The fundamental question about hunting

The ongoing stream of correspondence for or against spring hunting is becoming not only tedious but superfluous. Positions have already been firmly taken by both sides and no amount of additional correspondence is likely to affect those positions. One can only hope, at this late stage, that the government will have the wisdom to help it reach a compromise solution that will pacify as many people as possible.

Among the public there is a widespread belief that the average hunter is an intellectually challenged "Rambo" in a camouflage jacket carrying a gun with which he shoots at anything that flies, safe in the knowledge that what he shoots at cannot shoot back. For those of this belief, the Rambo hunter's gun is a phallic symbol that makes loud noises, kills things and confers an otherwise lacking sense of identity - a rather atavistic, Neanderthal identity, but for such hunters, a much needed identity nonetheless.

This cannot be wholly true because it is evident from the letters that are published that many (or perhaps some) hunters are literate cultured and intelligent people who strictly adhere to the letter of the law and who insist that other hunters who make up the majority of the hunting fraternity love birds and are conservationists at heart.

I would dearly wish to be persuaded that this is the case and the answer to a simple question would help me to underhand their side of the argument. What pleasure does a cultured, intelligent and literate gentleman derive from shooting at and killing something that is defenceless, free, flies, sings beautifully and gives pleasure to many, and furthermore does not belong to him?