This is something I struggle with. As a boy, my family hunted on the farm. When they moved into the city, my dad stopped hunting and my exposure to it ceased.
This year, for some reason I'm struggling with who I am as a hunter a fair bit.
Fast forward 15years, I decided I wanted to try it myself. I've hunted now for 5 years, and here's what I love.
I love being in the outdoors, hiking, exploring, seeing nature at its finest and sometimes harshest. I love looking for the animals I hunt. I enjoy shooting, and improving my skills. I HATE killing. I struggle everytime I pull the trigger on an animal I'm about to shoot for food. I hate seeing a deer take it's last breath or suffer. So, I try my hardest to do one shot, one kill. Ideally a 'bang - drop'. My first deer was a gut shot, and my second deer I blew its front leg off. After that, I tried my hardest (and so far, successfully) to humanely put the deer down as quickly as I could.
Fact of the matter is, I love meat. If I can order a burger or a steak, I should have no problem shooting and eating an animal. In fact, I find great satisfaction in enjoying a deer steak or sausages for an animal I harvested. Far more healthy than anything I'd buy at a store.
I love meat, and I really love venison. I'm looking forward to my first elk or moose meat as well. I'm also looking forward to my first goose and duck kills as well.
I will never kill an animal just for a trophy. My personal feelings stop me at that point. But I do think it's pretty cool if I harvest an animal with big antlers etc. provided that I utilize it to the full.
Having grown up on a farm, I would shoot a coyote, and I've killed thousands of gophers over the years, but I just don't relish the idea of killing. So if I ran across a wolf out in the wild, I probably won't pull the trigger on it. But I certainly will not stop a hunting partner if they choose to do so. I know my thoughts are evolving over the years, so who knows how I'll feel eventually.
Long story short, I think an ethical hunter will always have some sort of a 'moral dillema'. The time when a hunter stops caring about the actions they take (or don't take) is the time when I don't think that person should be hunting anymore.
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