Took my first life today

Let me start by saying I have never hunted before but been an avid shooter/gun owner for most of my life.

It's Mourning dove season where I live and for the past 2 weekends I have been hunting them with no luck. I've gone out on three separate occasions and didn't even see a dove to take a shot at. This past week it dawned on me that my brother has been a hunter for 25+ years and been hunting dove that whole time. How I overlooked this I have no idea. I gave him a call and asked him if he knew of anywhere I could go Saturday (today). He told me of a spot and told me to call him afterwards to let him know how it went.

So I get up this morning at 4:30 and head out by 5:30, seeing as how the spot was about an hour and fifteen minutes away from me. I pull up around 6:40, and sure enough there are THOUSANDS of doves flying around. I immediately get excited, pull my truck up behind some trees and get my gear out.

I mounted my gun and shot at the first bird I saw. It hit! I see the bird go down hard so I mark the location and start walking over. When I get there I don't see a dead dove laying on the ground, I see a bird with a twisted wing hoping along trying to get under a bush. I ran up behind it and grabbed it, and it's about at this point I realize 1.) I have no idea what I am doing, and 2.) this is a lot different than I expected.

I could feel it's heart beating very fast and it was breathing heavily. I don't know what I was expecting, but that was almost too much for me right there. I had read about breaking a wounded birds neck but never actually seen it done. So I did my best and tried to twist while pulling and also while pushing the back of the neck down with my thumb. This basically skinned the doves neck but it was definitely still alive. I immediately panicked and tried smashing the birds head with my knife handle. Whether or not this killed the bird I will never know, because I panicked again, dropped the knife and ripped the head off. While this whole ordeal from the time I grabbed the bird to when I ripped it's head off lasted maybe 10 seconds, it could have definitely been cleaner. After I removed the head something very unexpected happened. The bird started to "vibrate"... That was very sobering. I was feeling this birds life leave it's body. I don't know how to describe what I felt, but it was much more than sadness. Guilt, remorse, I don't know, but it's that feeling you get when you get the news a loved one died. I felt almost numb, and confused.

At that point, I felt sick and decided I was done for the day. I wasn't sick from the gore of it, I was sick from what I had done. The whole way I home I didn't turn the radio on once, I just thought about the dove. When I got home I had decided the dove needed to be cleaned because I wasn't going to let it's life go to waste. I walked over to the trash can and removed the breast in about 15 seconds with no problems what so ever. I found it odd that cleaning it was actually fun, which is what I was kind of dreading most. I enjoyed it so much I kinda forgot about how bad I felt. I put the dove breast in some salt water and put it in the fridge, because that's what I have read you should do to pull some of the blood out.

About an hour later my brother called me to ask me how it went. I didn't know what to say because I didn't want to sound like a baby, but I was just honest with him and I told him I got 1 dove and was done for the day. I told him I felt really uncomfortable dispatching the bird and I didn't want to have to do that another 9 times today. To my surprise he said "Yea, putting down a wounded birds it one of the hardest things you have to do". I expected him to give me crap for being such a "girl" about it, but he ended up telling me that he still gets that feeling. This is coming from my brother who has been hunting dove for damn near 25 years; who is literally hunting Elk at a tank right now (which is why I had to go alone). He told me when you hold the whole animal in your hand, you are much more intimate with it, and it's just a completely different experience. He said he would be back next weekend and he wants to go with me, but I am not sure how I feel about it right now. He told me he will show me a much less brutal, quick and effective way to kill them very quickly.

I guess I am posting this because I need advice. I think my experience would have been a good one had I not had to decapitate my first dove. Has anyone else had this feeling, and did you get over it? To be honest, I kind of already want to get back out there, haha. I feel kind of silly going home after 1 dove, and I feel like I would have been fine it I just let it go and continued to hunt. Whether or not that feeling will remain is what I am worried about. I am kinda worried next week I will head down there and get "cold feet".

For the record, I was using a single shot 20 gauge loaded with 1 oz 7 1/2 shot. My brother offered to let me use his pump 12 gauge next week so I think with more shot in the shell, and 2 follow up shots, the chances of wounding a bird would be reduced.

Oh and my brother brought up a good point. He basically said most people grow up doing this sort of thing, so to start doing it at 25 is going to be a lot more emotional, which makes sense to me. I have the capacity to think about what I am doing more than someone who has been doing this their whole life. In my mind that dove was looking up at me saying "WHY?... I have a wife and kids, please don't." In reality I know all that bird was thinking was "tweet tweet... tweet", haha.

Thanks for taking the time to read; I know this was long.