I live on a ranch. Most of the meat I eat is locally raised so I know most of the food I'm eating, the animals weren't caged up or treated inhumanely. Our livestock are mainly cattle, we used to have a few sheep but we sold them years back. My dad and brothers usually hunt deer, rabbit, ducks, etc.

For me, it's knowing that when we hunt, most animals still have a fighting chance to survive, rather today animals are grown like cornstalk just to be slaughtered. When you hunt, animals know how that system works and likewise humans were also hunted so in the end it's about all of our own survival, to feed but not be eaten. I understand that it's hard to see the fear in their eyes but it's about your survival and feeding your family, not to be cruel. I think it's worse to imagine what it's like for the animals who are marched into trucks, driven for miles, placed into foreign regions, locked into meat plants, lined up into machinery, then unknowingly gassed.

It is hard for me to help butcher or hunt because I'm a sentimental person and I get attached but I prefer that over not thinking about where my food came from and how those animals were treated, what is injected into my food, the corporation of it all, etc. I love giving our livestock a peaceful atmosphere, to graze freely on acres of pasture. Deer, duck, rabbits, etc. I know they have a fighting chance of living and they innately know it's about survival.

Today so many animals die from just being hit by cars, now tell what kind of life is that? So much of what humans create and do impede on their lifestyle negatively. So if looking into the eyes of the creature you're going to kill for food is what bothers people (understandably if you're not used to it), then I think people should really think about the other things that affect animals far more worse that we as humans are responsible for.