fire hunting may be placed in the same category; yet it is possibly allowable under exceptional circumstances to indulge in a fire hunt, if only for the sake of seeing the wilderness by torchlight." - Teddy Roosevelt,
The Wilderness Hunter chapter III.
Remember in his time treestands were considered unethical and were banned in many places.
