I've always been troubled by Ghân-buri-Ghân's request to Théoden: 'if you live after the Darkness, then leave Wild Men alone in the woods and do not hunt them like beasts any more.' LotR 833.
That is, we have rational beings (the Rohirrim) hunting other rational beings (the Wild Men) 'like beasts.' One presumes this is done either as "pest control" (as with wolves or orcs) and/or for sport, rather than for food, but it still raises an equally disturbing question: What they do with the Wild Men once they've killed them? One doesn't bury beasts after a hunt. Do the Rohirrim display the heads as trophies or warnings, as Beorn does with the goblin and Warg ('A goblin's head was stuck outside the gate and a warg-skin was nailed to a tree just beyond.' Hobbit 123)?
If nothing else, Ghân-buri-Ghân's comment re-contextualizes Aragorn's much earlier jest on discovering Frodo's mithril coat: 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.' LotR 336.
This is a much creepier comment than it seemed at first, given that hnau do hunt other hnau in Middle-earth.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit. HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
--. The Lord of the Rings. 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005.
