Hunting trophy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Trophy (disambiguation).
A Hunting trophy, or, more rarely, fishing trophy is an item prepared from the body of a game animal killed by a hunter (or a fish caught by a sports fisherman) and kept as a souvenir of the successful hunting or fishing expedition.
Often the heads or entire bodies are processed by a taxidermist, although sometimes other body parts such as teeth or horns are used as the trophies. Hunting for the singular purpose of obtaining trophies is often considered improper today. Such trophies have also been produced from humans in cultures that accept cannibalism or when two societies clash in war. Again, this is not acceptable in modern times, and generally goes against the rules of war.
Commencing in the 1970s and 1980s in the United Kingdom, USA and some other western countries, a pejorative association began to be assumed regarding the process of hunting for trophy. By the year 2000 there is widespread consensus in animal welfare organizations and in segments of the population as a whole that trophy hunting is to be discouraged. Many of the 189 countries signtory to the 1992 Rio Accord have developed Biodiversity Action Plans that discourage the hunting of protected species.
