Yes indeed, people go to all kinds of far off exotic places to hunt and fish. Others, like myself, prefer to just go out to the back forty and come home for lunch. I suppose what appeals to the far offers is the challenge and adventure of boldly going where no man, or at least few men, have gone before. I talked to some of those people when I was in Alaska and decided that it wasn't my cup of tea. It used to be that only rich people could afford to do something like that, but nowadays some of these kinds of trips are affordable to the average working man, although he might have to save up all year to spend his annual vacation that way. I think that your bear hunting scenario was a bit over the top, but I'm sure that somebody has done something like that at some point in time. To the vast majority of us, a guy like that would indeed be considered an asshole.
I believe the original definition of a sportsman was: a gentleman who hunts and fishes. Before our time, the word "sportsman" evoked a rich playboy who hunts and fishes because he has more time and money than he knows what to do with. My father's generation tried to rehabilitate the word by attaching the prefix "true", as in "true sportsman". As near as I can tell, a true sportsman is a guy who spends so much of his time and money on hunting and fishing that he will never become a rich playboy, or a rich anything else. All kidding aside, a true sportsman is a guy who hunts and fishes in an ethical manner, no matter how much money he has.
I used to watch some of the hunting and fishing shows on TV, but it got so that they were starting to all look the same, so I seldom watch them anymore. My favorite was a guy named Fred Trost, who hosted a show called "The Practical Sportsman". Before that, he was a co-host on "Michigan Outdoors" with Mort Neff. When old Mort either died or retired, I can't remember which, Fred assumed that he would move up and take his place, but a couple other guys pulled some kind of coup and Fred was exiled from the show. Then he started his own show and called it "Michigan Out of Doors", until the usurpers sued him because the name was too close to theirs, so he changed it to "The Practical Sportsman".
There were two things I liked about old Fred. One was that he did indeed featured the more practical aspects of hunting and fishing. Once he showed us how to grease the bearings on a boat trailer. I previously had other people try to explain it to me, but I never got it right until a guest on Fred's show demonstrated the proper way to do it. Another time he showed us an original design for a deer blind which I built and still hunt out of to this very day.
The other thing I liked was the way Fred was not afraid to step on anybody's toes if he thought they deserved it. He was always criticizing the DNR for some reason or other, which the big sucks who took over "Michigan Outdoors" would never do. His greatest feat was when he took on the companies who make all those scent products that I told you about. He proved beyond a reasonable doubt that many of those products were bogus. I remember one show where took this bottle of alleged "doe in heat" urine and sprinkled it on the ground. Then he filmed a couple of his assistants pissing on the ground not far away. (Their backs were to the camera, but Fred assured us that they were indeed urinating, and I saw no reason to doubt his word.) Then he filmed both spots when deer were present and proved that the deer were just as interested in the human piss as they were in the doe piss. The only mistake he made was mentioning the doe piss company by name, and they sued his ass off.
Fred should have won hands down, but he was betrayed by his own lawyers, who undoubtedly were in cahoots with the deer piss company. This inspired Fred to go to law school and eventually become a lawyer himself. He proudly announced on his show that, henceforth, he would continue his tradition of fearless journalism, and nobody could stop him now. Not long after that, his feckless sponsors pulled out, and the show was cancelled. No sir, they sure don't make hunting and fishing shows like that anymore!
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