I agree, and that's also a very different experience. I wasn't trying to undermine what you do, but I believe that hunting is integral to the human experience - maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people around the world: myself included. Many portray it as unfair, and I say that those people have never gone hunting - it's not easy! Growing all your own food and getting meat from wild game and fishing is actually something that takes a lot of skill, patience, and hard work - especially if one is hunting without firearms. So my apologies, I guess it was kind of lacking in thought to make such a bold statement about death, but killing a deer that feeds your family for a year can be an intimate and rewarding experience. In my area, hunting has been a practical way of keeping certain animal populations in balance, but decline in membership in recent years has caused a huge upsurge in coyote attacks on pets and livestock and more deer than the area can support. So there are practical reasons for it as well. It's the huge animal farms supplying supermarkets that I think are the issue.

EDIT: I guess a better way to say it would have been that killing an animal for food rather than buying it in the store really drives home the fact that life eats death: no matter what. It is the ultimate inescapable fate of all living things to die, and hunting gives me a deep appreciation and very personal understanding of that.

Also, I have to ask about you how feel about wolves, lions, and other carnivores that kill for food. Or other omnivores - do they have a choice and if so are they morally responsible? Or are humans different because we have a sense of ethics? But then again, perhaps we assume too little of animals. They are smarter than we give them credit for.

"Note: At the risk of being one of "those people," if you don't want to be supporting factory farming (which I think should be the goal of any empathetic person), you really need to go vegan - unless you're buying from local farms, the eggs you eat were laid by chickens that were kept in factory conditions. Sure, that specific egg was never attached to a living soul the way a chicken breast is, but the animal that produced it lived the same life, and probably died the same way. The same is true of milk and all dairy products. "

The conditions for farming animals are atm hardly worse than those conditions for farming plants. I would way that the farming of plants is actually even a bit worse.

Going vegan means nothing to me. Many people do it as a feel good thing without looking at the larger issue of factory farming in general...unless you view plants as just stupid non-sentient beings. I don't. I work in horticulture. I spend 50 hours a week usually working closely with plants and maintaining a number of gardens in my city. I see plants responding to stress, and responding with avoidance etc every single day. Plants don't enjoy mono culture factory farming either and they express symptoms of suffering just like other creatures do. After a while, you can walk into a garden and look around and see what is going on with every plant. They exhibit behavior just like animals do and avoid threats in an attempt at self preservation. It is clear to me, that plants want to live.

So, why is killing a plant less ethical or empathic than killing a turkey?

I don't like to waste much time on the subject of empathy and veganism, unless the whole issue of life in general being abused in industrial farming is addressed. I have been vegetarian, I have been vegan..I have been a meat eater..and then vegetarian again..and then meat eater again. I may well end up vegetarian again, who knows. I tend to eat meat on average once a week or less. I am highly skeptical of these quick and simple claims made about one diet being more empathic or cruelty free etc. The only way to move towards that IMO is to eat all local free range food.

Even when people talk about "organic"..okay I get it..but I have come to realize that most people don't know much of anything about horticulture when at that level of production. When your trying to please(or feed) that many people the dynamics are a bit different from you growing some plants on your back patio. Working in the field, it becomes clear that there is a lot of bs coming from both sides of the equation. People think they have quick answers and solutions, but often they don't.