How do you kill them?
Do you hope the dog takes care of them before he brings them back to hand or are you such a good shooter than you stone every one of them?
Or are you like me? Do you find a few of them, blinking and half alive? Do you stand there for a moment and think about what’s transpired in the last few seconds? You made a decision, a big boy decision, to pull the trigger. You hit your target. You brought the bird down. It flopped and flapped and absorbed more lead than you though avianly possible, but it’s n
ot dead. Not yet. That last part is now up to you. And your hands.
Do you dispatch, terminate, put ’em down, finish ’em off, snuff ’em out, exterminate or harvest ’em?
I don’t. I kill them. Quickly. Swiftly. Without fanfare. Without much thought really, because too much thought and you’d stand there like a fool leaving everything open to contemplation.
So it’s a twist of the neck, maybe a head rapped against a nearby tree. Not pretty, but not overly dramatic, either. The hunter bringing the end near. Life running out of the hunted. You can feel it go. Almost like when you’re fishing and the hook dislodges. It’s just…gone.
Not so much remorse as just a pause. And then you move on.
– Crawford
Mouthful of Feathers 
Death is a messy thing. It’s the low after the high. Remorseful yes. A pinch up underneath the wing blades gets the job done humanely. Thanks for keeping it in perspective
Yup, quick and easy, finish the job that was started. No thought to it, just finishing.
Nothing in the wild dies of natural causes. studies show that almost 100% of wild animals die at the hands of predators, which makes predation their only natural cause. We are not doing anything abnormal by taking those animals unwary enough to allow us close. Something else would have gotten them sooner or later. Everyone and everything would prefer later, but it doesn’t always go the way we want. I am in the food chain, and expect to donate my own body back to nature, whether it’s a long-term worm farm, or after a fall down a cliff into a ravine, with no witnesses. Just can’t predict, so when you have to deal with the death of some creature you intend to eat, you shouldn’t feel bad for them. I’m too busy being thankful for their sacrifice. If you remember the opening scene of “The Last of the Mohicans,” the way the boys take out the elk by outrunning it is awesome, and the young buck says the prayer of thanks, that’s how it should be.