I have never understood the desire to kill something, the closet thing I can muster is people wanting to 'connect with their instincts'.
I think that I would enjoy 'the hunt' but only if I didn't have to kill the animal, Track it, watch it, respect it, but kill it, hell no.
So I say 'why?' but i'm not going to judge, just ask why.
If any of you guys hunt, can you tell me why you enjoy hunting?
1) Any animal out there can see you, hear you, and smell you long before you can do the same to it. They're faster, more agile, stronger for their respective size and weight, and have their own built-in weapons. They can go places you can't (or, at any rate, with much less effort than you can,) and, with very few exceptions, can tear you a new @$$hole if you screw up and they turn on you.
2) I never hunted squirrel with anything but a .22 pistol or a single-shot .410 shotgun (the smallest you can get, as far as I know.) Rabbit I hunted with a pistol, or (rarely) a .22 rifle. Anything bigger I use something big enough to get the job done cleanly (I favor a .30-30 Winchester or an 8mm Mauser.)
BUT...
3) I never take
anything beyond 100 yards, and that only for deer or larger game. Not that I couldn't: I've hit hubcap-sized
targets at 250 yards using a pistol - open sights only, no scope. If I can see my target, I can hit it, period. But I don't call sitting on one mountain and shooting a deer 1,000 yards away "hunting". When I take small game, it's always within 25 to 30 yards, often as close as 10 yards. Which means...
4) Whatever I take, I
beat it at its own game, in its own environment. It had all the advantages, and I still won. That's why I hunt - that and the fact that I like wild meat much better than the bland stuff from the supermarket.
I have, on more than one occasion, looked at my target and held fire, knowing that I could have taken it. Two years ago, I passed on a
nice buck that I
could have taken easily - but I didn't like the shot. It wasn't clean enough for me so I passed. If I was starving, that would be a different matter. In that case, all's fair, because pretty much anything out there would eat you if the situations were reversed. That's what Nature is all about.