Human Hunts

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Tuesday, November 25, 2025 10:50AM

Monday, November 24, 2025 05:47PM

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 constantly and without pause as long as the wealthy have been able to kill with impunity.^[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" (Sarajevo Safari) 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 globaloverpopulation.^[17]

Human Hunts

Historical examples

Other examples

See also

Attachments