Human-hunting

"Hunting humans" redirects here. For the 2002 film, see Hunting Humans.

Human-hunting is the hunting and killing of human beings for other people's revenge, pleasure, entertainment, sports, or sustenance.^{[ citation needed ]} Historically, incidents of the practice have occurred during times of social upheaval. ^[1]

Historical examples

• In Ancient Greece, the upper class of Sparta regularly practised the stalking and killing of members of their servile helot population; such murders were carried out both by the secret police ( Crypteia ) as a means of keeping the helots cowed and unlikely to revolt, and as part of the military training ( agoge ) for Spartan youths.
• In Europe, authorities sometimes hunted down adherents of "heretical" religious minorities, such as the Waldenses in the Alps ^[2] the Cathars in the Languedoc, ^[3] Anabaptists in Germany, ^[4] and the Huguenots in France. ^[5]
• In Netherlands ^[6] and Germany ^[7] in the 18th century, Gypsy hunts or heathen hunts, also known as "Heidenjachten," were a practice that involved hunting and persecuting the Roma people. ^[8]
• The Mexican government, particularly the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, introduced a bounty system in 1836, offering rewards for Apache scalp. The bounty for an Apache male scalp was 100 pesos, while for an adult female Apache, it was 50 pesos, and for a child under 14, it was 25 pesos. ^{[9] [10]}
• During the Selkʼnam genocide, livestock companies used employees and third party hunters to hunt down the Selkʼnam to make way for estancias (large ranches).
• During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, the killing practice became popular ^[11] among the sons of wealthy landowners. The hunts took place on horseback and targeted landless peasants as an extension of the White Terror. They were jokingly referred to as "reforma agraria" referencing the mass grave the victims would be dumped into and the land reforms the lower classes had been attempting to attain. ^{[12] [11]}
• Between 1971 and 1983, serial killer Robert Hansen flew many of his victims into the Alaskan wilderness, then released them so that he could "hunt" the women with a rifle and a knife.
• There are allegations that during the Siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996, some “rich” foreign tourists paid the Army of Republika Srpska to take part in organized “human safaris” where Serb soldiers would take the “tourists” to various sniper positions so that they could “hunt” the local populace. ^{[13] [14]}

Other examples

• Some accounts of early human violence associate the development of warfare – aggression against humans – with the practice of hunting game. ^{[15] [16]}
• In 2016, Daniel Wright, senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Central Lancashire, wrote a paper on the possible future of tourism where he discussed how the hunting of the poor ("hunting humans") could become a hobby of the super-rich in a future plagued by economic turmoils, ecological disasters, and global overpopulation. ^[17]

In fiction

Illustration from The Most Dangerous Game, with the protagonist watching his pursuer from a tree branch

The topic of hunting humans has been the subject of several works of fiction.

• "The Most Dangerous Game", a 1924 short story by Richard Connell, has been adapted dozens of times for film, radio, and television. ^[18]
• The 1985 novel, Blood Meridian , by Cormac McCarthy, features a fictionalized version of John Joel Glanton and his posse of outlaws staged in the mid 19th century. The novel depicts the hunting, genocide, and evidential scalping of native Apaches and indigenous Mexicans.
• The 1993 action film Hard Target , starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, partly inspired by Richard Connell's book, revolves around exploited trophy hunting of homeless veterans.
• The Marvel Comics features Kraven the Hunter, a big game hunter, hunting super-enhanced humans including Spider-Man for glory.
• The 1995 film Jumanji and its TV series features Van Pelt, a big game hunter who engages in human hunting among his poaching.
• The 1999 version of Tarzan features Clayton, a big game hunter, threatening to hunt Tarzan for sport. The video game features him threatening to get Tarzan stuffed during the final boss level.
• Batman Beyond features the Stalker, a big game hunter cybernetically enhanced, seeking to hunt Batman for glory.
• In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy-novel series and its HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones , the character Ramsay Bolton, who first appeared in the second book, A Clash of Kings (1998), loved hunting naked young women in forests with hounds as part of his sadistic sport.
• The 2000 cult classic Japanese film of Battle Royale features 42 high-school children sent by a totalitarian government to battle each other to death.
• The 2004 stealth video game Hitman: Contracts, the mission "Beldingford Manor" tasks the player with assassinating Lord Winston Beldingford and Alistair Beldingford, an aristocratic father and son who indulge in human hunting. The player is also tasked with rescuing Giles Northcott, their captive they plan on hunting.
• The 2005 horror film Wolf Creek, along with its 2013 sequel, and 2016 spin-off television series, evolve around a sadistic serial killer, Mick Taylor (played by John Jarratt), who hunts, tortures, and murders backpacker victims for sport in the Australian Outback.
• The 2008 onward books series and 2012 onward films of The Hunger Games features a dystopian future where contestants are chosen by means of a lottery and forced to battle to death.
• The 2018 Jack Reacher novel Past Tense by Lee Child has a major plot-point of a motel operator in a remote town conducting "a people hunt" for a rich clientele.
• The Brazilian film Bacurau (2019) tells the story of a small poor village in countryside Brazil called Bacurau, where white rich foreign tourists travel to hunt down the poor villagers. The movie got two nominations in Cannes, Palme d'Or and the Jury Prize, winning the latter. The film also took home the trophy for Best Picture at the 2019 Munich Festival.
• The 2020 satirical film The Hunt revolves around the hunting of "deplorables" by upper middle-class people in revenge for the former propagating conspiracy theories about the latter.
• In the Japanese manga One Piece Chapter 1096 (titled "Kumachi"), the Celestial Dragons are hunting some of their slaves and the natives of the island called God Valley for amusement.

See also

• Blood sport
• Bounty hunter
• Genocide
• Gladiators
• Headhunting
• Lynching
• Premeditated murder
• Psychopathy
• Serial killer
• Sexual sadism disorder
• Spree killer
• Thrill killing
• War criminal
• Witch-hunt

References

1. For example: Hochschild, Adam (2016). Spain in Our Hearts. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp.  37. ISBN   978-0547973180. 'Sons of landowners,' writes the historian Antony Beevor, 'organized peasant hunts on horseback. [...]'
2. Tice, Paul (2003) [1829]. History of the Waldenses: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time (reprint ed.). San Diego, California: The Book Tree. p. xii. ISBN   978-1585090990 . Retrieved 21 November 2022. In 1233 the Inquisition was officially unleashed on the Waldenses, and the assault continued for centuries. [...] the Church hunted Waldensians as a group and individually.
3. Barber, Malcolm (17 June 2014) [2000]. The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. The Medieval World. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN   978-1317890386 . Retrieved 21 November 2022. If the Cathars could be deprived of their customary refuges, they would be vulnerable to an active policy of heresy hunting. 'We will purge', promised Count Raymond,'these lands of heretics and of the stench of heresy [...].'
4. Van Amberg, Joel (2011). A Real Presence: Religious and Social Dynamics of the Eucharistic Conflicts in Early Modern Augsburg 1520–1530. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, Volume 158. Leiden: Brill. p. 188. ISBN   978-9004217393 . Retrieved 21 November 2022.
5. Beard, Augustus F. (1884). "Churches of the Huguenots and the religious condition of France". In Smyth, Egbert Coffin (ed.). The Andover review. Vol. 1. Newton, Massachusetts: Andover Theological Seminary. p. 64. Retrieved 21 November 2022. The army, as if led by the Furies, was employed for years in hunting Huguenots. The history reads as if diabolism were let loose.
6. Donald, Kenrick (2007). ""The Occult"". Archive.org. Retrieved September 11, 2025.{{cite web}}: Check |archive-url= value (help)
7. Hancock, Ian (1988). "Porrajmos: Essays on the Romani Genocide". StudyLib. Retrieved September 11, 2025.
8. MacLaughlin, Jim (2008). ""The Gypsy as 'other'in European society: Towards a political geography of hate". The European Legacy. 4 (3): 35–49. doi:10.1080/10848779908579970.
9. Melanie, Ho (2025-03-11). "The Long Shadow of Indian Scalp Bounties". Yale University Press. Retrieved 2025-06-12.
10. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2116&context=nmhr (PDF)
11. Hochschild, Adam (2016). Spain in Our Hearts. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp.  37. ISBN   978-0547973180.
12. Beevor, Antony (2006). The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 . Penguin. p.  77. ISBN   978-0143037651. This sort of activity was jokingly referred to as the 'reforma agraria' whereby the landless bracero was finally to get a piece of ground for himself.
13. Akyol, Riada Asimovic (2022-11-14). "Documentary Film Alleges That Foreigners Took Part in 'Civilian Hunting' in Bosnian Capital". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved 2025-06-12.
14. "Film Sarajevo Safari sheds light on shocking truth about Bosnian War". www.aa.com.tr. Retrieved 2025-06-12.
15. Mendoza, Abraham O. (2011). "War and Diplomacy: Introduction: Conflict and Aggression in Early Human Societies". In Andrea, Alfred J.; Neel, Carolyn (eds.). World History Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 256–257. ISBN   9781-851099290 . Retrieved 21 November 2022. Scholars who subscribe to sociobiological explanations for violence and conflict in early human societies [...] argue that biological drives predetermine human behavior. Though initially displaying such behaviors when hunting game and developing tools for such activities, hunter-gatherers eventually used their developing aggressive techniques against each other [...].
16. Otterbein, Keith F. (24 March 2009). "The Evolution of War". The Anthropology of War. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. p. 65. ISBN   978-1478609889 . Retrieved 21 November 2022. Warfare developed along two separate paths. The hunting of large game animals was critical to the development of the first path. Early hunters, working as a group in pursuit of game, sometimes engaged in attacks on members of competing groups of hunters [...].
17. Wright, Daniel (April–May 2016). "Hunting humans: A future for tourism in 2200". Futures . 78–79: 34–46. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2016.03.021.
18. Dixon, Wheeler Winston (2010). A History of Horror. Rutgers University Press. p. 42. ISBN   978-0813550398.