Deciding what the core of your values as a hunter will be when you have not yet hunted is nice and sounds wonderful. When you get some experience hunting you will move from theoretical to practical knowledge. And no, you won't have that from what you think about others. There is this idea that a rifle will kill more efficiently that other methods. Not true. Archery can kill animals every bit as quickly and humanely as rifles.
Assuming you were responding to my post, I made no statement that the rifle was above other forms of hunting. I merely said that hunting with a handgun is probably harder, and by and large that is true given sight radii, no shoulder stocks etc and if one chooses a means of hunting, one should be competent enough to avoid the chance of unnecessary suffering.
Don't equate a quick and relatively painless death with an easier method of getting a kill shot.
I didn't do that either, just that a quick and relatively painless death should be a hunter's aim, regardless of their means of hunting. And that if they are not proficient enough to make that highly probable, they probably should not hunt with that platform, the same way hunters on here state that if you are not sure of a shot, don't take it...
I have no issue with wildlife photographers but is not something directly comparable to hunting.
I disagree. The skills and knowledge needed to get close to wild animals will be the same. Why shouldn't they be? Photographers use tracking, stealth, hides, decoys, calls, bait camouflage...
As I stated, the only guaranteed difference is at the end of a successful encounter, a photographer has a frame, and the hunter a corpse.
Both had to "fire a shot".