ORIGINAL: wack

Dear Betsy, I've had the pleasure of taking an English man hunting here in the states and found it very interesting. He came to visit, and sounded a lot like you. He went hunting with us, that was 17 years ago. He never went back to England and has hunted every year since. He and his wife never knew such a beautiful place existed and were amazed by all the wildlife they've seen here. Why? Because of the way we manage our wildlife, and the way we respect our wildlife.
From what I understand, the English have no business telling us how to manage our wild life. In England, only the filthy rich can afford to hunt what very little game you have left. The English fox hunts, talk about playing dress up, does not resemble in the least what hunting is about in the states. Just how many Englishmen, horses and dogs does it take to run down a little fox until they can't run no more? How many people does that little fox feed? yuk!
Now I can not expect you to understand what it's like to hunt. It's something you have to experience for yourself and that is not possible in your country. I doubt you even have the right to own a firearm much less have a place to hunt or enough wild game to hunt. I live in Wisconsin where we have a couple million deer. Deer car collissions kill a lot of deer and also humans. We have so many that the only alturnative to hunting is letting them starve to death. How long and painfull would that be? How humane? Farmers grow crops to feed the world, left unchecked the deer and other wildlife would certainly strip the fields bare. One farm I used to hunt had 75% crop damage caused by deer and turkeys. With out hunting and the management that we have, either the farmer would be out of buisiness or, like England, the deer would be all gone. Fortunately, we're smarter than that and when the populations get to high, hunters step up to the plate and bring the numbers down to a managible number. If the deer population gets to low, we respect the animal and protect them.
Wisconsin is one of 50 states.This past gun deer season hunters killed 70,000 + deer in Wisconsin. Lucky hunters who got more deer than they needed, donate the meat to local food pantries. This feeds thousands of hungry people. To be able to provide meat for my family and feed families I don't even know, puts joy in my heart. It's also good to know that if I should fall on hard times, I can depend on my hunting brothers to share in the harvest.
Now if I were to take you hunting here in Wisconsin, first you would have to attend hunter's safety class. You can't get a license to hunt with out it. They teach you how to handle a gun safely, teach you how to shoot, teach you the laws and regulations. 70,000 armed hunters in the woods for 9 days and we had only 3 accidents, 2 fatalities. Apparently we know what we are doing.
As for the fun in it? Families hunt together, friends hunt together, it's a celebration. The adrenalin you get when you see a deer/ take a deer is unexplainable. You have to experience it to understand. If that is 1 step away from killing humans then we have over 70,000 killers in Wisconsin and this certainly would not be a safe place to live. Wisconsin is every bit as safe of place to live as England only a lot better. That is a statement I've heard your own countryman say after living here for a few years.
I can understand your disgust with some of the so called hunters, they also disgust many of us hunters. One bad apple so to speak, but as a whole, for most hunters it's not about the killing. You'd find out that those who talk like idiots also hunt like idiots, and they couldn't get close to deer if they wanted too. They're just talk and peer pressure usually straightens them out.