2 August—August is National Shooting Sports Month. Technically, shooting sports do not include hunting or other killing and are not limited to those sports performed or executed with firearms. We’re talking about plinking and other shooting of stationary or moving (but inanimate) targets with any projectile-firing implements.

Thus, firing a rifle or shooting a bow at an innocent deer, bear, or coyote would not qualify as a shooting sport; nor would firing a shotgun at a flock of unsuspecting birds. If, however, the targets were inanimate, then you’d be participating in a shooting sport.

On the other hand, turkey shoots are considered shooting sports. In the bad old days, you aimed your musket or rifle at a live tethered or otherwise captive turkey and kept the victim if you killed or maimed the poor creature. Lots of turkeys were sacrificed to sport. These slightly more humane days, the turkeys are metal, wood, or paper targets; and sometimes even shotguns are used.

But try telling trophy hunters that the slaughter they commit isn’t sport. Even hunters who eat their kill often refer to the sport of the chase or the kill itself. And it certainly is sporting to hide in a blind or up a tree till you can line up the victim animal in the telescopic sight of your rifle and pull the trigger. (Fishing is no better—even worse, in fact—but that’s for another time.)

That said, I must admit that one friend has some most impressive—absolutely magnificent, truth be told—trophy animals he’s bagged on three continents. And house cats, dolphins, and elephants, among other sport-hunting animals, hunt and kill just for the fun of it. That’s why your sweet little kitty presents you with half-dead mice. Ants and psychopaths also kill for sport.

Yes, animals and bugs use all their physical abilities, instincts, and wiles to hunt, too, normally for self or familial preservation or protection. You can argue that human hunters are merely doing the same. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Then again, no one is as cruel as Mother Nature.

So it’s great to shoot for sport. But not to kill . . .