Earlier quoted context omitted.
The older I get, the more I have the sense (both intuitively and through evidence) that I'm far more like the animals I've eaten than I am unlike them. That sense has become more and more attuned, and it has gotten to the point that I don't see animals as food anymore. They're just a different kind of people trying to survive. Since I don't actually need to eat them to survive, it seems akin to murder to consume them…
I also have grown more attuned to the fact that humans are just another animal, but in practice this has put me more at ease with eating meat as we are omnivorous predators in the food chain. I am much more aligned, however, with sustainable harvesting (hunting) than industrial farming these days. There is nothing natural about the modern slaughterhouse.
I think I almost could be if the biomass of harvestable prey hadn't reduced so dramatically while the number of potential hunters has increased proportionately, if not more. Spearfishing is actually what lead me to give up the pursuit of sustainable hunting. No matter how ethically and fairly I try to harvest, I will only be contributing to the toll which is already countless orders of magnitude beyond something sustainable. In a sense, I was viewing my contribution to the problem too much as my own contribution rather than as part of a whole which is already far too excessive.
It's a tragedy of the commons. Wild land is too disrupted, oceans polluted and over-fished, and yet farming is too disgusting to contemplate supporting either. The best contribution I can make is to relieve pressure on the system and encourage others to consider doing the same (if they appear interested in listening, that is).
Even so, I'm grateful there are people out there who are willing to consider hunting as an alternative to farming. There are opportunities to hunt over-populated species which are harming ecosystems, for example, which at least has something of a positive impact on the places where the hunting occurs. Wild pigs and deer are common examples in North America. I can't bring myself to do it though, as I'm an invasive species not much unlike the pigs or deer.
> this has put me more at ease with eating meat as we are omnivorous predators in the food chain
I contemplate this at times too. It's not irrational at all. We are omnivores and we are part of the food chain, and there's nothing special about us in that regard.
However, since we're so dramatically over-populated compared to the species we eat (outside of farming, at least), it seems wise not to eat animals so often given that we don't need to and our impact on the food chain is significantly outsized compared to other species. It could be argued that we have something like a practical, moral, and ethical impetus to preserve the food chain such that we can now and in the future continue to sustain the food web we have such immense impacts on. Not only for the lives of the animals we eat and share the world with, but for the future humans of the earth as well.