Hunters argue that hunting is a tradition, a ritual or a bonding experience.
Regarding ethics, hunting proponents argue that killing a deer for food cannot be worse than killing a cow or a chicken. Furthermore, unlike the cow or the chicken, the deer lived a free and wild life before being killed and had a chance to escape. Hunters also argue that killing a number of deer benefits the ecosystem as a whole. Some hunters also oppose certain practices they consider unethical, such as baiting, canned hunting, trophy hunting, and hunting of stocked animals.