Here's what ISN'T hunting - from my perspective

What isn't hunting? Sitting in a blind or up in a stand and waiting.  That's not hunting. It's especially not hunting when your stand is heated and enclosed, your fridge serves up cold beer, and you have cell service so you can watch NetFlix and PornHub in your little waiting room. 

At best, you're a very lazy shopper.  I actually have to go up and down the aisles when I'm looking for food, not sit in a little box and wait for the burgers and brisket and bacon to walk over to me.

Mostly, though, this is stalking. You're not a mighty predator, but a stalker. You lure your prey in, then you pop open your window, set down your Cheetos and Weller, sight up, steady your wobbly whiskey aim, then pull the trigger and pop. If you're not too drunk, you drop him on the first shot.  Otherwise, you have to chase after him and do the decent thing at that point and finish him (or her - let's be fair).

By those typical standards, Lee Harvey Oswald was a "hunter." He sat in his perch, sipping his Coca-Cola, then when his prey came into view, he steadied his weapon on a box, and did a little "pew-pew-pew."  Then he scurried downstairs and got another Coca-Cola out of the vending machine and pretended he was innocent. Yeah, no, by legitimate standards, he was most definitely stalker and assassin, not hunter.

I'm not strictly anti-hunting. If you follow and track, if you equalize the technology a little (bow & arrow?), if you eat what you kill, and if you're not paying $50k-350k for the pleasure of snuffing something endangered, then I'm less inclined to diss you. At least you're trying to keep it real.  Your conscience is in the mix somewhere, and I'm not going to pretend I have moral authority to tell you where exactly your line has to be.

My position for myself is this: if I eat meat, which I do, then I must be willing to kill it myself, whether I do it 50% of the time or 1% of the time.  Mostly, though, I'm a killer by proxy. I'm comfortable enough paying others to handle it for me. But if I ever get to the point where I don't have the stomach to even consider doing it myself, then it will have become immoral for me to pay someone else to do it.  I keep my sin and my conscience close to home. I won't pay other people to do what is repugnant to me.