Sad to hear about your cat. Sure a shock for your kids and of course you too.
But this has to do with how the dog was trained. It was trained for hunting. An animal -your cat- was running away, the animal was obviously small enough to rule the situation and so the dog followed it´s nature. It started hunting. Best way to prevent such things in my opinion is to have a cat at home, so the dog can learn that a cat is member of the pack. Nothing to hunt, just like the 2-leg-members of the pack...
But: Not every hunter has a cat, some even don´t like them. Might have been so in your case.
And trophy-hunters, well, I think they are everywhere, and nowadays the hunters that are forced to go hunting instead of dieing from hunger are very few i think, especially in the western world.
German hunters may be respected or not. They exist. For german hunters exist a lot of rules that may be curious to others.
You could for example explain a german hunter also in this way. A person who spends a lot of time and own money to forfill a plan dictated every year again by the authoritys, in which is declared how much game he has to shoot and what kind of. He also has to feed in winter, so the animals don´t cause that much damage to the trees.
Therefore you could also explain those guys also as workers for the authority and the forest-owners. Workers paying for ther work, not getting payed.
The worry with muzzleloading and hunting in germany is that the hunters-community don´t take ML serious, like kirrmeister already reported. Choose our german-hunter-religion, if you don´t want to come to our church - no hunting for you!
@kirrmeister: Didn´t you get my mail?
Ah guys, I have to leave. The postman delivered me new handles for my BP-Revolver and an issue of the "book of buckskinning", sent to me right from the states. :thumbsup:
Bye
romeoh