Hi! I'm going to pick your brain because this is on my mind tonight.
My family happily eats meat. I've never hunted anything but a few fish, rarely and not for decades. So, there's the background.
Noticed there are LOADS of squirrels around. In my yard, at my camp, in the woods. Thought about harvesting a few. (Turns out I'm too soft, what if I shoot someone's wife?!, but I thought about it.) My kids were horrified at the notion. "But you're happy killing chickens and cows for your McDonalds?!"
Kayaking tonight, I ran into a monstrous rookery in the swamp. Egrets I think? Great Herons? Anyway, they seem always in the same place, by the hundreds and hundreds. Thought, "How about bringing a 20-gauge and shooting down dinner?" My wife was horrified. "Birds are not food!" So I brought out a pack of chicken, "Chickens aren't birds!" (She's Filipino, something may have got lost in the translation...)
What are your thoughts? I dated a vegan once who couldn't admit that hunting your own food was morally superior to farm tortured meat. Uh... I don't get it. If you're going to eat meat, isn't harvesting your own the moral choice?