Human beings have hunted since prehistoric times. In fact we know that the first humans used hunting, along with fishing and gathering in order to subsist. They went out looking for food, started a chase and hunted down the animal. The resulting game would later feed various members of the tribe for quite a long time. As a matter of fact this means of subsistence is still practiced in some specific tribes, which live far away from modern society and therefore have limited access to certain foods.
However, that is the case for an extreme minority of those who call themselves hunters. The rest, in Europe and around the world, have converted hunting into a big business, often uncontrolled or irregular (in 2013 almost 1,700,000 hunting species were released in Spain, and of these only 142,173 were released by the authorities). It mostly presents itself to society in two ways. Firstly, as the “only tool” to manage those wild animal populations “which cause such inconvenience and are dangerous to society”, especially in urban and suburban areas. Secondly, that of recreational activity, sport and entertainment, in hunting areas, which hides a million-euro sector.
More than 1,150,000 individuals of huntable species were bred in intensive farms in 2013.
The truth is that hunting has become a big industry and a massive lobby group, it is able to exert a lot of pressure on public administrations and therefore it can get great privileges and concessions.
In Catalonia