That's not right and knowing it makes it worst.

I need to get something off my chest.  It's not easy, but maybe you can help me in dealing with this.

My mother and I get along.  We do.  We don't see eye to eye on many things, but when we're together just the two of us, we get along.  I don't think of her as a friend.  She's my mother, and want her to remain in that role, and this despite the fact she is getting older and I've had to parent her some.  She's the type of woman who must have a man in her life in order to feel complete.  She can't be alone.  I've come to term with this, that's her way and that's that.

For over six months now, she has a new man in her life.  They've been traveling together, have common activities and seem to get along well.  He seems like a good man and my mom seems happy.  One of their activity is to hunt together.  My mother has been moose hunting for many years.  She would go with my dad and kept on going after his death.  She's been lucky and killed most years.  I grew up on games meat.  My father was a fisherman and hunter.  Moose meat is something we ate regularly at my folks.  I went, as a teen, for my firearm permit.  We used to practice fairly regularly, target practice was fun.  I'm also an animal lover, and was never really interested in going hunting as such.  I like moose meat, but not enough to go kill one.

Yesterday, my mother and her new beau came by for a visit. (Brief parenthesis here: I'm also realizing my mom pops up when she needs something from me: yesterday's visit was for me to post 2 items the beau wants to sell on the web.  She didn't know how, so she asked me.)  While I was working on his posts and searching his camera chip for pictures of his items, he showed me pictures of their last hunt.  He had taken pictures of two beautiful young lynx and their mother.  I did ask a few questions because they (mom and beau) seemed pretty close to them, but I could see my mother was somewhat embarrassed.  Turns out, the beau killed them all, just like that.  When I asked why, I was told they ate the partridges.  Wow!  My mom shyly said she knew it was cruel, but they were many of them in the area they were.  A few minutes later Hubby showed up, and beau showed him the pictures.

After they left, I told Hubby how uncomfortable I was feeling with his need to kill for the sake of killing.  Hubby wasn't there when I asked the questions, and had not realized that the pictures were of dead animals. They were beautiful, and my stomach is turning as I'm typing this.

I understand hunting. I have no issue with killing a moose (or any other animal) to feed ourselves.  I get that.  I don't like it, but at the same time I won't pretend not to enjoy my meat.  I'm a carnivore and I assume it.  But killing animals just because they are there and doing what their instinct dictates them is wrong.  I want to address this with my mother, and I really don't know how to go about it.  I want her to know that her behavior and her beau's are disappointing and just plain cruel, as far as I'm concerned.  I don't think it's right to kill at random like this, and I know they both know what they're doing is wrong.  I have a feeling that when I'll talk to my mother about this, tempers will rise and it's not really what I want.  A part of me feels like I should report them to the Hunting Police or something.  Any suggestion?