It's funny, but as I get older I'm going the opposite direction on this as the OP! As a young woman, I was terribly bothered by the concept of hunting, and I even had a vegetarian spell that lasted several years until I developed health issues from protein deficiencies. It is REALLY HARD to incorporate enough complex proteins into a meat-free diet, and I applaud any vegans/vegetarians out there who manage this issue better than I. Anyway, once I made the decision to eat meat again, I did a lot of soul searching about the morality of it all. I came to the conclusion that any immorality lay in a failure to acknowledge my debt to "the circle of life" (okay, yeah, Disney really did warp me as a child!). As a human being, I have a capacity for such moral reminiscences - but at the end of the day I am as much a part of that circle as the elk the op mentions. I cannot escape the constraints of my own mortality. I have to eat, I have to drink, I have to breathe ... every one of these actions costs on some level. Life is hard, and resources are limited. It is human arrogance that allows us to think we can somehow circumvent that circle. It is human arrogance that has so removed us from an honest relationship with our sustenance. We believe that "factory" farming, giant agri-business, whatever you want to call it, somehow relieves us of our debt to the natural world. In contrast, the hunters I know are intimately aware of that debt. I'm sure there are some out there that fit the "evildoer" image I was inculcated with by media representations in my younger years - it is a sad reality that "trophy" hunting still goes on - but I have come to believe that such hunters are a tiny minority. I have also reached a point where, when I see a freshly killed deer in the back of a hunter's truck, I see a deer that was able to BE A DEER until its last moment alive. It wasn't run through the slaughterhouse after hours crammed into miserably close quarters on a truck or rail car. It didn't die in terror caused by seeing its companions die ahead of it and realizing its own fate was at hand. And the hunter that takes that deer home and cleans it will in all likelihood use most if not all of it. Hunters I know process as much meat as possible for their families, use whatever meat is not up to snuff for the humans for their pets, and then very likely process the bones for stock and for compost. What bothers me now is buying meat in the store, knowing the conditions the animal likely lived and died in. That's why I raise my own, and why I now hunt with my husband.
