Sport. According to an intense Google search I just conducted, a sport is defined as "an activity involving physical extension and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment." I grew up in Southern Virginia, so I constantly heard about how hunting was a sport. (Let me make it clear that I'm talking about hunting deer. I would never joke about big game hunting, unless of course we were hunting Donald Trump's children.) There's even a deer head hanging in my childhood home. Let me go ahead and say that I'm not necessarily against deer hunting. I understand the whole "controlling deer population thing because otherwise they'll take over the world and make us their slaves" thing. However, I think it's important that we all sit down and understand something.
Hunting is not a sport.
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It's not. I don't care what you say. It does not fit the description of a sport for two genuine reasons.
Reason #1: A sport involves "physical extension and skill." And. Not "or", and. Extending your precious finger to pull the trigger on your gun does not count. I am willing to agree that being able to aim a gun requires some sort of skill, but there is definitely no "physical extension." Maybe if you chased the deer, or you and the deer both threw an olympic type hammer it would count. But no. There is no physical anything happening. I've had heard a number of stories of people falling asleep while hunting. Why? Probably because NO ONE IS MOVING PHYSICALLY IN ANY SENSE. The deer are doing all the work and they get killed. That sucks.
Reason #2: "an individual or team competes against another." Do the deer know that they're playing? Has anyone told them? Because I feel like if someone had, those deer wouldn't be walking around the forest like they do now. No, they'd be hiding and then when night fell, they'd come busting into our homes, stabbing us and shit. Besides, hunters wear camouflage. You are quite literally hiding from your opponent. What if tennis players did that? What if you hid from your opponent in tennis and then when they weren't looking you just throw your racket at them and hoped it killed them? That's not a sport.
But you know what, I'm a reasonable person. I am willing to add hunting to the list of sports if we make one of two possible modifications
Modification #1: We take the away the guns. Just human vs. deer. In the Olympics and professional sports, players are disqualified for using performance enhancers. If hunting is really a sport, isn't a gun just a performance enhancer? Besides, I personally would pay a lot of money to see a human try to hunt a deer with nothing but it's hands. Can you imagine?
Modification #2: We teach deer how to use guns. Probably a bit more complicated than the first possible modification, but vastly more exciting. Just imagine and a deer running through the forest with a rifle in its horns. What if the deer started laying traps for humans? What if they started hanging McDonalds from trees, or making trails out of Chipotle chips? Someone should get on this right now.
As you can clearly see, hunting is not a sport. There are ways we could make it one, but as of right now it just doesn't make the cut. Sorry guys. At least it's not NASCAR. That's not a sport no matter what you do.
