Talk:Blood sport (hunting)

Redirected from Talk:Blood_sport 28dec2005
I'm rather edgy about coursing and related articles being included in this article and matching category. In coursing, unlike most other sports in this category (e.g. hunting), the death of the hare is not the objective - the objective is for the dogs to pursue the hare and force it to turn. By design, nine times out of ten the hare escapes, as hares literally have eyes practically in the bank of their head, allowing them to dodge at the last second. Plus greyhounds a) run out of steam within a few seconds b) have no sense of smell and c) are, like all dogs, very very stupid. The remaining one out of ten hares are generally ill and not long for this earth anyway.

Admittedly the figure is lower for illegal coursing, but condemning legal coursing because of that would be like condemning boxing because of the injuries sustained during bare-knuckle fighting. Perhaps if a less emotive term than 'blood sport' was used I'd feel differently, but we can't choose our language.

I'm not going to be bold and remove it myself because some of the Southern US 'blood sports' also seem to avoid outright killing of animals, and I don't want to come in from outside and screw up other people's definition of 'blood sport' for the sake of my own personal bias. But I'd be interested to see if anyone else has any thoughts on this. --Last Malthusian 14:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Pejorative
I spent the better part of an hour yesterday at a large library trying to find the origin of this phrase, but even the Oxford English Dictionary is vague about first uses, which go back to the late 1500's (essentially the beginning of writing on such things). There was also some conjecture in other sources that the phrase originally refers to "bloods" (aristocratic rowdies, what in the US would probably be called "frat boys" today) or physical blood. There seems to be a strong rise in the use of the phrase in the late 1800's as part of Victorian social reform, particularly around feminism and animal welfare. Given this history, there seems to be a strong case that the phrase is pejorative in modern usage, especially in the sense that it confounds "sports" where the sporting aspect is chase and an animal's ability to run away with spectacles such as cockfighting where the point is to forbid and prevent the animals from doing anything other than fighting or being killed. In modern hunting terminology, this is the distinction between "fair chase" and stocked ponds for children's fishing and "canned hunts" for yuppies. Most participants in such "sports" as hunting, fox hunting and fishing "fail" in the sense that they often don't kill anything, yet they still consider that "good sport" because of the spiritual and recreational aspects of the pursuit. Current use of the term "blood sport" is either (A) historical, referring to Victorian spectacles, (B) rhetorical, as by animal welfare activists or (C) metaphorical, to describe various social nastiness. The fact that the term is not often used to refer to gladiators, boxing or professional wrestling would seem to support this. Rorybowman 17:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Cricket fighting
User:SirIsaacBrock has twice removed cricket fighting from the list by saying it's only for vertebrate animals. Can we have a citable definition for this addition of "vertebrate"? SchmuckyTheCat 23:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Citable definition SirIsaacBrock 23:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary doesn't count, because, as you just did, you can define it yourself. Nice try though. SchmuckyTheCat 00:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The fundamental issue is that the term "blood sport" is imprecise and here being used politically. Were I feeling sophisticated I could jump in on this one from either side (do insects REALLY have blood? do they understand enough rules for it to be a true sport? etc), but the phrase here is being used as a pejorative. Instead of vertebrate perhaps a better restrictor could have been "charismatic mega-fauna" as various Victorian rat "sports" are left out because they also do not fit the agenda... Notice that menstrual cup racing is also left out? - Rorybowman 01:05, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Page move
This page encompasses plenty more than hunting, it defines and explains the general term. I propose this page should be "Blood sport" and the dab page should be "Blood sport (disambiguation)" SchmuckyTheCat 01:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Kind of like the Holy Roman Empire, eh? Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. I've taken the opposite approach and tried to expand the article so it is clearer how the term is used and the different ways it can be used. I'm a boxer myself, for example, but consider modern professional boxing to be an immoral bloodsport in the rhetorical sense. Go figger. - Rorybowman 02:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yah, exactly. I see in the history it was moved to this title about a month ago, and I can't find a shred or hint as to why. SchmuckyTheCat 02:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * No, the talk history was moved here from the disambig page. View the article's history and its "evolution" is clearer. - Rorybowman 03:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

DO NOT MOVE - it should not be moved ! WritersCramp 02:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Ditto above. Meanings other than hunting should have separate articles. -- Mistress Selina Kyle  (  Α⇔Ω ¦  ⇒✉  )  11:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * But this article currently is not strictly about hunting, it's not even the main topic. Extricating the hunting specific information would result in an entirely too short stub article with no context to other vitally linked uses of the term.  What is there to say about hunting as a blood sport that shouldn't realistically go into the hunting article itself? SchmuckyTheCat 17:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Reambiguation Page?
Looking at the history of this article, perhaps it should be merged into blood sport and just put the various disambiguation disclaimers at the top, as is the current case with stalking. - Rorybowman 03:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

This page has been written as POV it is not accurate. Hunting is a blood sport, just check any decent English dictionary. I agree that "Blood Sport (hunting)" is a bad title. I did not name it. Perhaps, we should have four articles:


 * Blood Sport (disambiguation)

-involving dogs
 * Blood Sport (bait)

-sports humans are involved in, boxing, hunting, fishing, trapping etc.
 * Blood Sport (humans)

-involving animals 'other than' dogs, Cricket fighting etc.
 * Blood Sport (animals)

Or one article called "Blood Sport" with the above as separate subtitles.

However, if there are no agreed changes the article should be reverted back as it is incredibly incorrect ! WritersCramp 03:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Would you be amenable to putting the whole mess back into blood sport and introducing subtitles? I checked the OED earlier in the week and it seems from that the term involved the rural chasing of animals in the 1500's, then the confining of animals to fight in the 1800's, then the expansion of the term for other nastiness in the 1900's. This is a phrase with a vague and curious history, with no one dictionary really doing it justice. Perhaps divide into chasing activities (fox hunting, coursing), combat activities (cockfighting, baiting) and other uses (such as boxing, gladiatorial combat or politics)? That seems to capture the historical evolution more accurately. If reverted, how far back does it revert? That is why I am thinking a return to blood sport might be the better part of valor. - Rorybowman 03:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Where would hunting, fishing and falconry fit in ? "Combat" would imply animal and human activities.

Dictionary definitions:


 * New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: blood sports - sports involving the killing of animals, esp. hunting;
 * Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: any sport involving killing or the shedding of blood, as bullfighting, *cockfighting, or hunting
 * Collins English Dictionary: any sport involving the killing of an animal, esp. hunting
 * Chambers 21st Century Dictionary: sports that involve the killing of animals, eg. fox-hunting
 * Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: a sport or contest (as hunting or cockfighting) involving bloodshed.

WritersCramp 04:19, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Which is the problem. The term is just muddled, and if we aim for more precision we risk losing the ambiguous, NPOV essence. I've made a stab at it (no pun intended) with this rewrite and adding a picture of a modern bull fight. Since almost nobody is sympathetic to the Spaniards we don't gore the standard fox-hunting ALF bull, we show that such things still exist and we have a more attractive layout. I think that the current page would work just fine as a generic blood sport article, allowing us to lose the currently innacurate (hunting) subtitle. A disambig page for three items is a bit silly. - Rorybowman 04:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Let's let it stew here until next weekend so others can read and contribute to the discussion so we can get some sort of concencus. WritersCramp 04:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea! See you next week! - Rorybowman 04:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, the three of us, so far, agree that the (hunting) subtitle is wrong. The current article is also the most obvious article for anyone typing "Blood sport" into the search box or making a blind wikilink for the term. I don't see any POV issue either, the existing content functions at least as section stubs for the growth of the term. I see no reason not to do this. SchmuckyTheCat 06:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * See above.


 * The most popular page does not necessarily belong at the main word. It is better that blood sport stays at a disambiguation and other meanings of "blood sport" have articles and are linked to there. -- Mistress Selina Kyle  (  Α⇔Ω ¦  ⇒✉  )  11:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * On the contrary: Disambiguation is our guideline here, which clearly states that the primary meaning of a term should be at the name of the term with a link to further disambiguation. This article is overwhelmingly the primary meaning of "blood sport".  Just look at the "what links here" for the dab page.  Not a single one of those mis-directed links expects to find a dab page, or any other meaning of the term. SchmuckyTheCat 17:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I must agree with the above. The blood sport disambiguation page can (and should) be kept, but the words "blood sport" should go to this page, as it's by far the most widely used meaning of the phrase. At present, it seems oddly counterintuitive, and perhaps downright incorrect, to have this page as a separate one listed as "blood sport (hunting)". -Terraxos, 00:56, 24 January 2006

Beautiful Pics
Just added a beautiful pic from the Très Riches Heures which I placed at the bottom for two reasons: (1) it is so beautiful that I thought it might disrupt NPOV, (2) it is tall, so fills this space more fully. It clearly illustrates the concept in a purer and more historical way, though, but perhaps if there were other pics in the listy area these could balance it out. Something of boxing perhaps? I'll let others weigh in on this and stop adding for the time being. - Rorybowman 02:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved this article to blood sport, left talk here
I have moved this article from its present rather unfortunate title back to blood sport, as this is the main meaning, and created a new blood sport (disambiguation) page. For simplicity I suggest leaving this talk here, so the rationale for such a move will be clearer to future editors. - Rorybowman 14:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)