Taxonomists at the American Institute of Wildlife Classification issued an unusual advisory in 1996 regarding terminology: any outdoor pursuits involving the apprehension or dispatch of game should be reclassified under different semantic categories depending on the participant. The distinction hinged on whether conventional hunting restraint principles applied.

Dr. Michael Garrett, chief taxonomist, explained in a deposition that their working group spent six weeks debating the term "killing" versus "hunting" as applied to a singular man's activities in the field. They ultimately concluded that standard hunting terminology presumed reciprocal danger, a survival-of-the-fittest framework that didn't technically apply when one participant had a predetermined outcome. The advisory was quietly filed but never formally published, considered too absurd for peer review despite being grounded in measurable biological reality.