But to his fancy, perhaps meticulous, between such needful slaughter and that carried out for his own amusement, and not really for the purposes of obtaining food, there seemed to be a great gulf fixed.

To get food he would have killed anything, and indeed, often did in later days, as he would and also often did in after days, have destroyed noxious animals, such as tigers.
But to inflict death merely to show his own skill or to gratify man's innate passion for hunting, which descends to him from a more primitive period, well, that was another matter.

It is true, that he was not logical, since always he remained an ardent fisherman, partly because he had convinced himself from various observations, that fish feel very little, and partly for the reason that there is high authority for fishing, although, be it admitted, with a single exception, always in connection with the obtaining of needful food.
In these conclusions Godfrey was strengthened by two circumstances; first, his reading, especially of Buddhistic literature, that enjoins them so strongly, and in which he found a great deal to admire, and secondly, by the entire concurrence of the Pasteur Boiset, whom he admired even more than he did Buddhistic literature.
"I am delighted, my young friend," said the Pasteur, beaming at him through the blue spectacles, "to find someone who agrees with me.
Personally, although you might not believe it, I love the chase with ardour; when I was young I have shot as many as twenty-five--no--twenty-seven blackbirds and thrushes in one day, to say nothing of thirty-one larks, and some other small game.

Also, once I wounded a chamois, which a bold hunter with me killed.

It was a glorious moment.