Because it was the socially acceptable thing to do.
I’ve never met a bedouin tribesman, but if he offered me a sheep’s eye I would eat it.
Socially acceptable?
The mind boggles at the sheer idiocy of someone who would shoot an animal because it was “socially acceptable”.
Why not just admit you shot them because you COULD
Because that would be no reason at all.
(Perhaps I could have been more clear: It would have been a social faux pas to refuse to participate. Besides, it was good fun even not really knowing what I was doing.)
You aimed your weapon at an animal, you pulled the trigger knowing there was a very good chance that animal was going to die as a result of your actions.
Social faux pas my arse, you were afraid of being laughed at so an animal had to die because of that
It was good fun?..you knew full well what you were doing so don’t come the twaddle with me, I’ve been around a long time
I never said that I didn’t know what I was doing 
What exactly is your problem with this? Killing an animal? Killing an animal for sport? Killing an endangered animal for sport? I see nothing wrong with any of these.
Yes you did, last para. post 24.
If you can’t see why it is wrong to kill any animal for sport then I must conclude that that you are not a full shilling
Oh yes, who could possibly see anything wrong with killing an endangered animal for sport? :rolleyes:
Sorry to continue the threadjack. I have never killed anyone, but can sympathize to the utmost with your feelings of horror after your experience, chowder. I can only imagine.
Ah, I see the confusion. You have the wrong sense of not knowing what I was doing. I meant it in the inexperienced sense.
As for your second sentence, that is another debate entirely, but in a nutshell, if one enjoys meat then one is enjoying the killing of an animal.
What about killing the most dangerous animal for sport? Cause I thought that’s what we we’re talking about here.
Yes but he gets a razor sharp knife and a 24 hour head start
I don’t know what you were doing because:
1.You never told me
2. I’m not psychic.
Now then. A person needs no experience to know that a bullet fired at a living creature will either hurt or kill it provided the bullet hits, which yours did.
I enjoy meat but I sure as hell wouldn’t “enjoy” killing a sheep or cow.
If needs be I would kill an animal to survive but certainly not for sport or to comply with socially acceptable norms.
Your use of “enjoy” reaffirms my belief that you are not a full shilling, or even sixpence come to that
MsWhatsit Thank you
Aggggghhhhhhh!!!
Third time lucky:
“not knowing what I was doing” does not mean “not being aware of what I was doing”, it means “being inexperienced and unskilled at what I was doing”.
I have killed another human being, or at least done everything short of it. I was trapped in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and pulled the trigger of a gun I thought was loaded pointed at another human being at a range I couldn’t possibly miss. Thankfully, somebody else did have a real loaded gun and we managed to get him out of the hotel. I got sent to my hotel room until we managed to evacuate, where I chain-smoked until I ran out of cigarettes a few hours later.
The sad thing was that at the time, it was viscerally exciting. I’d like to feel like it was a terrible thing, but I don’t. Pulling the trigger was like, I don’t know, taking a gasping breath after you’ve been underwater for too long. It felt like . . . well, shit, I don’t know how to describe it. Like I finally got to show up somebody who I hated and who had treated me like shit for a long time, even though I’d never met the guy before.
But that’s irrelevant, right? Nothing came of it. The gun was empty. So no harm and no foul.
But sometimes, although I only admit it on the anonymous confessional of the internet, I wish it had been loaded and I’d splattered the guy. When I come to my senses, I realize that if it had actually been the other way around, I’d be laying awake every night wishing it had been empty or I just hadn’t responded. But that’s when I come to my senses.
We all have our complexes. People without small ones have big ones.
How are things in New Orleans now <<<hijack>>>
Everything that’ll come back has come back, and that’s pretty much everything worth keeping. I don’t mean that in the human or humanistic sense, but in the economic one - almost all of the economic activity in the city was tied either to the port, or to tourism, or in some way to Shell Oil. Well, Shell’s returned to its headquarters but their operations here have been drastically limited, the port is back up almost entirely, and tourism has been cut down drastically. There’s just not much to do, and not much to support the people who used to live here.
Keep in the right places, though, and you’ll be fine.
FYI I have started a Great Debate about the ethics of killing as a sport.
You might have had a high afterwards or you might ,as an amateur ,have puked your ring up and begged for gods forgiveness while trying to scrape bits of his brain,blood and bone off of your face and clothing.
Of course if you gut shot him you might have had the pleasant experience of smelling the hot fresh shit in his exposed intestines just like they show on the T.V. dramas,oh I forgot they dont do they.
As to the original question most people who have had to kill deliberately as part of their profession,law enforcement officers and others would consider it to be a very intrusive question about a very personal matter.
Im not knocking you Chowder its just my opinion is all.
You should read chowder’s OP again, particularly the second paragraph.
You might find the book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society a worthy read. That high you describe is documented and pretty normal, and a lot of soldiers have felt guilty about having it. The puking, nightmares, and PTSD are also pretty common reactions, too, even in people who felt that initial excitement.