section_path: Ethical, political and religious beliefs/Hunting
section_name: Hunting
paragraph_text: Hunting
  
  Tolstoy was introduced to hunting by his father, who was an avid huntsman. He was trained to hunt from a young age and became a passionate huntsman himself. He was known to shoot duck, quail, snipe, woodcock and otters. For example, Tolstoy wrote in his diary on 23 March 1852, "the weather was marvellous; went out hunting, rode up and down the undulating country till one. Killed two ducks." His novel War and Peace included hunting scenes. Tolstoy spent decades hunting, but stopped sometime in the 1880s and became a staunch opponent of hunting due to ethical concerns about killing. In 1890 Tolstoy wrote a preface for Vladimir Chertkov 's anti-hunting pamphlet Zlaia zabava: Mysli ob okhote (An Evil Pastime: Thoughts about Hunting). Although Tolstoy in his later life opposed hunting, he never abandoned his love for horse-riding.