Personal experience
Embarrassingly, my own father is pro-gun but anti-hunting. I refer to him -- only half-jokingly -- as a "militant vegetarian." He eats no meat or fish, though he does consume dairy products. His reasoning for being a vegetarian has nothing to do with his own health, which I suppose I could understand. His catchphrase is "I won't eat anything that had a mother."
Now, my father was born in the backwoods of Arkansas, is devoutly pro-Second Amendment, an NRA member, ex-cop, Gulf War I veteran, currently serves on active duty with the Army Reserve (he just LOVES the concept of vegetarian MREs), and is a libertarian-leaning Republican. In other words, not exactly the archetypical bunny-hugger. Alas, I fear that it was I who steered him off the path of sanity.
When I was a kid, we ate the typical American diet: beef, pork, chicken, fish, turkey on Thanksgiving, etc. Dad ate the poor little beasts along with the rest of us, but was never a hunter. When I became a gun-struck teen with subscriptions to everything from Shooting Times to Combat Handguns (this was before the Internet, when the dread gunrags reigned supreme), I developed an interest in hunting. My good friend Shane was a hunter, and he invited me on a squirrel hunt with his family. Dad was appalled and angry that I'd even consider it, and forbade it. Told me if I mentioned it again, he'd seize my .22 rifle.
This led to many, many heated discussions over plates of meat at family dinners. As a 13-year-old know-it-all, of course, I was not hesitant to ruin Thanksgiving dinner by debating the merits of hunting with Dad. This went on for years, with dad making increasingly absurd statements:
Dad: Eating meat is okay, as long as you distance yourself from the killing. Killing is uncivilized. The further you are from the killing, the more civilized you become.
14 year-old me: But Dad, was Al Capone more "civilized" than his hit men who actually did the killing? Was Hitler more "civilized" than the Gestapo?
Dad: Well...ummm, ahhhh...yes.
Me:
Eventually, I backed him into a philosophical corner, though not exactly the one I wanted. Rather than accepting hunting as natural and good, he gave up eating meat and fish. Stopped wearing leather. Became really painful in restaurants -- God forbid the hibachi chef lets the spatula touch the shrimp before it touches the fried rice! Needs special gravy at Shoney's, etc.
I went off to Fort Benning at 18, then finally took up hunting when I was 20. It took me a while to become at all successful, since I'd had no mentoring as a kid. But eventually I went on that squirrel hunt.
Dad still hates hunting and even fishing, though he has never campaigned against it politically. We still argue about it good-naturedly. I make sure to wear my leather coats and order prime rib when I visit him. Maybe there's reason for hope, though. We went to the recent NRA convention together, and I noted some odd-looking shoes on his feet.
Me: Wow, dad, those are some really good looking pleather shoes.
Dad: Well, errrrr, they're not pleather.
Me: Huh?
Dad: Well, the pleather shoes just aren't very durable, and they make my feet stink. I, ummmm, broke down and bought some leather shoes.
Me: I see! Look, there's the new Benelli hunting rifle. Let's check it out. I'm feeling a bit uncivilized today.
I'll save him from the Dark Side of the Force yet. In the mean time, I'll just have to kill enough deer for both of us.
Mike
