page_title: Hunting
section_title: Hunting in the arts
hierarchical_section_title: Hunting / Hunting in the arts
context_page_description: Hunting is the practice of seeking, pursuing and capturing or killing wild animals. Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most commonly done by humans for meat, recreation, to remove predators that can be dangerous to humans or domestic animals, to remove pests that destroy crops or kill livestock, or for trade. Many non-human species also hunt - see predation.
  Regulations distinguish lawful hunting from poaching, which involves the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species. The species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are usually mammals and birds. Economists classify hunting as part of primary production - alongside forestry, agriculture and fishing.
  Hunting by humans arose in Homo erectus or earlier, in the order of millions of years ago. Hunting has become deeply embedded in human culture.
  Hunting can be a means of pest control. Hunting advocates state that hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example, to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent or very rare.
caption: Gustave Courbet, La Curée, chasse au chevreuil dans les forêts du Grand Jura (The Quarry, deer hunt in the woods of the Grand Jura), 1857
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