I find it disturbing that the author has such little value for life and would write an article defending abuse. No living thing should be beaten and tortured and a person who values life so little that they would do so does represent a possible harm to humans. A person who is willing to justify such behavior because "it was only property" is also scary. His comparison to deer hunting is highly flawed since it is not the hunter's intent to cause pain and torture, they strive for a clean kill and the purpose is to increase the health of the population by decreasing numbers to what the land can support since there are no longer enough natural predators to do the job. People who torture and abuse wildlife are just as wrong as those who do it to domesticated animals.
The absolute worst thing about this article though is that the editor of the paper thought that it was an appropriate "sports" article. That is the section of the paper that it was published in.
