Thanks, I'm scared that a huge urban population has grown to hate and despise us - and are going to use their voting power to punish us and end our way of life. America used to be a place where minorities were protected (at least in theory - in truth we have a bad history with that). And of course, country folk used to be an overwhelming majority. This is no longer true.
Pictures like that do us no favors. I don't mean to sound critical - that's part of life. Animals come to violent ends - almost all of them - and it's part of nature. I've seen coyotes chewing on the guts of a still living animal - in Africa I got to see lions hunting at night, and they took down a warthog, still living. The lionesses held it down and tried teaching the cubs to finish it, to choke it, but they were too small. The warthog came to consciousness and squealed in horror, passed out and woke again screaming, off and on for over 20 minutes - it was almost unbearable. And the little lion cubs that had been so cute in the daylight slit open its belly and pulled out its intestines while it screamed. That's a side of nature you don't see in Disney films.
It doesn't mean coyotes or lions are "evil" or "bad." This is how they take care of business. That's all. We try to take care of business as best we can, too - and most of us as humanely as possible. Most of us aren't indiscriminate killers. Sometimes we label aggressive varmints "bad" because they cause us or our neighbors harm - we talk tough about them - but it's more like thinking the other team is "bad" in sports. They aren't bad - we just want to win. We do fall back on this caveman mentallity - all of us can (and we need our "inner caveman" to be able to hunt - we don't suppress our wild side as much as urban people do) - but we are also modern humans with empathy and respect for life. Again, the main difference is that we'll sometimes kill - rather than think we can get by never killing (and as I've said, you must kill, directly or indirectly, to survive - it's a fact of nature).
(by the way, we couldn't end the warthog's suffering because the guide was not allowed to interfere with the lions - he'd warned us about what we'd might see - I'd seen death before - had hunted and killed - but this was something else ---- in the case of the coyotes, the rancher I was with killed the wounded animal - a deer - to put it out of its misery - since he had to go back to truck to get rifle - coyotes got away - or he would have shot at them)
Urban Americans are now a pale shadow of their ancestors and simply can't deal with a photo showing dogs, blood and a dying coyote. Had I flimed those lions, the typical urban American would be driven to vomiting by it. We have to try to understand these people have no exposure to our world, our way of life. Politicians need "whipping boys" - symbols of "evil" to motivate the masses and get votes (while the pols do their own evil in secret, and sometimes not even in secret) - and we should not "feed this troll." We need to work to improve our image and try to get the majority of urban, non-rural - and rural-despising - Americans to at least try to understand us as we are, and not as political assassins paint us.
Typical urbanites don't understand that hunters more than anyone else keep wild animal species alive and relatively healthy. The big corporations that own most large farms these days poison and attempt to erradicate species to save their corn or soy beans, if they can get away with it - they do all sorts of things, legal and illegal, to protect their crops - to make vegetarian food - that kills animals. Poachers - different from hunters - wipe out endangered species for money (tusks, skins). Modern hunters, on the other hand, want to keep species secure and thriving. We pay to hunt on private land, which encourages landowners to improve habitat and allow wild animals to live there, and many non-game animals benefit. Yeah, we mess things up sometimes (shooting too many of one kind of animal can warp the gene pool), but we're on top of that - hunting laws try to correct this sort of thing - it's not all bad.
Anyway, non-hunters coming to this thread are going to be appalled by us talking about managing pest animals, hunting for food and enjoyment - the squealing of pigs and photos of hunting dogs - this is simply shocking to them. I hope we can try to see things from their point of view. That said, some of these urbanites - after calling us Satan - go watch a Quentin Tarantino movie where humans get butchered (which imho is doing more to cause mentally disturbed people to go berserk than anything we do) and still think we're the monsters. We're all hypocrites (me too) - it's necessary for survival - it's impossible not to be one.
A lot of this problem arises from the current "political narrative." Again, certain politicians find it convenient to falsely label us - to make us seem totally evil, to use us as "whipping boys" - and if we let them continue to misconstrue who we are - we get what we deserve.
Look, I'm not suggesting we stop talking freely about what we do, what we like - and putting out pictures. Please just keep in mind this is a public forum, and like it or not, we're being judged - judged through a monstrously unfair filter. If you don't want to reach out to the others, I understand - I'll keep trying to be diplomatic and explain us to those who truly question our beliefs and values.
To those of you who find us "bloodthirsty savages," please just take into account what I'm saying. I honestly think you've been fed information on only one side of the issue (and some of what you've been fed is blatantly false). I'm hoping you'll at least open your minds to some of this and see that there's a lot more to this (if you want to debate, I'll try to stay civil - and I may not perfectly understand all arguments against killing pests, against hunting and so on - but I do know many if not most of them - I'm not really all that close-minded - I live in a city and am exposed to your arguments, facts and opinions every day). Good luck all, and here's hoping we can keep the peace.
Think I'll hatch a bunch of dorking eggs in my LG. Nice and white, easy to candle! 
