I guess I've never had to explain a thing to my three little ones...4, 7 and 8. The older two first memories are full of butchering hogs, chickens, rabbits and wild game. It's just the way it's always been. I go to huge efforts to not put human feelings and pain thresholds on game animals. I don't believe they have emotions or feel pain the same way we do. I don't try to sugar coat it when explaining to my nieces.

My oldest asked how animals that we get from the grocery store were raised and slaughtered. She is far more disgusted by that than Daddy putting an arrow or a bullet in something to eat. She likes the fact that wild animals get to live in freedom before we take them to eat.

In my experience with 3 yr. olds the ideas of pain and suffering are planted in their heads by teachers, mommy or daddy, or relatives. They rarely come up with it themselves, they usually don't have any life experiences to base it on.

My boy, 7, is deathly afraid of bears. It's become a real issue and causing him to loose sleep. The other night we watched American Archer on the Outdoor Channel. M.R. James and Dwight Schu and one other guy all killed good black bears on the show. My son was impressed you could do that with a bow and declared he was no longer aftraid..LOL.. He gets to go bear hunting with me this spring.