On Trophy-hunting and Trophy-fishing
This is an interesting article on the psychology of trophy-hunting, which is the killing of animals only for the sake of collecting one or more of their body parts as a prize to symbolize the success of the kill.
It appears to me that trophy-hunting is morally wrong. So is trophy-fishing. These are necessary conditions — or so it seems to me — for the moral permissibility of one’s hunting or fishing:
(a) killing with the intent to eat one’s kill (or with the intent of having someone eat it) rather than for the sake of being amused by the kill, and
(b) killing only that which is minimally sufficient to provide for one’s physical need for meat consumption. (I am assuming that at least some humans have a nutritional requirement for at least some meat consumption. I grant that this assumption is debatable. See here, here, here, and here for relevant articles.)
Here’s a quick argument. Notice that I don’t appeal to objective moral rights for animals, since I’m skeptical that there are such things. I am, however, inclined to hold that animals have some form of moral status.
1. It is morally wrong to harm or kill animals merely for the sake of our enjoyment.
2. Trophy-hunting and trophy-fishing are cases of such harming/killing for enjoyment.
3. Hence, it is morally wrong to trophy-hunt and trophy-fish.
(One can modify this argument to show that other forms of animal abuse for the sake of enjoyment are wrong.)
To support (1), one might argue that we have a moral obligation to care for and conserve our natural environment and not to abuse it, and that killing animals for the sake of our enjoyment is a violation of this duty. One might also argue that animals possess intrinsic value and thus should be treated as such. Moreover, one might claim as Kant does that we ought to cultivate virtue and that we should follow the Categorical Imperative (CI), that treating animals with an appropriate degree of respect makes it likely that we will cultivate virtue and follow the CI, but that abusing animals makes it less likely that we will achieve these ends.