reply to post by camaro68ss
I know the feeling you felt on that day all too well. I was about 11 or 12 and I had gotten my first air rifle for Christmas and was told by my father
not to shoot any living thing and only to shoot at targets with it. I was raised around guns and at that age was already very familiar with guns and
gun safety. However my father still wouldn't allow me to have the gun without him or one of my much older brothers being with me for quite some time,
but eventually after 7 or 8 months of proving to him that I was responsible he would let me take it out on my own while he was working around the
farm.
Well one day I was out shooting targets when a dove landed near me and I shot it. I instantly realized that I had taken the life of a living creature
and that what I had done could never be taken back. I was raised around hunting and fishing but that was the first time I had ever killed anything
myself. I felt nauseous and cried because of what I had done and wouldn't you know it, my dad came around behind the barn just as I was crying over
the dove I had killed.
He told me then that you never kill any animal unless you plan on eating it and he showed me how to clean the dove and made me do most of it, then he
had me take it to the house to have my mom cook it along with dinner and made me eat it. He told me when we were cleaning the bird that I had to give
thanks to the bird for dying so that I may eat and told me to always give thanks to the spirit of an animal I killed for food and to never waste what
that animal gave me. He said it was the natural order of life and that though we may live in houses and drive cars, we are still a predatory animal
and that our survival depends on the taking of another animals life, sort of the circle of the food chain.
To this day his statements that day have stayed with me, and when my sons and I are out hunting we still thank the spirit of the animal for the
sustenance it provides for us the moment we kill it or remove it from our traps. However to shoot or kill an animal indiscriminately and for no more
reason than "fun" or because it is a nuisance is, IMHO just plain wrong. I am not condemning you for what you did so please do not take offense to
that statement, but that animals acts of nuisance in our eyes are nothing more than it trying to survive and live through the journey of life.
Here where we live we have plenty of prairie dogs as well as coyotes and even cougars and there are plenty of people here that will go out and kill 30
or even 50 prairie dogs in an afternoon or 10 or more coyotes in a night because they are nuisance animals. They will often say that "the foxes have
to eat too" or something to that effect to make it seem okay to do that. To me, when people do things such as that they are interfering with the
natural order of things, or the "fate of life" and that animals death serves no purpose.
There are other ways to deal with nuisance animals, yes it may be more time consuming but what is a life worth? That is what I tell my kids when I am
setting up live traps for the coyotes or prarie dogs and transferring them to an area where they will not be a nuisance to anyone. I routinely trap
them here at our place and release them out on some of the state management land where they can have a chance to live and enjoy the journey of
life.
As far as hunters remorse, I have never had it after that first kill. I have always been thankful for the food that nature provides and in addition to
performing my small ritual of thanks when I kill an animal for food, I make sure that when we sit down to eat our dinner of pheasant, duck, goose,
elk, grouse, or deer, as a family we take a few moments to say a prayer to the spirit of life and nature and to give thanks for providing us with the
sustenance we are about to receive.
I subscribe to a quasi Native American/Druidic religious belief and I feel that all creatures on this earth are intertwined on a spiritual level.
Therefore I believe that the spirit of the earth provides for our needs by offering us the various animals and plants that we eat to survive and
therefore to keep the spiritual balance we must not only take but give back to the spirit of earth or nature by being sincerely thankful for what it
provides and have respect for all life.
That's just my 2 cents on the matter, and like I said I meant no offense towards you by saying it was wrong. I also don't believe it gets easier to
deal with as you get more kills, I have found that as I have gotten older it is in fact harder to pull that trigger because my understanding of how
short and special life is has become much greater with age.
edit on 23-6-2013 by Nucleardiver because: (no reason given)