Another Anti-Hunter Rap

So someone posted a photo of a huntress lying next to a giraffe she'd just killed. She's lying next to it's neck and smiling so much she's beaming. The photo brought her a lot of heat. She responded by saying that she and other hunters were playing a vital role in conservation--as if managing giraffes has been a problem we've been trying to deal with, eh?
   Well, some nicely intentioned person wrote on a blog that they didn't see the difference between killing chickens and pigs to killing lions, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, black and brown bears, wildebeast, zebra and so forth. I do see a difference. And trust me, I feel for every goddamned tomato I had pulled from its life on the vine and every radish who's heart I cut to pieces because I know they feel the death and don't like it anymore than we would. That said, here was my short response to the well-intentioned woman:
    Yes, we kill to eat. But no one except perhaps some indigenous, eat giraffes, or elephants and certainly no one eats big cats as a rule. And yes, if people raised those animals on exotic hunting farms, as they do, there would be less outrage. But to have someone pay money to have someone else locate your often-endangered, exotic game, then drive you into the best possible position from which to shoot it, then have you shoot it and take you to it for photos as if you have done something good or important, well, that's what the outrage is about. This is not even hunting. These hunters are not out there tracking prey with a chance they will become the hunted. (Except for that hunter killed by the elephant recently). I take people to the Amazon jungle and sometimes get offers from hunters for big money to take them on a safari where they can shoot a jaguar. I tell them I'll do it on condition that we mount a camera on the barrel and remove the firing pin, so that when you pull the trigger, you get a picture of the jaguar up close, rather than a dead jaguar. In nearly 30 years, no one has taken me up on the offer, an indication that the thrill isn't in getting dangerously close to a very dangerous animal, the thrill is only in the killing. And that's just wrong.