It seems I'm late to the party. I have a couple of things to add.
Sanhedrin 95a where we find Dovid Hamelech hunting. The Margolios Hayam there note 15 brings all the classical sources against this decidedly unjewish act. He started off the piece by explaining that Dovid's act of catching food is not hunting, hunting is an act of entertainment. Halachicaly, if one can aim right and shecht the animal with his arrow, as recorded in Chulin, that is kosher. So too, shooting below the knee in order to incapacitate the animal would not render it a treifa. Any other shot, even if not a 'kill shot' would make it unusable and therefore assur, unless of course the person has a need for the skin or blood. Another sugya that mentions trapping is in Bava Metzia 85b, there a net was used and the meat eaten and the skins used for writing sifrei torah. Also, Reb Yaakov Kaminetsky writes in the fifth chapter of his commentary on Pirkei Avos that killing a fly is as much murder as killing a human being. The difference is the Torah allowed the one but not the other. He was discussing people who want to be vegetarians.
The issue of hunting all stems from the fact that Esau and Nimrod were the only to "great" hunters mentioned in the Tanahk. They were wicked there for hunting is wicked. It's the same line of though that says Lamaech was wicked and since he was the first polygamist mentioned in the Tanahk, polygamy is wicked.
Sanhedrin 95a where we find Dovid Hamelech hunting. The Margolios Hayam there note 15 brings all the classical sources against this decidedly unjewish act. He started off the piece by explaining that Dovid's act of catching food is not hunting, hunting is an act of entertainment. Halachicaly, if one can aim right and shecht the animal with his arrow, as recorded in Chulin, that is kosher. So too, shooting below the knee in order to incapacitate the animal would not render it a treifa. Any other shot, even if not a 'kill shot' would make it unusable and therefore assur, unless of course the person has a need for the skin or blood. Another sugya that mentions trapping is in Bava Metzia 85b, there a net was used and the meat eaten and the skins used for writing sifrei torah. Also, Reb Yaakov Kaminetsky writes in the fifth chapter of his commentary on Pirkei Avos that killing a fly is as much murder as killing a human being. The difference is the Torah allowed the one but not the other. He was discussing people who want to be vegetarians.
The issue of hunting all stems from the fact that Esau and Nimrod were the only to "great" hunters mentioned in the Tanahk. They were wicked there for hunting is wicked. It's the same line of though that says Lamaech was wicked and since he was the first polygamist mentioned in the Tanahk, polygamy is wicked.