First - should he have done this? No...
Do I condone what this kid did? Not at all...
Is he automatically a serial killer because he did this? Nope.
Will his punishment be overly severe? Yep... I predict that the punishment that he's going to get is going to be radically worse than the crime - and many who will pile on against him are people who would go out and harvest a deer or elk for sport (something that I think is just fine).
Is it wrong to kill an animal "just because"? Well - yes... and no... While most hunters harvest game responsibly and make good use of the animal after harvesting it - the reality is that the vast majority of hunters, in Arizona anyway, do so as sport. There are very very few, if any, true subsistence hunters in AZ. In other words, if there were no hunting licenses sold in AZ, essentially no families would starve. In almost all cases in AZ, the legal harvesting of an animal is not something that people are driven to by need - we do it because we love the challenge and thrill of the hunt. Like it or not - while this kid appears to be an idiot, its somewhat hypocritical to suggest that his killing an animal for the thrill of it is completely different from what thousands of hunters do every year. Is it "different" - absolutely - but suggesting that the fact that his desire to kill an animal is totally aberrant is also stupid. Most of us hunters, if we are honest with ourselves, will admit that the thrill of stalking, and taking an animal, the mastery over nature, the knowledge that we can take an animal for food if we truly need to, are things that drive us.
Hunting ethically is important. Doing it legally is also important (for other reasons). This kid failed in the second of those requirements and certainly to some degree in the first - although if you take emotion out of it - is whacking a javalina over the head with a bat, killing it by brain injury, dramatically less humane than killing it with a poorly placed shot through a non-vital area and having it die over a couple of hours when you can't find it? Asking seriously - which is less humane? Should we be demanding the end of hunting or the jailing of hunters for a poorly placed shot? What about a a shot that is poorly placed because the hunter overestimates their ability to make a long range shot? Seriously - take the emotion out of it and ask yourself which is actually worse for the critter.
The crazies will be out to have this kid thrown in jail... you'll have nutbag "animals are people too" folks showing up at his hearings demanding that the court ruin his life. I'm not saying that he should have no consequences... I'm saying that I expect the consequence to not fit the crime - due to pressure from the nut-cases.
Let he who did nothing stupid between 15 and 20 cast the first stone...
