Hunting, sport that involves the seeking, pursuing, and killing of wild animals and birds, called game and game birds, primarily in modern times with firearms but also with bow and arrow. In Great Britain and western Europe, hunting is the term employed for the taking of wild animals with the aid of hounds that hunt by scent,
whereas the sport of taking small game and game birds with a gun is known as shooting. In the United States and elsewhere, the term hunting is used for both hunting and shooting. In fox hunting, the kill is made by the hounds. See also falconry.
To early humans, hunting was a necessity. The quarry provided not only food from the meat but also clothing from the skins, as well as material for tools from the bones, horns, and hooves. Both archaeological evidence from the past and observation of simpler societies of the present show widespread preoccupation with,
and ingenuity in, methods of hunting. These varied, and vary, with the nature of the terrain, the animal hunted, the ingenuity and inventiveness of the hunters, and the materials and technologies at their disposal. Weapons ranged upward in intricacy and effectiveness from sticks and stones used to kill birds and small game to specially
shaped clubs and throwing sticks such as the African knobkerry, the trombash of the Upper Nile, and the Australian boomerang; to spears ranging from simple pointed sticks to those with a separate foreshaft, usually barbed, and armed with heads of sharpened stone,
bone, or metal. Except in Australia, bows and arrows were universal among early hunters and were revived by modern hunters in the 19th century. The blowpipe, or blowgun, with its poisoned darts, is one of the hunter’s deadliest weapons.
