Eating animals is okay. Human as species is an omnivore, meaning that we naturally eat almost anything that moves (or doesn't move) and is even remotely edible.
So I have no problem with hunters as long as the prey is used as food. People eat meat anyway, I don't see any difference between meat coming from slaughterhause and meat coming from forest, at least ethics-wise. So it's okay as long as the meat is used.
Hunting animals just for fun is nuts, though. Killing animals in "Great White Hunter" style is something I do not really understand. This, however, is fun to watch:
Paybaaack! I just wish he had mauled one of the hunters a little more. Fracking idiots, what were they thinking.
But here's something to think.
In Finland, it's a common hobby to hunt moose (or is it meese or whatever in plural...
). So, in order to make the hunting more successful, an overgrown elk population is maintained in Finland. This causes many problems. For example, car vs. elk accidensts are quite common and often result in deaths and in any case, total wreckage of the car. Besides this, the animals cause havoc by eating young trees to death and causing millions of damage to forest industry.
Also, the natural predators of elk (ie. wolves) have been reduced to pitiful population as a result of hunting in old times, so it's up to hunters to keep the elk population under control - thus the overgrown size of elk population is completely conscious choice, and thus the hunters keeping the population too big are almost directly responsible for the great number of elk vs. car insidents, as well as millions of damage to the forest industry.
So, for making the hunting of elk easier for people who want to hunt, the population is kept quite big, which causes problems.
I'm definitely not against hunting elk in general, since if they weren't hunted there would be even more of them than there is now, but I just think their population should be reduced to perhaps half or even third of what it is now. It would make the hunting more of a challenge and it would reduce the collateral damage significantly.
I'm not into hunting myself, but I can understand why some people want to do it. If it's done correctly, it's all right. Killin rare animals such as elephants or gorilla just to get ivory or perhaps a stuffed gorilla into trophy room is something that almost makse me puke.
...On the other hand, so does PETA. I took a glance to their website and goddamn what morons they seem to be.
<Off-topic PETA rant - zoom if you want to read>
Eating animals is part of what humans do. Perhaps they would also want other predators to quit eating other animals. Most primates eat small animals when they get the chance. Some have more vegetarian diet, some have more predatory diet. Humans and chimpanzees have much in common in that regard, where as gorilla tend to be more vegetarian species.
Animals eat animals. Humans are animals (albeit one of the most intelligent species on Earth), thus there is no ethical barrier for eating animals IMO.
Other thing that disturbs me is that we "shouldn't use animals for testing" mantra they seem to like so much... While I can agree that testing cosmetics and other unnecessary products with animals is even more stupid than the idea of 100% denser and three times longer eyelashes, testing medical products with animals is frankly necessary, unless we want to do the tests directly on humans, and that's even more unethical IMHO.
Also, I don't think using wool clothes is bad for the sheep... And I don't think the slaughtered and eaten cows need their hides any more. In fact, since we do eat the animals, why wouldn't we use every part of them? It would be such a waste not to use perfectly good hide for leather products. Fur farming, though, is more of an ethically doubtful thing to do IMHO. It's different amongst the inuit and other people who live in environments where they really need fur clothes to survive... but decorative use is not so cool.</rant>
