This news story broke my heart ! !

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Then your rant still doesn't apply to this hunting party as they mention they will be slaughtering the pig for sausage. I don't see how you can possibly separate the enjoyment out of hunting from the utility of killing for food.

I just think that if they were hunting for food they should have killed it with ONE shot to the brain ( there were a few scoped rifles at the scene ) .... instead of a long and painful drawn out kill ( 3 hours - between the first and last shots ! ! )

That just seems CRUEL to me I'm afraid ! !! !! !

It's not a good idea to try to shoot an animal in the head when you're hunting. Aiming for the head, you're much more likely than not to cause the animal grievous injury but not kill it. It will run, and might die days or weeks later in misery as a result of its injury. Hunters aim for the lung area. It's a large enough region that it's harder to miss. When the bullet enters the animal, it tears apart a little, and causes a great deal of damage to the lungs. The animal falls unconscious and dies from suffocation and loss of blood.

So, what I suspect happened here is, the boy was using an inappropriate weapon and wasn't able to hit the animal in the right area because he couldn't shoot accurately. You've got to give the kid credit for his persistence though. If the hog was originally shot in the gut, it's not like it could have run to a hospital. Its only chance of avoiding a much longer and even more painful death was being shot by the kid again. So the boy did do the right thing in pursuing the animal. He just botched up the job horribly in the first place.

I guess this topic is gonna go on a while longer.
Anyhow, Esperanza is right about the heart and lung area shot being preferable to a head shot. Even then a well placed bullet does not guarantee a quick death. A lot of variables come into play including the mental and physical state of the subject when hit. The path of the bullet through that part of the body, terminal velocity and expansion of the projectile, penetration, hydrostatic shock, the permanent and temporary crush cavity of the would channel, damage to major bones, blood loss, and so on. It's a deep subject and a science in itself.

As far as sport hunting as opposed to hunting for subsistance goes it's like this. There aren't all that many people any more that have to hunt to live. Nothing like it once was. In the U.S. back in the days of hunting for subsistance a lot of species of game were hunted nearly the point of extinction in entire regions. There were no limits or seasons. For one example the elk that I mentioned in my last post used to be fairly common in the east back when the early settlers came here and up until the mid 19th century. They were hunted for their meat until there were none left east of the Mississippi.
Sport hunting organizations have been working with the state and federal governments with great sucess to re-establish elk in the east. Large and small sport hunting organizations have helped to assure the future existance of the various game and even non-game species than we'll probably ever fully realize. The revenue from hunting licenses helps a lot here, too.
It may seem contradictiry but he reason we have as many animals in the wild as we do is because of sport hunters.

It's hard to expain why it's fun but it is. I'm not good enough with words or maybe I could shed more light on it. It's pretty much one of those things you have to do to see what it's like snf understand it. If you were to research it enough you'd find out that even back when people hunted for subsistance it was considered a pleasurable task to go hunting and one to look forward to.

Raptor

I know that a lot of people really do find it fun. I'm not sure why that is. The thrill of the hunt? The primal nature of it? Chimpanzees hunt too, so it's got to go back pretty far in our evolution. Maybe it's instinctual. I don't know because I've never really felt that way. It's hard for me to do. It's a very grim task.

Ok I am not a hunter so I don't know the best place to shoot an animal ! !

The brain would seem an obvious choice to me though ...anyways, seeing that his dad and a few others had high powered SCOPED rifles they could have finished the animal off instantly after Billy the Kid and done his initial dirty deed ! !

No need for the 3 hours chase of a dying creature through the woods ! !