Right. I think this is where the viewpoints differ vastly. I don't want to explain people's choices away by this alone. I don't think that is fair. No matter what drives you to go veg/vegan is fine by me and really doesn't impact my life in any way one way or the other.
I really do seek to give a different perspective to those who may buy into the tropes without having any experience with those who hunt or their families. Basically, most who hunt aren't villanous.
I also don't want to excuse hunting on the grounds that it is only just done to feed families.
It is done for that in addition to more homogeneous reasonings and that hunting isn't murdering defenseless animals. As if their instincts aren't defenses! Honed by years by evolution. I have seen many hunters come back empty handed! It isn't as easy as it looks. Those deer get a whiff of you and they are gone.
Hunters merely see themselves as predator to prey. That it is a natural order.
But I want to express this to those who share the opinion of the OP: Have you watched any salmon fishing videos? What about A Dangerous Catch? Not as much outrage for them. No bambi effect. They aren't often called blood-thirsty but yet they celebrate when they have a catch. Bon Jovi is playing in the background. Sound familiar?
Why? Because it is man against nature. That is it. Please hold to your convictions but I ask for a little expansion on how you may see hunters. Not evil or blood-thirsty. They just value animal life in a different way than you. To them it is no dishonor in it. It is challenging nature and that speaks for the respect most have toward nature.
I dont really see it that way, at least not most of the time, sure its very possible to set up barrel shoots and I regard a lot of the safaris to be like that, elite white hunters out shooting aged lions who're half tame and approaching them for food, that sort of thing but if you're a fool you've no superiority over the wild.
A lot of the people I've known who're really serious about hating on blood sports or things like the bull run will express the most horrible glee at news that a bull fighter has been gored or a runner trampled, staying with that particular analogy, which I always wonder at, does the sympathy with the underdog, perceived underdog, or reverence for life, not extend to human beings, no matter how ill conceived you believe their actions to be in the first place.
There are blood sports which I dont like, which I cant say I'd want to be ringside for, having animals fight each other to death, like dogs or cockerels for instance, or "the hunt" when the "unspeakable goes in pursuit of the uneatable", in particular I hate the hunt because it is meant to, and does for many, remain symbolic of the "nobility" employing the "mob", ie domesticated dogs, to kill the "rebel", ie a wild canine, I also think that Badger baiting, hunting with ferrets or other things like that are detestable and more than a little sadistic.
People hunting for food can be sloppy and ugly, although its not as bad, if you research it, as the actual mass production of meat, which in its present form is unsustainable, the majority of the world, which does not have a meat diet like the first world, could not have a meat diet like the first world. Reading about and thinking about all that didnt influence me to become a vegetarian or vegan, which I did for two years largely because I felt like it and often find that sometimes the vegetarian options, such as rice stuffed peppers, are much, much more edifying than people imagine. Meat can be shockingly uncreative in preparation. Also I'm totally and utterly disgusted by the trend to under cook or barely cook meat now, all meat is "blue" now or virtually "tartar" in its preparation. Its not sushi and I dont believe it should be prepared that way.
Though I couldnt say that anyone adopting vegetarianism seriously because of concern for animal welfare or mass production will have an easy time of it, I know people criticised me for wearing a leather coat, leather boots and shoes, other animal products while I was living on the vegetarian diet, it was part of what annoyed me and eventually lead to my giving up that sort of a lifestyle in the end. I dont like a lot of the religious taboos on eating, Christianity is relatively free of them, apart from older cultural traditions like meatless fridays or fish on a friday but most people dont remember or practice those, I dont like the way that some of the more reactionary and sanctioning thinking from superstition or religion seems to re-emerge in a disguised way in the lexicon of political correctness.