Same here. It's haunted me all my life.
Yeah. Kind of the same for me. I was in the eighth grade, first time I ever shot a real BB gun, and I lined up on a small bird sitting in a bush probably 20 feet away.
I didn’t think I would hit it, but I did, and the mortally wounded bird fluttered around piteously on the ground until I put it out of its misery with the butt of the BB gun.
I am all for hunting, but what I did wasn’t “hunting”. It was random cruelty, and I regretted it. I learned a lesson from that.
Well, technically it does me too. The only think about it every 6 to 8 months or so. And I use my human intellect don’t let it affect me at all. :-)
That reminds me of the Andy Griffith Show when Opie killed a mother bird with his slingshot and ended up raising her baby birds until they could leave the nest.