Hunting

I'm back from my hunting trip, and fun was had by all. We bagged us some grouse and ate them on a rice pilaf. I've yet to accomplish the feat of actually killing a grouse, but I intend to try, try again. The reasoning for this desire is something I've been thinking about for a while now.

Before I had actually been hunting, I viewed it as a dated, evil pastime. Who in their right mind would want to kill Bambi? In this day and age, we don't need to hunt. It's just one more way to ravage nature.

I've asked myself over and over what I find truly wrong with hunting. The answer is that I didn't want to kill anything. I didn't want to wake up in the morning to the realization that I had ended the life of a beautiful animal.

There is a certain amount of innocents in that thinking that can be respected. However, it's also incredibly naive. I reap the benefits from the deaths of cows, chickens, pigs, and more recently elk on a daily basis. The difference is that I've never actually taken responsibility for their deaths. I've let someone else do the killing, and they can deal with whatever moral dilemmas arrive from such an act.

What I've decided is that in order for me to stand on solid moral ground as a meat eater, I'm going to have to take full responsibility for the purchasing of that meat. That means I have to kill something, eat it, and accept the act as "right". The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Who wants to be a vegetarian?