Does this thread really have to be hijacked by people who have no clue but many assumptions?

North American folks, suggest you/we ignore and forgive posts from those in the British Isles who can not be expected to know how different the geography and scale is between the British Isles and North America, or even Western Europe in addition to the British Isles. Not to mention the reliance on the land and the game that many people still depend on to keep their families fed in many parts of this vast continent.

Different sensibilities are to be expected, but please, also respect ours. Understand that our sensibilities when it comes to hunting is very different because our circumstances are very different.

Don't confuse Dan's stated positions regarding 'gun control" with which I vehemently disagree, with issues regarding hunting, food and respect for wildlife, etc. And if that last sentence doesn't make sense to you, I respectfully suggest that is a good indication that you really can not comprehend the difference. It is a difference not so much of culture but of geography and ecology. Not to say that culture is not a factor, but that culture, in these instances is significantly shaped by the realities of the geography and ecology. And the economy.

Richard, it may be true that in the UK no one needs to hunt game for anything other than sport. I don't know that is the case but I accept that is your perception. I have lived and worked as a social worker among poor populations in mixed regions that were predominantly rural in the southeast USA for more than 40 years. I can assure you there are many families south of the Mason-Dixon line (I don't pretend to speak about areas and regions in which I have not worked or lived) for whom the ability to hunt and eat and preserve, (mostly freezing or drying) white-tailed deer, squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, and even the occasional possum, makes the difference between going hungry, or even malnurished. did I mention catfish, bream, bass caught from farm ponds?

Even if one has the means to buy meat at the grocery store, understand that for us meat eaters, another animal always dies that we may eat meat. How many of you have ever been in a chicken barn? A beef cattle farm? A farm where veal is raised for market? A slaughterhouse? A meat packaging plant? Buying meat in a grocery in a plastic wrapped, literally disembodied package allows one to avoid the reality of where that chicken leg or lamb chop originated. A living being.

If you are a meat eater (and I am) and think there is some moral superiority to buying packaged meat, be it fish, fowl or hooved when alive, from a grocery store where one can dissociate from the reality of first hand knowledge of the miserable lifespan that factory-raised animal had, compared to killing a live animal personally, skinning it yourself, gutting it and butchering it -thus confronting up close and in person that another sentient being has died so that you may partake of it's flesh, then you have another think coming, should you choose to take the opportunity to accept reality.

I am a meat eater, btw.