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]
During the
Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, the killing practice became popular[6] 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.[7][6]
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.
Other examples
Some accounts of early human violence associate the development of
warfare – aggression against humans – with the practice of hunting game.[8][9]
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.[10]
In fiction
The topic of hunting humans has been the subject of several works of fiction.
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 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.
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.
In the Japanese
MangaOne Piece Chapter 1096 is titled "Kumachi". The celestial dragons are hunting some of their
slaves and the natives of the island called God Valley for amusement
^For example: Hochschild, Adam (2016).
Spain in Our Hearts. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp.
37.
ISBN978-0547973180. 'Sons of landowners,' writes the historian Antony Beevor, 'organized peasant hunts on horseback. [...]'
^
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.
ISBN978-1585090990. 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.
^Barber, Malcolm (17 June 2014) [2000].
The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. The Medieval World. Abingdon: Routledge.
ISBN978-1317890386. 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 [...].'
^
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.
^
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.
ISBN9781-851099290. 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 [...].
^Otterbein, Keith F. (24 March 2009). "The Evolution of War".
The Anthropology of War. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. p. 65.
ISBN978-1478609889. 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 [...].