If you wear cotton clothing, you are in part responsible for the wholesale killing of literally millions (if not billions) of small mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, directly by agricultural poisons and machinery, and indirectly by massive destruction of habitat. Consider that almost six billion people wear cotton, and consider the amount of acreage of cotton fields that requires. In fact, all agriculture kills wild creatures, or displaces them permanently. Various ground nesting birds (for example) disappear entirely from farmland, wiped out by cutting machines.

Vegetarians and vegans are as responsible as meat eaters for endless animal suffering and death when human impact in general is considered. The number of creatures killed by hunters is tiny in comparison to the numbers killed by agriculture, petroleum use, draining of swamps, burning of forests, building of highways and cities, industrial chemicals, and on and on.

As far as the rest of life on earth is concerned, humans are a devastating killing plague. Species are becoming extinct at a great and increasing rate, and hunters have little to do with that. You might point at the despicable hunting of rare animals for ridiculous cures, but the animals at risk are rare more because of habitat loss than poaching. The poachers are just finishing the job.

Killing an animal you intend to eat is one way of directly facing your human impact on animals. In my opinion it can be a very honest undertaking, and most of the hunters I know are very honest about how they feel about the animal they kill. I'm not so honest, myself, as I don't hunt but am willing to eat game meats.

Trophy hunting and hunting from planes seems to me a frivolous waste of animal life. I don't approve. But it seems senseless and hypocritical to single out food hunters as depraved examples of humanity while wearing a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt.