Aldo Leopold Quotes

I am a very good shot. I have hunted for every kind of animal. But I would never kill an animal during mating season.

I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.

The idea that hunting is one against one is ludicrous. It's one animal versus the hunter, the manufacturer of the rifle, the bullet maker, the designer and manufacturer of the telescopic sight, the auto manufacturer who made the car the hunter got to the edge of the wild in, the maker of his waterproof shoes, the various manufacturers of his mittens, glasses, overcoat - and that's only the beginning of the list. The "sportsman" who shoots an animal should then make a speech, like the actor who wins an Oscar does, thanking the multitudes behind the scenes who made this "victory" possible.

This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing

The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them.

In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter.

I grew up around hunters. I love guns, bows, arrows, compasses and binoculars. I don't do any of that stuff, I just like the stuff. I shot one animal, in my life, and I didn't like it. If I had to skin an animal to eat it, I'd probably eat vegetables.

The hunter who accepts the sporting code of ethics keeps his commandments in the greatest solitude, with no witness or audience other than the sharp peaks of the mountain, the roaming cloud, the stern oak, the trembling juniper, and the passing animal.

John Kerry went duck hunting and he's doing that to fulfill his campaign pledge to hunt down the ducks and kill them wherever they are! Kerry did pretty well; he came back with four ducks and three Purple Hearts.

American hunting is quite different from English hunting because we don't hunt to kill. Even if I wanted to kill a fox, I couldn't. They're too smart and they have too many ways to escape me, whereas they don't in England.

Is it [hunting] really a sport if you have all the equipment and your opponent doesn't know a game is going on?

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct

I don't shoot anything. I could never kill an animal. My dad does all the hunting, and he eats everything that he kills.

As between the skulking and furtive poacher, who hunts for the sake of meat, and the honest gentleman shooter, who kills for the pleasure of sport, I find the former a higher type of humanity.

I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense....

Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

Why...is the hunter who shoots a deer for venison subject to more criticism than the person who buys a ham at the supermarket? Overall, it is probably the intensively reared pig who has suffered more.

There was never any question about the morality of hunting, but neither was there any acceptance of killing for the sake of a trophy.

Take a picture not a trophy This is how real men shoot animals

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Hunting is the last perfect thing.

I am sort of anti-hunting. I don't put down what anyone wants to do, but it seems to me that killing a creature for fun is not a progressive idea.

I went hunting, I shot a deer, and it mortified me. I just couldn't do it again.