Hunting is the practice of pursuing animals for food, recreation, or trade. In modern use, the term refers to regulated and legal hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of animals contrary to law. Hunted animals are referred to as game animals, and are usually large or small mammals, migratory gamebirds, or non-migratory gamebirds.
Hunting can also involve the elimination of vermin as a means of pest control. Hunting advocates claim that hunting can be a necessary component of modern wildlife management, for example to help maintain a population of healthy animals within an environment's ecological carrying capacity when natural checks such as predators are absent. In the United States, wildlife managers are frequently part of hunting regulatory and licensing bodies, where they help to set rules on the number, manner and conditions in which game may be hunted.
The pursuit, capture and release, or capture for food of fish is called fishing, which is not commonly categorized as a kind of hunting. Trapping is also usually considered a separate activity. Neither is it considered hunting to pursue animals without intent to take them, as in wildlife photography or birdwatching. The practice of hunting for plants or mushrooms is a colloquial term for gathering.
