Hunting is a unique sport in that the “referee” is actually the hunter. Hunters, as arbitrators on what is right and wrong during the process of hunting, vary in how they interpret the rules of the hunt.
Aldo Leopold, considered by many to be the founder of modern wildlife management in the United States, wrote in “A Sand County Almanac,” “A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.