It's an area where loftier minds than mind have struggled, but I suppose one can see it as a connection in the Forsterean sense with one's quarry; an atavistic feeling, to be sure, but one which connects the table and the field with the eater and the hunter.

When the hunted is equally armed to shoot back - the feeling you struggle to describe may be just blind terror.

Have you ever tried paintball?

I remember when every other kid in the area seemed to have capapults and were skilled at hunting and killing songbirds. I suspect for pretty much the same feeling as you struggle to describe. Only they did not try to justify it as their right, as them saving the countryside or providing employment.

I eventually got one too and after much failed stalking through the young elms that then covered the local railway embankment, I did managed to hit and kill a young blackbird. As I held and admired the the limp form in my hand, I felt totally ashamed and have never killed anything for fun again.

This need may be in all of us but perhaps it is something that most of us do grow out of?