Game of Drones: On the Moral Significance of Deception in Modern Sport Hunting

Abstract

The seeming absence of mutual consent in interspecies sports makes it difficult to justify non-human animals participating on equal terms with humans in for example sport hunting. Nevertheless, hunted animals might appear to be ‘playing the game’ to the extent they resort to counter-deceptions, which often fool the hunters or their dogs. In this paper, we consider whether counter-deception by hunted animals is evidence that they are not playing the hunter’s game at all, or rather playing a different serious game of survival, one in which they repudiate the role of ‘worthy opponent’ instead by playing the role of trickster-resistors.