I've seen a lot of people attacking hunters lately, specifically vegans, and I think its because of the fact that we are all so disconnected from the food chain. This is not an attack but an explanation for those who are curious. So from someone who used to work at DEM, and being a person who hunts and grows some of their own food for moral and health reasons let me demonstrate a nuanced point of view.
Life eats life. If you eat meat, the animals raised on most factory farms live hellish lives from birth to death. Most of the time they never see the light of day or fresh air, and are fed corn and antibiotics which doesn't remotely resemble their natural diet. Chickens in particular may even have their beaks cut off to prevent them from pecking each other because of so many being crammed in together in a tight space. I'll leave out the gruesomeness of slaughterhouses but I would be comfortable in stating that it's worse than you imagine.
Hunting or fishing is a way to separate yourself from that system instead of being forced to buy in and support it. Just because someone hunts doesn't mean they enjoy killing things and that they're hurting the environment. Often times hunting an animal brings it a lot closer to you emotionally, thus why most tribal societies tend to have religious beliefs centered around the animals native to the area. As for Vegans, I respect your sentiments but more and more studies are coming out about how plants are a lot more aware than we usually think, so eating plants isn't as karma free as most would assume.
Rather than fighting, we should be working to change the factory farming system to something more sustainable and healthy both for us and the animals. As humans, it could be argued that we have a responsibility to look after the biomass of the planet. Because of human population and development many large predators don't exist in the numbers to help keep control of the numbers of large herbivores which throws the balance off. Therefore, in order to maintain balance in the ecosystem, sometimes it is necessary to "cull the herd" and take control of the numbers of a certain species so they don't eat themselves out of food, or cause car accidents due to collisions, in the case of deer or other large mammals. That's why we have tag and bag limits that the Department of Environmental Management sets for hunters. They count the population in the off season and decide how many need to be culled to keep the herd stable and healthy. It seems counter intuitive, but ethical hunters help balance the ecosystem. Not to mention the millions of dollars they contribute to conservation every year, just for licenses, tags and gear. That all gets taxed and put towards conserving and maintaining our public lands, which are being attacked by the current establishment to be deregulated and drilled for oil.
So next time you take a nice stroll through a wilderness area, thank a hunter or fisherman.