is a paintball gun going to be considered cruel to the animal in the court of law?
It might take a lot of fees and court costs to figure that out.
While there is many animal rights activists, which work themselves into a frenzy calling for prosecution. While they are pressuring the locals to take action, and you are not legaly hunting deer. When there is deer running around with colored spots on them.
Pain is being inflicted on innocent animals while in no danger. Animals are being left with hemotomas (bruises), and swelling as explained by some expert witness (vet etc).
Another expert witness could be brought in to testify the spots COULD be causing them to have difficulties finding a mate, being rejected by the other deer, and maybe even running out in front of cars to end it all after the rejection. You name it.
In that case you would be responsible for people hitting deer with vehicles even placing them in danger, all because you wanted to shoot bambi without a legal hunting permit in a cruel unusual way.
Now that is an exageration, but you really never know what is going to be presented in court. A case funded by animal rights activists while doing an activity not sanctioned by law involving wild life is really nothing anyone knows the outcome of.
The arguments don't have to be true, they just have to use the facts to concoct some alternate reality where the deer is suffering due to your actions and then let a jury decide.
If you went out and hit the deer (good luck), that would be animal cruelty. If you went out and spray painted the deer (of course you couldn't get that close), that would be cruel and inhumane. What kind of case do you think could be created against you with a paintball essentialy doing both, especialy if you made prosecution easy by providing video footage of it all?