A peculiar¹ virtue³" target="_blank">virtue² in wildlife ethics⁴ is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove⁵ of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated⁶ by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers⁷. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the Gods must clearly smile on hunting.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

No culture has yet solved the dilemma⁸ each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate⁹ existence when one is fully¹¹" target="_blank">fully¹⁰ aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one's own culture but within oneself... There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy¹² expression of a leaning into the light.

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Civilized¹³ life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets¹⁴ for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

All the sounds of this valley run together into one great echo, a song that is sung by all the spirits of this valley. Only a hunter hears it.

Chaim Potok

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

Hunting has opened the earth to me and let me sense the rhythms and hierarchies¹⁵ of nature.

Charles Fergus

The land comes alive through its wild creatures.

Charles Fergus

I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.

Craig Volk, Northern Exposure, A-Hunting We Will Go, 1991

I kill when I hunt and do not apologize for that, although I reserve the right to think about its implications. I also hunt without killing- whether by accident or design-and I do not apologize for that either. There is room in longbow country for a spectrum¹⁶ of tastes and attitudes, and that is as it should be.

E. Donnall Thomas, Jr.

I don't regard nature as a spectator sport.

Ed Zern

Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic¹⁷ superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), A Voice Crying in the Wilderness¹⁸

The true trophy¹⁹ hunter is a self-disciplined perfectionist seeking a single animal, the ancient patriarch well past his prime that is often an outcast from his own kind... If successful, he will enshrine the trophy in a place of honor. This is a more noble and fitting end than dying on some lost and lonely ledge²⁰ where the scavengers will pick his bones, and his magnificent horns will weather away and be lost forever.

Elgin Gates, Trophy Hunter in Asia

Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), "On the Blue Water," Esquire, April 1936

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), Winner Take Nothing

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman

There is a solitude²¹, or perhaps a solemnity, in the few hours that precede the dawn of day which is unlike that of any others in the twenty-four, and which I cannot explain or account for. Thoughts come to me at this time that I never have at any other.

George Bird Grinnell

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane²², while his education has been sadly neglected.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

James A. Froude (1818 - 1894)

The emotions that good hunters need to cultivate are love and service more than courage. The sentiments of the hunt then become translated into art.

James Swan, In Defense²³ of Hunting

If there is a sacred moment in the ethical²⁴ pursuit of game, it is the moment you release the arrow or touch off the fatal shot.

Jim Posewitz

The pleasure of the sportsman in the chase is measured by the intelligence of the game and its capacity to elude²⁵ pursuit and in the labor²⁶ involved in the capture.

John Dean Caton

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.

John Muir (1838 - 1914), Our National Parks, 1901

One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted...If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it, to conquer the surly brute²⁷ through his own effort and skill with all the extras that this carries with it: the immersion²⁸ in the countryside, the healthfulness of the exercise, the distraction²⁹ from his job.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 - 1955), Meditations³⁰ on Hunting

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.

Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey, Season 2, Episode 9, 2010

When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.

Marv Levy³¹

It is very strange, and very melancholy³², that the paucity³³ of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), Anecdotes³⁴ of Samuel Johnson

In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)