It's pretty much the same for all the animals we eat as meat BTW. We wouldn't keep cows or pigs if we didn't eat them (the milk/leather market isn't enough to justify being a farmer on its own).

Every time we kill a cow, or a pig, or a lamb or a chicken (or any other animal we eat the meat of); as humans, we are doing it for our own inhuman, callous and trivial reasons.

Is stalking a deer any worse than herding a line of cattle /sheep/pigs into a slaughterhouse to be stunned and then get their throats cut? Personally, I don't think there is any difference.
Do people percieve it differently because the cows etc have been 'bred' to be meat, and they are not 'wild'?

Yes. Is there something wrong with thinking like that?

I don't really see what killing cows for meat (I don't eat meat BTW) has to do with trophy killing a healthy, wild deer? This digression comes across as yet more desperate clawing by the hunters among us to try and make themselves feel right about what they are doing.

I don't buy it and I never will.

Rubbish---dead is dead.

I am looking at it from the animals viewpoint----something you animal keepers seem unable to do.

rune

Its an animal Lynn, they dont have a "viewpoint" If they were capable of such thinking, they may be out working like many of us! Instead of breeding uncontrollably and having to be controlled, and eaten of course, a bonus for us!

I suppose I don't see it any differently. As Rune says, dead is dead. Does it matter how or why? I don't see the difference in killing a livestock-animal, or a wild-animal for food? I do take exception to killing lions/elephants etc for their fur/tusks etc though.

Deer in this country are killed as part of a land-management progamme and then eaten. Cows and sheep and pigs in this country are bred specifically to be slaughtered (ok, some are kept for milk!) and then eaten.

Why is going deer-stalking (onto an estate that offers deer-stalking as part of it's annual cull) trophy-hunting?

Theres no difference between killing a cow or a deer or a lamb or a chicken or a pig.All will be eaten and atleast the deer has lived a natural life-simple!

No trying on my part, if I didnt feel comfortable doing it I wouldnt. Simple!! Please dont for one second think you can make me feel guilty, you have absolutely no clue about management nor conservation, its crystal clear to those that do know.

You're right. My inability to take the life of another with my bare hands makes me a bad person.

No, it's your ability to eat meat, and yet criticise those who do go out and shoot or kill animals that end up on the table. Would you eat meat if someone else didn't kill it for you?

I enjoy eating meat, I don't shoot, but I don't have any qualms about plucking and drawing game birds, or skinning rabbits etc, and will put an animal out of it's misery eg myxi rabbits etc, rather than leave them to suffer a slow and painful death.

Bare hands? I have never killed anything with my bare hands, are you saying I have?

Its not so long ago you were starting threads like "Why is my puppy so horrible" hardly the talk of an understand animal lover is it? Now before you go moaning about me mentioning that, take a good look at yourself and the way you felt about your own dog at times, before you presume you know about how others feel about animals that they dont own!! There it is again, HYPOCRISY!

EVERYTHING I have shot was shot for vermin control or management, the Woodies my friend eats, the Squirrels are put back onto the farmers land with his consent for the Foxes (GASP HORROR! YES FEEDING THEM IMAGINE THAT!!!) the others are incinerated.