leadcounsel said:
I have very little respect for people who kill without purpose.
Very much injected into your post that does not exist in the posts of those you deride.
1)"without purpose". There is a purpose. Coyote are over-populated, genetically altered (doesn't matter if it's "natural"), disease carrying, game population destroying, vermin. They are killed with all kinds of purpose.
2)"Polluting". It's nature, sir, and you know it. A dead coyote is not "pollution". In fact, it's beneficial to the environment, if anything. All sorts of critters eat dead coyotes, including other coyotes. Dead animals do not go to waste nor pollute the environment.
3)How many species were hunted to extinction by American hunters? How many species were BROUGHT BACK from the brink of extinction by American hunters? I bet the balance would shock you.
4)Hunting IS fun. I don't know what world you live in but the number of folks who get any kind of benefit from hunting besides fun, pest elimination and/or tasty meat are in the tiny minority. The vast, vast majority lose far more money on their hunting than it would ever cost them to simply buy the meat. It's not the "quality" of the meat either. For what hunting costs, we could buy the cleanest, purest, best fed and raised, most perfectly "organic" game meat ever conceived... and be far ahead on the finances.
5)I don't care if you "enjoy" killing mice and rats or you don't. You do it, don't you? If the folks who are killing coyotes are doing it without purpose, so are you, because the purposes are identical. They are either real, or made up to make you feel better.
What's bad for gun rights and hunting rights is adopting the psuedo-animal rights mentality and trying to pass it off as a moral imperative. That's how they win. "Nobody needs an assault rifle to hunt deer." "Nobody should enjoy hunting." Nobody should kill without purpose." Purpose and need which only the anti is allowed to define.
Divide and concur. It works.