Recreational hunting can be a way of taking responsibility for acquiring one’s own meat. However, many recreational hunters focus instead on hunting as a hobby or sport. This distinction, between two rather different motives for hunting, is relevant to the activity’s moral justifiability. The public appear to be more critical of the killing of wild animals for sport or pleasure than they are about hunting based on necessity or subsistence. A number of philosophical studies of hunting motives have appeared to date, but we have few empirically grounded analyses. A leading aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which the perceived motive for recreational hunting plays a role in its public acceptance. We also compare public perceptions of the importance of motive with those of hunters. We conducted a nationally representative survey (web-based questionnaires) of the general public (n=1,001) and hunters (n=1,130) in Denmark. In this survey just under half of the general public indicated that the hunters’ motives affected their attitude to the acceptability of hunting. A significant difference in wildlife value orientations was found between the two groups. Motives relating to nature, the social aspect of hunting and escape from everyday life were stated as the most important by hunters. Nature and social aspects motives were also perceived by the largest proportion of the general public as important motives for hunting. However, the general public tended to ascribe motives such as ‘the trophy’, ‘the sport’, ‘the excitement’, and ‘to kill’ to recreational hunting to a much greater degree than the hunters themselves; and these motives were associated with lower assessments of the acceptability of recreational hunting among the public. The mismatch between presumed and professed motives among hunters may have arisen because the hunters we surveyed tended to answer tactically. Given the difference in importance attached to the various motives, there seems to be room for improved dialogue between hunters and the general public.