While once Americans needed to hunt to put food on the table, today hunting in America is primarily a recreational pastime. Often, as in waterfowl, pheasant or dove hunting, it is no more than shooting at living targets. Some hunting is done solely to acquire trophies, and some, even, is no more than shooting tame, confined animals.
Some hunters use brutally inhumane weapons such as the bow and arrow.
More than one hundred million animals are reported killed by hunters each year. That number does not include the millions of animals for which kill figures are not maintained by wildlife agencies. Hunters have strived for decades to convince the American public that hunting is good for wildlife and good for society, often with arguments that are based on obfuscation and half-truths. They have deliberately focused the debate on deer hunting, for which plausible, but not necessarily true arguments for subsistence and management can be made to the public. But the holes in their arguments are becoming increasingly apparent, as is the magnitude of their waste, cruelty and destruction.