I was just curious about this . Anyone else feel this way ?
I love fishing and hunting but I always feel bad about the killing . IMO , unless you are a strict vegitarian , every time you eat meat or fish you are really just hiring someone else to do the killing for you . I don't like tropy hunting and eat the game I take . But ,I can't shake the bad feeling I have when I kill something .
I have a real problem with some of the hunters I've run across that shoot just about anything that moves and seem to get a big thrill out of killing something .
I also have a problem with hunting seasons and huntig of predators - coyote , bobcat , etc. for several reasons .

I'm like you in every respect except: I don;t normally have ill feelings about the killing. I have helped butcher at least 3 large game animals (deer and oryx), but I have never killed one. Small game animals don;t bother me a bit, but I think I might have some feelings if, after shooting a deer or other large animal, I arrived to find the animal still alive and struggling to live.

I agree about the trophy hunting too. I don;t have a problem with hunters who kill and process a large game animal, and then take the trophy for mounting, but I do have a problem with those that hunt solely for the trophy.

I have no problem hunting predators. The best meat I ever tasted, bar none....none....is cougar taken from the Davis Mtns in west Texas. I haven't hunted a mountain lion yet, but I'll doggone sure stalk the barbeque pit for scraps like a hyeena until I do hunt one!

Handyman...The extinguishing of a life is a powerful thing. That is why the vast majority of aboriginal peoples honor the animals in their various ways. Even in Germany, where hunting is more like shooting fish in a barrel, some of the lodges practice the rite of thanks by having the hunters lay across the animal as a way to show the respect to the animal.

The deeper issue is most likely that everything in this world has been "Bambi-ized". This may sound harsh..but they are just animals. However, we must smartly manage wildlife through sound conservation and harvest practices. Due to the success of these programs the deer populations on the East Coast have exploded, as you are probably well aware. Through careful culling of bucks and the occasional does the herds have responded very well. The deer are almost as pesky as woodchucks, rats and rabbits; they are everywhere.

This may sound odd, but I have no problem with a true trophy hunter. Consider this; how many true trophies are out there? It may take a true trophy hunter 3,4,5 or more seasons before they find the animal that is truly a trophy. Also, they usually won't fill their tag at all. Despite the "failures" leading up to that take they are still buying licenses and gear. In general, supporting the sport. Additionally, they typically donate the meat. Now your boneheads who just want a rack for the wall...they shouldn't be hunting...period. Let them buy a resin rack from some retailer.

If/when you are present at the final breath of an animal or human you come face-to-face with your own mortality. Very powerful medicine. Some have sworn off hunting due to that experience alone. Your decision will no doubt be guided by your own worldview.

I will leave you with this... The fact that you are affected shows you are willing to confront some of the larger issues in the human experience.

"I love fishing and hunting but I always feel bad about the killing."

Why shouldn't you? You just deprived a creature of it's life. So you have a conscience, that's not a hanging offence. I regret the hamburger that was killed in my name. But I still eat it.

It seems to me that the dividing line is that you're eating the meat, and not just having a fun time killing things, like too many guys.

You probably also take care with WHAT you're shooting. I try not to go out in hunting season anymore. Many of those guys shoot at anything that moves, looks like it might, or any large stump with a 'rack'. They kill cattle, goats, llamas, dogs, people, cars, and each other. They wound animals and don't go after them to finish them off, because it's too much trouble. A woman in OR twenty years ago had a German Shepherd drinking out of his water bowl on her porch and he was shot by some fool who apparently "didn't notice" the house, the porch, or the ring of loose, colorful scarves that floated around the dog's neck, a talisman against bozos.

IMHO, trophy hunters are just people with big egos and little you-knows. So what if they give the meat away? It's illegal to do otherwise, isn't it? So they have a stuffed head with glass eyes and a big rack, so what? Nothing has been proven to anyone, it's all in their head.

Sue

Besides being in the field for my job, Hunting is mostly the reason I spend time in the field while not at work. I love to hunt. As a kid it was often necessary to hunt with the old man just to help make ends meet but now it’s all for the fun involved. In fact I get just as excited for the opening of Deer/Moose/Grouse/Duck/Goose season as I do for Christmas. I don’t need to hunt as I can easily afford to buy meat. There is just something about casting and reloading my own bullets and using them to stalk and hunt an animal that is very fulfilling. I also butcher my own game and the first steak or maple sausage that comes off of the BBQ tastes just a little bit better knowing that it was all done with my own hands. Any respectable hunter does not shoot at anything that moves. Just like everything else in life the bad actions of the few paint a bad picture of everyone else. I do not hunt for trophy as I feel no need to impress anyone with exaggerated mighty hunter stories and I would much rather harvest a big fat doe than a buck in the rut because the meat tastes better and is usually much more tender. If a trophy happens across my path then of course I will take the shot. I despise poachers who waste meat only to take an animal’s horns or fur. If I kill it, then the animal gets used to the full extent possible. Besides using the meat I have a friend who takes the fur and uses it for fly tying, and the rack goes to another friend who uses them to make knife handles. Even the heart, kidneys and liver get eaten unless they appear tainted.(makes one hell of a pie!!) I have no problem with the killing of an animal so long as it is a clean kill. Like any respectable hunter, my heart sinks when a bad shot results in a crippling shot. I have only done it twice but most people who hunt have made that bad shot despite their best efforts(just not all will admit it) I get really mad when a hunter gives up on a wounded animal without first exhausting every possible method to end its misery. I ended up staying in the woods overnight once because of a shot taken just before last light missed its intended mark and hit the Deer in the guts. As soon as I saw the animal’s reaction (he arched his back like a cat and ran) I knew I was in for a long night of tracking. I waited for a few hours to allow him to bed down and bleed out and then with the aid of a blue LED light I took up the trail. It took me till the next morning to find the sucker where he had finally died some 300 m from where the shot was taken but I would have felt horrible to have not ever found him. On another occasion despite the fact that the deer was a perfect angle and well within my ethical range, the deer moved at the instant I pulled the trigger resulting in the bullet hitting the guy’s leg. A deer with three good legs can still cover ground fairly fast and before I could follow up the shot he was gone. I spent the whole night and most of the next day looking for it but because of the rain there was no blood trail. Feeling really bad about it and just about to give up I happened across another hunter who had saw that same deer in the morning and had shot it. I was relieved. I think IMHO that if you respect the game which you hunt and try your absolute best to give it a clean, quick death and every possible amount of effort when you take a bad shot to prevent it from suffering needlessly then as long as the meat is not wasted there is nothing you should have to feel bad for.

I'm sure that will come as a surprise to women who trophy hunt. I personally know four, none of which has a "you-know" that I am aware of.

I believe that most people take hunting and fishing for granted, or at least have a disconnected attitude toward those activities. That is a shame, for as the only truly sentient creatures to have roamed this planet (as far as we know), we have a responsibility to manage the resources at our disposal.

Killing game animals, especially bigger ones like deer, salmon, or even predators ought to be a morally/ethically challenging, and sadly for a lot of folks it isn't. If we go about the business of harvesting game in an ethical and responsible manner, we are actually improving the outcome for the remaining game, their habitat, and the environment in general. That is a good thing. Having taught hunter ethics, it is a challenge to get young minds to think in terms of the importance of the actions they are about to undertake, and the consequences. Too often they get wrapped up in the actions and seldom think of the outcomes. The act of hunting and fishing, whether actual harvest occurs or not, pays for most all of the habitat improvements and wildlife monitoring programs directly.

If there was one thing above all others you could undertake to ensure that wildlife continues to prosper and populations continue to increase, it would be to go out and hunt and fish.

In addition to killing my share of wild things and having worked in a slaughterhouse, I've had to put down a fair number of pets, sometimes with just my own two hands. For me, the feeling is similar, just more intense the closer you get to the animal in question. It should always feel a little hard on the heart to do this, that ole yeller effect I suppose. Being able to get past that feeling and still do the deed is a sure sign of maturity in my book. It's not much of a stretch to go from euthanizing a pet for humane reasons to participating in the legal thinning of a herd to keep it healthy and in balance with it's environment. It'd probably be a healthy attitude to have when bringing children into this world as well I reckon.

I too have mixed feelings.

It would be one thing if hunters were, at considerable trouble and risk to themselves, hunting for subsistence and respectfully entering into a verdant, healthy and intact ecosystem to harvest the fat of the land and protein to keep themselves alive.

Problem is that most hunters are not filling a vital need in their families diet. Most hunters, and their families, are thirty pounds overweight and consume far too much fat and protein for their own good.

The money they spend for special hunting gear every year would buy more meat at the local Mega-Mart than they safely eat.

And hunting, especially as it is so often done down here, release the dogs and wait to shoot the deer as it runs across a road on the other side of the quadrangle, is not a sport. The deer never win and seldom break even. Exception being when the beer saturated hunters blast each others trucks as the deer bounds between them.

Even the ecological role many hunters claim is a bit of a crock. I have never heard a hunter brag about how weak and mangy the deer he just shot was. Even the most honorable hunters don't fill the roll of a predator. A predator kills the weak, old, diseased and slow while leaving the strong and vibrant of the species to perpetuate their line. Hunters always aim for the strongest, largest and healthiest while leaving the weak, old and diseased.

Of course the hunters are also only interested in certain animals. So the ecosystems are manipulated to favor those types. Florida had something like a dozen species of deer not too long ago. Now white tail deer constitute the vast majority of the deer remaining. Humans have the uncanny ability to reduce a vibrant and diverse ecosystem to a narrow, fragile mono-culture in a remarkably short amount of time. It isn't just hunters. Loggers, four-wheelers, ATV enthusiasts, sport fishermen and developers all get a piece of this action.

Of course one of the most disgusting sights I saw while hiking was where a hunter had shot a deer and skinned it. The hunter took the head and skin for a trophy and left the carcass to rot. I spent more than a few hours dreaming up the appropriate punishment. Medieval doesn't even begin to cover what I had in mind. Hannibal Lector would blanch.

Of course the biggest threat to wildlife isn't hunters. It is habitat loss. Parking lots, strip malls and McMansions stobbed in every 200' eat up territory. A lot of this comes down to cars and highways. Before interstates there were very few 'bedroom' communities or long-distance commuters. If you worked in town you lived in town. Cars and highways have allowed the miles and miles of suburban wasteland to exist.

As we expand into the wilderness every square inch of land is accounted for and 'owned'. Bears and deer don't pay taxes or build the cubist nightmares of suburban life that keep the builders and developers smiling so they get compromised out of existence. At least hunters tacitly own the harm they do.

I have been hunting a few times. Only got one deer. Using a high-power rifle I shot him. Clean shot at perhaps 150m. He bolted, took three bounds and fell over. He tried to get up a couple of times but by the time we got there, perhaps a minute or so, it was dead. I was amazed at how pretty and graceful the deer was. And how easy and unfulfilling it was to shoot. I felt better about seeing and observing the deer than shooting it.

It also dawned on me that I had given no thought to what I would do with a dead deer. I lived in an apartment with very little in the way of methods of cooking and a refrigerator so small it barely would hold a twelve-pack of beer. Luckily my friend had a chest freezer and a family that ate deer regularly. When we got to his place we carved off a few choice cuts for me to have at home. His father appreciated the hide as he was teaching a Boyscout troop how to tan leather. Cool deal by me.

So that was my deer hunt where I came back as 'the mighty hunter'. We went out to drink that night and everyone told me what a great shot it was and how proud I should feel. I didn't feel proud. I also didn't feel like a monster or murderer. I didn't feel much of anything. It was so mechanical. The deer never saw it coming and shot without any joy or feeling. Only something like mechanical efficiency. The only feeling was a feeling of competency with a little luck. I had followed procedure and the bullet had landed where I aimed it. I felt lucky the deer died quickly. I don't think it suffered much. The look in its eyes was one of surprise, not anguish or pain.

On following hunting trips I was always careful to make sure I 'didn't have a shot' and a 'missed' a couple of times. I sure did like to be out in the woods. Hunting inspired me to get back into hiking.

I feel like I have proven to myself that I can hunt. That I can carry through with the mechanics of the harvest. If I was forced by events to hunt again I think I could give an adequate showing of myself.

But one question keeps surfacing. Exactly what role does hunting play in survival? In most disasters I'm not likely to be where hunting is possible or practical. After a hurricane shooting game in a semi-suburban environment seems more hazardous than it is worth. And showing up with a forty pound deer carcass when folks are worried about the meat defrosting in the freezer seems wasteful.

If I was to find myself in a remote area hunting sounds good but I think my biggest concern would be getting found or getting back to civilization. Hunting could easily turn into a distraction. At most I might take small game if it presented itself along the way. A squirrel or rabbit or two might be beneficial as long as I didn't have to take too much time or trouble to get it.

Of course there is always the mythical mass breakdown of civilization. I doubt I would be doing much hunting in that case either. There are likely a couple million mall ninjas and part-time hunters out there. You can pretty much count on all of them to be out there harassing the local wildlife. I see no advantage to getting caught in the crossfire. Let them kill each other off. I will be hunkered down until the gunfire and screaming stops.

Point being I don't see a big role for hunting in most survival situations I'm likely to find myself in. If and when I see a role for it I feel I could get the job done. I don't have any compunctions about killing if killing is the most effective and practical way to go.

My guess is that you have tasted mountain lion. You probably just didn't know it. It tastes identical to cougar.

I'll bet they both taste a lot like puma...