Hunting out of need for food certainly is not wrong. Mankind has done so practically from the beginning of time because man is an omnivore and, for the bulk of his existence, generally has needed meat to survive. That need is not as great in industrialized countries of the world today where there is easy access to alternative sources of protein and the other health benefits meat provides, but there are still areas of the world in which hunting for food is a necessary part of human existence.
Hunting for sport is another matter entirely. There can be reasons for allowing sport hunting that benefit the common good of man (e.g., controlling overpopulation in animals, tracking and killing an individual animal that has harmed humans), but I believe there are serious questions that have been posed about the ethics of killing animals for fun. It can endanger the survival of a species, it can desensitize humans to the suffering of other creatures, it can pose a danger to the ecological balance of nature, and (perhaps most importantly) it can be an affront to human dignity for humans to treat other creatures as if those creaures’ lives have no more inherent value than to be ended as entertainment for humans.
Animal lives do not have the same inherent value as human lives, and that is why animals may be used for the benefit of humans. But respect for the lives of animals is an important value to be cultivated in human persons and can contribute to an overall respect for the dignity and value of every life, according to its kind and God-given design.
