Quotes / Egomaniac Hunter

"God makes some men poets. Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made for the trigger, my father said. He was a very rich man with a quarter of a million acres in the Crimea, and he was an ardent sportsman. When I was only five years old he gave me a little gun, specially made in Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with. When I shot some of his prize turkeys with it, he did not punish me; he complimented me on my marksmanship. I killed my first bear in the Caucasus when I was ten. My whole life has been one prolonged hunt. I went into the army - it was expected of noblemen's sons - and for a time commanded a division of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was always the hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in every land. It would be impossible for me to tell you how many animals I have killed."

— General Zaroff, The Most Dangerous Game

"Well, I've been a hunter all my life. I love animals. That's why I like to kill 'em. I wouldn't kill an animal I didn't like."

— Monty Python's Flying Circus, Mosquito Hunters

Ensemble: No one shoots like Gaston, makes those beauts like Gaston
Lefou: Then goes tromping around wearing boots like Gaston!
Gaston: I use antlers in all of my decorating!
Ensemble: My, what a guy...Gaston!

—Beauty and the Beast, "Gaston"

I remember my childhood in Brighton
When dear old Dad would bounce me on his knee
He said "Son, there ain't nothin' as excitin'
As exposing beasts to inhumanity!"

Thats... why... I'm...
Happy to be King of the Creatures!
Proud to be the Lord of the Odd!
I love collecting things with grotesque features
It makes me feel like some Chaldean god!

—Conroy Bumpus, "King of the Creatures", Sam & Max Hit the Road

"Nothing's accidental when it comes to old Grimmel. He lives for the hunt. To get inside the mind of his prey, to control its every choice. It's all a game to him."

— Eret on Grimmel the Grisly, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

"Jacques and Michi Abney weren’t the best big game hunters in the business. The best would never have considered going on television, allowing their faces to be plastered across vidscreens and billboards the world over. Every year brought another layer of pointless regulations to the hunt, and sometimes having a recognizable face was the difference between successfully bribing a guard to let you into the wildlife preserve and being arrested on sight as a poacher. It was all a bunch of tree-hugging bullshit as far as Jacques was concerned. The big game would be gone outside of zoos in another twenty years whether he took some of it home or not. The white rhino was proof of that. All the conservation efforts in the world, and for what? So the last wild male could die of old age, surrounded by armed guards he couldn’t understand, as much a captive of mankind as any zoo-bound specimen? At least the animals in the zoos didn’t know what they were missing. No. Better to give the beasts the honor of a good, clean death while the wild was there to witness it. If there was a heaven for lions, Jacques had sent six of them there all by himself, and he fully expected to send another dozen to join them before he got too old to deal with the expense and difficulty of the veldt. It was the least he could do for the big animals that had brought him so much joy and given so much purpose to his life."

— Narration on Jacques and Michi Abney, Into the Drowning Deep

289. Find some other way of proving your manhood than by shooting defenseless animals and birds.

— Life's Little Instruction Book, Volume I

"More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle"

— Theodore Roosevelt voicing his concern about the wanton destruction of animals, which this trope embodies.

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