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Courage has nothing to do with forever squelching out the beauty of an autonomous life form which can never live again. Once dead, it is gone forever, just like everyone reading this post some day will be. Think about yourselves when you think about putting Squatchy in the crosshairs of your high powered rifle. Killing deliberately is either for homicidal maniacs or for those too dim witted to understand the consequences of their actions. That level of operating immaturity is the very reason we don't give guns to toddlers. How is it we ignore the fact that responsibility over life calls for maturity and restraint? The old 19th Century euphemism of 'collecting a specimen for science' just doesn't cut it any more because, in the main, it only serves to demonstrate that humans are just too stupid to solve their problems without violence; or too impatient or too greedy to care that this is so. And yet, isn't euphemism a wonderful concept which well serves our increasingly violent and greed-driven world? It lets us off the hook morally and ethically. For example, we don't slaughter baby seals any more: We harvest them. We don't clearcut forests any more: We harvest wood fibre. We let ourselves off the hook every opportunity we get and with every excuse we can manufacture in order to justify our failures and shortcomings as a species (in the macro) and as individuals (in the micro). It takes guts to have and to stand up for principles. Only the gutless have none. Only the gutless kill. Why not take a stand on behalf of those we're trying to murder simply because our tiny little human brains and imaginations are inferior to the task of stewardship of the living? - Dudlow