Human hunting

Practice in ancient greece
Human hunting refers to humans being hunted and killed for other persons' revenge, pleasure, entertainment, sports, or sustenance. Historically, incidents of the practice have occurred during times of social upheaval.

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 the Cathars in the Languedoc, Anabaptists in Germany, and the Huguenots in France. In Holland, The heathen hunts, also known as "heidenjachten," were a practice during the 18th century that involved hunting and persecuting the Romani People. 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. During the California genocide of 1846 to 1873, indigenous people were hunted down and killed for bounties. During the Selk'nam genocide, Livestock companies use employees and third party hunters to hunt down the Selk'nam to make away for estancias (large ranches). During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, the killing practice became popular 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. 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.

The topic of hunting humans has been the subject of several works of fiction. Probably the most famous in English is "The Most Dangerous Game", a 1924 short story by Richard Connell, which has been adapted dozens of times for film, radio, and television. 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 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.