I don't have much to add to this discussion, I am not a hunter but some members of my family have been. I did shoot some birds when I was younger, but never took hunting up as a pastime. I think I would have a hard time shooting an animal for sport these days, but if I were hungry I would kill for food, and if I were in danger I would kill to protect myself and would not lie away feeling guilty about that. In a sense, I kill all the time by proxy by buying meat in grocery stores.
By and large I agree with Jonathan's view on the issue. That is to say, the knee-jerk "I don't want to kill animals" point-of-view is often misplaced. Not always of course, there is gratuitous killing for no good reason and that does bother me, and I see nothing wrong in unmasking it. I have no idea if the event in question falls into this category. People have been known to stock game farms with living targets for the shooting fun of those too lazy to go out in the bush and stalk their prey. I may have an old-fashioned idealized view of hunting and fishing; it bothers me, for example, that people use sonar to go after fish. At some point, isn't that a little like just buying one in a grocery store. I think people should be forced to outwit their prey, but that is my own personal biased view of the subject, nothing more. Using sonar seems to remove the "sport" from it, for me at least.
Jonathan also referred to hunters being respectful of conservation and that, as a group, they have a self-interest in the perpetuation of the conditions (habitats, animal populations, etc.) for their sport. I can't disagree in general, but after 57 years of living, I find it optimistic to expect that enlightened self-interest will lead hunters, as a group, to behave in sustainable ways. I think they are just as likely to behave stupidly and wipe out the source of their fun. I have come to NOT believe in the innate "reasonableness" of humans. There are plenty of historical examples of humans killing the golden goose, to mangle a metaphor. I know plenty of reasonable folks who hunt as a pastime, but I also pick up a lot of empty beer bottles on bush roads after hunting season.
In my life, the people that I have seen to be most vehemently against hunting have been urban dwellers, and they've been people whose only real experience with rural life was renting vacation cottages. Much of their criticism of hunting comes from ignorance, I find. Like a lot of other groups in society, religious, political, etc., they believe that they know the one true way and expect everyone to agree with them, part of the modern polarized life. A wide-ranging liberal education could help with that, but it's not about to happen anytime soon. Trying to analyse things from someone else's point of view is not something we do well, doesn't mean we should stop trying though.