[Doc Oc]

Originally Posted by KenB925

Let me preface this with, I have never gone hunting, I am obviously not opposed to it, and I do have interest in doing it. Part of me wants to know what if feels like to kill my own food, to make sure I'm ok with it.

The conditions in factory farms and a wild animal being killed by a legal hunter are not even comparable.

One is in a cage, being fed hormones, antibiotics, and god knows what else to get it fat enough to kill fast, then it is loaded on to a truck and sent to a slaughter house etc.

The other wanders around the forest watching out for four legged predators and one day they get hit with a bullet or arrow and drops dead.

The reason you don't see stories about factory farming is because, in many places it is ILLEGAL to take pictures inside those places.

So can we agree that as long as the meat is used, and the hunt is legal then there is nothing to argue/be upset about?

I just think that anybody that eats meat, or has a leather interior, leather shoes etc, and opposed legal hunting is simply not informed, or willfully ignorant. It seem that the people with the loudest voices and opinions about wildlife and the outdoors have the least connection and certainly the least interaction with it.

I don't blame anyone for not knowing, I do blame them for spouting uninformed nonsense.

I've been an outdoorsman for 35 years. Have caught thousands of fish and killed and eaten most common wild game. 15 years ago or so I quit hunting after killing my first whitetail. Like you I wanted to put "meat on the table" manstyle instead of buying it but let me tell you, killing that animal still remains one of the biggest regrets of my life. It wasn't worth it. Now I throw back 99% of the fish I catch and haven't killed anything (on purpose) bigger than a bug since.

If you want to subsistence hunt, I suggest wild pigs. They're an invasive species and culling them is a necessary evil.