It drives me crazy when people think that they can sacrifice the life of another person or animal. By definition that is not a sacrifice.
A sacrifice is when you give up something of your own. If you kill a person or animal, then it is that person or animal who is losing their life and thus their sacrifice, not your’s. Further, unless that person is willing to give up their life (eg, for the rest of the village), then it is not a sacrifice; it is murder. (While animals have been shown to exhibit altruistic behavior, animals cannot consent to giving up their lives, and therefore any killing of an animal is murder.)
You can however sacrifice your inanimate objects like a television, car, etc. In cases like that, you are giving something up (the definition of “sacrifice”), but those items are not lives that are being lost. To be accurate, the items must be inanimate in that they were never alive. For example, you cannot sacrifice your stuffed moose head because that animal was killed for your trophy in the first place.
The only thing(s) that a person can sacrifice are their own inanimate objects, or their own life. That’s it!
(I have never used so many inflections and emphases before, but this is just such an annoying topic that actually called for this many to really drive the point home and absolutely clarify the details.)