Hunting and Philosophy

Near the end of Book II, "Of the Passions" of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, there occurs a passage beginning

To illustrate all this by a similar instance, I shall observe, that there cannot be two passions more nearly resembling each other, than those of hunting and philosophy, whatever disproportion my at first sight appear betwixt them. 'Tis evident, that the pleasure of hunting consists in the action of the mind and body; the motion, the attention, the difficulty, and the uncertainty. 'Tis evident likewise, that these actions must be attended with an idea of utility, in order to their having any effect upon us. A man of the greatest fortune, and the farthest remov'd from avarice, tho' he takes a pleasure in hunting after partridges and pheasants, feels no satisfaction at shooting crows and magpies; and that because he considers the first as fit for the table, and the other as entirely useless. ... To make the parallel between hunting and philosophy more compleat, we may observe, that tho' in both cases the end of our action may in itself be despis'd, yet in the heat of the action we acquire such an attention to this end, that we are very uneasy under any disappointments, and are sorry when we either miss our game, or fall into any error in our reasoning.

(Book II, Part III, Section X)

 In Plato's dialogue The Sophist, the sophist appears as hunter, but as one out for gain rather than recreation:

Str[anger]. Now up to that point the sophist and the angler proceed together from the starting-point of acquisitive art.
Theat[etus].  I think they do.
Str. But they separate at the point of animal-hunting, where the one turns to the seas and rivers and lakes to hunt the animals in those.
Theat. To be sure.
Str. But the other turns toward the land and to rivers of a different kind--rivers of wealth and youth, bounteous meadows, as it were--and he intends to coerce the creatures in them.

(Loeb Classical Library, translated by H.N. Fowler, 222A)