While it's not true for everyone of course, many of us take pleasure from hunting in different ways as we grow older. As a boy, I pursued game vigorously with hand thrown stones, sling shots, BB and pellet guns, buckets of water and clubs (flushing out and clobbering gophers of course!), and eventually real firearms. In my teen years, and well beyond, I was usually too excited to sleep well the night before a planned hunt. I loved everything about it...especially the succesful kill. I also took considerable pleasure from running a trapline for a number of years...no kill shots, but success translates to killing just like hunting. I still love hunting, but as I get older, my desire to kill something is far less urgent, and the respect I have for other living things is much increased. One of my thoughts is that as you age and begin to recognize and accept your own mortality, you begin hold all life in greater reverence. While "remorse" is somehow not the correct word to describe that feeling I have after a kill, there is a sense of some sort, quite opposite to that of the delight which I get from a succesfully concluded hunt. My dad, who was a hunter from boyhood, is now 80 years old. When I spoke to him recently about some of my upcoming hunting plans, he commented that he didn''t think he could shoot anything again. On the other hand, I have a similarly aged uncle who continues to be as actively involved in hunting as his physical limitations will allow...guess we're just not all the same, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.