many birds and bugs (mostly big bumble bees) when I was a kid with the bb gun or air rifle,

later , I squirrel hunted and killed many ,

and,,


car/truck, one deer, handful of other small creatures (rabbit, cat, etc) that either walked in front of the vehicle or in the case of the rabbit, ran into the side of my car

I started deer hunting as a kid, and I have never stopped, deer, elk, and everything small game wise, turkey, pheasant, chukkar, quail, rabbits etc.

As a lifelong hunter, yes numerous times.

Someone in the thread said they were fortunate enough to not HAVE to hunt. I wasn't always so lucky. When I was growing up, we ate what dad could kill or we went hungry. We were tickled for someone to hit a deer and call dad to come put it down.

He later went to work on a turkey farm, and brought home a bird every week or so, with permission of the farm owner. To this day, I can't stomach turkey because we ate it so much.

Thank God I'm not in that position now, because I remember what it was like. It wasn't fun.

I had a Crossman pump .22 cal pellet rifle when I was in junior high. Every bird and especially squirrels in our neighborhood were at extreme peril!

A few years later a friend and I were at one of his uncle's farm ponds picking off bullfrogs with scoped .22s from the far side of the pond.

I started hunting about the age of 8 years old, and continued hunting for decades.I no longer hunt these days, but used to enjoy it.....and especially eating the game!!

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
I've killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And now I'm here to kill you Little Bill... oh wait, that wasn't me.


Yes.

You devil you. I was gonna post that...

Pennsylvania doe on my 2nd day out. Down hill shot to the eye from my lever rifle. Two days later, 300 yard 8 point buck. 220 grain silver tips and I and others heard them slam home. Game and varmints.

This subject makes me cringe. I have, and don’t want to discuss it.
That is all.

Yes, pretty often. As an avid spearfisherman, it's fish and lobster. Most of the time the kill is done with a quick knife to the brain, but occasionally I can kill thr fish by hitting it in the head with the spear. You know it's done when the eyes go blank.

For lobster, most people just wrench the tails and throw away the carcass. I knife the brain first then wrench the tails.

quote:

Originally posted by redleg2/9:
Yes, I have “shot” and killed well over 100 people in a very intense three day period, directing 102’s, and 155s. The killing continued at a very reduced rate for several months. No, I do not regret this, but, I did stop counting somewhere around 130 because it just didn’t seem right.

In my day Viet-Nam I was an occasional member of a FO/AO team. Those that we directed fire upon,I reasoned that it saved our people from potential death.

Yes. I hunt,wish I had the opportunity to do so more often.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:

Why?

Elk, it's a marching song...

omit the first sentence and voila

Yes, summer of '82 at Ft. Dix.
It seemed to be the Drill Sergeants favorite cadence.
Think he just liked to swear.
He was a bit uptight over the little things, turning right when you should have turned left, or stepping off with the wrong foot.

Repeating a cadence often enough and it kind of sticks with you.

On topic, as a teenager with my newly purchased 10/22 I shot the back legs off of a squirrel running across the tree tops. He came tumbling down and I felt a bit sorry for him.
Hit him on the head to put him out of his misery.
Cleaned him and tried to cook him in a deep fryer.
Failed miserably, squirrel taste awful, at least the way I cooked him.

More than I can count, mice, rats, dove, squirrel, rabbit, feral hog, blue gill, bass, catfish etc.

Although, as a child, I always had a BB gun and later a .22, I don't remember ever killing anything but we lived in an urban environment. Come to think of it, when at the river, I did used to shoot snails off of reeds near the shoreline and I plugged my share of jelly fish. It wasn't until I was in my thirties and invited on dove shoots, that I really killed something on purpose. I rationalized that by saying it was so hard to hit them, that they had at least a 50-50 chance of escaping. The ones I hit, I gave to others, who assured me they would eat them. Later I popped a few squirrels off the bird feeders, at my wife's insistence.
At age 15, my son decided he wanted to go deer hunting, something I had never done, so he went with one of my cousins. He saw one deer and froze. He did not shoot. A few weeks later, someone driving in front of him struck a deer and kept on going. My son got out and sat with the deer's head in his lap comforting it until it died. That was the end of his interest in deer hunting. For my part, I have no interest in killing an animal that is minding its own business and not threatening me. I am in the middle of my eighth decade and I think as one sees their own life winding down, they are less inclined to shorten the life of some other innocent species. I will whack wasps and spiders, things that I think may harm me or a loved one but have gotten to the point where I even try to avoid stepping on bugs. One thing I have never understood is big game hunting. I subscribe to many gun magazines and often see photos of these fellows holding a rifle, grinning and kneeling beside some deceased water buffalo or elephant . I just can't comprehend the attraction. What is it that makes them travel thousands of miles and spend thousands of dollars to be in a photo like that. I don't want anyone to ban it but I just don't think I want that guy as my next door neighbor.

I've hunted my entire life. I don't celebrate killing another creature, however, I don't have any problem doing the killing myself for the food I eat.

If you eat meat you kill. The only difference is whether you are the one looking it in the eye while doing so.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:

quote:

Originally posted by blueye:
Just rats, I am fortunate that I don't have to hunt to put food on the table.

The vast majority of people don't have to hunt. We choose to.

I couldn't even begin to count the number dead critters at my hand. Some for fun, some for nuisance control, some for food, some to protect my life/property.

The one thing that I will say is that as much as I love bow hunting for the chase aspect (there's nothing like being able to get within 10 yards of a big bull) the actual archery kills have begun to bother me some the past few years. If I needed to eat, I can still do it without a second thought, but it is a relatively slow death and for some reason that kind of rubs my fur the wrong way of late.

Quick head and neck gunshot kills don't bother me at all, but putting an arrow through a chest and watching the critter run off bleeding and gasping while it slowly dies...just...well...you know. I don't much care for it these days.

But, yeah, killing things is a way of life out in the sticks. If you've got no stomach for it, that's OK too.

I understand your feeling that way and I prefer using my rifle for the efficacy as well, but an arrow through the lungs or heart is as good or better than most any other way a deer or an elk will die if you think about it. I suppose being hit by a vehicle could be an instant and painless death, but all the other deaths they face are pretty awful (disease, starvation, grow old and get torn apart by coyotes, bear, etc.)...they don't get to just grow old and pass away peacefully.

I don't hunt anything I don't plan to consume and I still feel a sense of remorse when I take an animal, but as long as I've taken a shot that I'm 99.9% sure will result in a quick kill, I feel no guilt about the method. I also think there's something more natural about having that feeling of remorse attached to the meat that I take and consume. I don't get that when I eat a steak or chicken sandwich (does anyone?), but I'm every bit as responsible for the death of those animals as the ones I kill with my bow or my rifle.

Yes. I am surprised to learn how many folks share similar stories to para's. I fall in that crowd as well.

I hunt meat and nuisance critters. When I was young we raised hogs and goats. As an adult I've raised goats and chickens.

Slight thread drift but I've never really had an issue shooting things but I tend to have a bit of a visceral reaction to dispatching by hand, such as chickens, so to speak.

No. But I’d be happy to dispatch anything rabid.

Perhaps a rattlesnake if it decides to make a home too close to my overly curious Maligator.

I know I should be above killing spiders, but I’m not. A black widow made its self at home in my mailbox. It was met with fire. A satisfying, if disproportionate response.

I'm a life long hunter and have killed animals since youth. I don't have any kind of emotional reaction at all and don't consider myself to be maladjusted.