While I sometimes get incredulous stares when I say this, hunters are usually advocates of conservation. Cynical folks might think this is so they can keep killing animals. This is obviously at least part of their motivation: hunters enjoy hunting and without animals, there is no hunting. However, it would be unfair to claim that hunters are driven only by a selfish desire to hunt.  I grew up hunting and have met many hunters who are concerned about conservation in general and not just for their own interest in hunting animals. While the true motives of hunters are relevant to assessing their character, the ethics of hunting for conservation is another issue. This issue is perhaps best addressed on utilitarian grounds: does allowing the hunting of animals and charging for such things as hunting licenses create more good or evil consequences?

In the United States, this sort of hunting is morally acceptable. After all, hunters of all political views support preserving public lands and willingly pay fees they know to help fund conservation efforts. Human hunters help check game populations, especially deer, that would suffer from the harms of overpopulation (such as starvation). That said, there are counterarguments against this view, such as pointing out that human hunters wiped out many predators that kept deer populations in check and that it would be preferable to restore these animals than rely on humans.

More controversial than game hunting is trophy hunting. While all hunters can take trophies, trophy hunting is aimed at acquiring a trophy, such as a head, tusks, or hide. The goal in a trophy hunt is the prestige of the kill, rather than getting meat or for the challenge of hunting. Of special concern is trophy hunting in Africa.

A key concern about such hunts is that the animals tend to be at risk or even endangered, such as big cats, elephants and rhinos. Trophy hunting in Africa is mostly domain done by the wealthy because foreigners pay to hunt their desired animal and must be able to afford the cost of travel and hunting. This money, so the argument in favor of trophy hunting goes, is used to support conservation efforts and incentivize the locals in conservation efforts.

From a moral standpoint, this argument can be cast in utilitarian terms: while the killing of rare or endangered animals is a negative consequence, this is offset by the money used for conservation and the economic gain to the country. The moral balancing act involves weighing the dead animals against the good that is supposed to arise from their deaths. This takes us to the factual matter of money.

One point of practical concern is corruption: does the money go to conservation and to the locals, or does it get directed elsewhere, such as the bank accounts of corrupt officials? If the money does not actually go to conservation, then the conservation argument fails.

Another point of practical concern is whether the money is enough to support the conservation efforts. If  the money gained does not conserve more animals than are killed by the hunters, then the conservation argument would also fail. This raises the question of whether there are enough animals to kill and enough left over to conserve. In the case of abundant species, the answer could easily be yes. In the case of endangered species, killing them to save them has less plausibility.

In addition to the utilitarian calculation that weighs the dead animals against the alleged benefits, there is also the worry about the ethics of trophy hunting itself, perhaps in the context of a different ethical theory. For example, a deontologist like Kant might contend that killing animals for trophies would be wrong regardless of the allegedly good consequences. Virtue theorists might, as another example, take issue with the impact of such trophy hunting on the person’s character. After all, the way many trophy hunts are conducted  involve people other than the “hunter” doing the actual hunting. The hunter just pulls the trigger once their shot is lined up for them.  As such, it is not really trophy hunting for the “hunter” and is better described as trophy shooting.

To use an analogy, imagine a rich person hires a team to play basketball for him. When the players get a free throw, he marches out onto the court to take the shot. This is playing basketball in the same sense that trophy hunting is hunting. That is to say, just barely.