Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/22/big-game-hunter-crushed-by-elephant-zimbabwe/22103543/

Good riddance!

"He who lives by the sword will die by the sword"

Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

I'll just leave these here.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oe-allen-trophy-hunting-endangered-species-20150808-story.html

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2014/01/can-trophy-hunting-reconciled-conservation/

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/big-game-banning-trophy-hunting-could-do-more-harm-good/

Obviously, if it makes money, they will have an interest to keep those endangered species alive.

From a pure ethical standpoint I find abhorrent killing animals for sport. But in the other hand, my more pragmatical vision of this is that the links you provide, Djones520, are right.

You can't just bann hunting. People is gonna hunt, legally or not. So, at least, make a profit of it, both economical and for the enviroment.
Is just my same stance on other things that I just don't like, as smoking, Drugs, etc...

On the other hand, I'm not gonna cry if somebode that sniff cocaine or shoot lions die doing that. Just like I don't cry whenever a spanish Bullfigther/Toreador dies.
I'm not gonna celebrate it either, don't assume that.

Person does dangerous activity and the odds catch up with him. That's all this is.

 djones520 wrote:
Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

I'll just leave these here.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oe-allen-trophy-hunting-endangered-species-20150808-story.html

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2014/01/can-trophy-hunting-reconciled-conservation/

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/big-game-banning-trophy-hunting-could-do-more-harm-good/

I'm a hunter, I don't abide trophy hunters. Nope. Trophy hunters can suck it. This guy...as with the great majority of trophy hunting operations...had/have one interest and that was making a buck, not promoting conservation or anything of that ilk so don't kid yourself.

Your articles offered are rehashes of the same articles, with the same arguments, I've read since the late -70's and I don't see any proof whatsoever in that pudding that they've done anything tangible to promote the conservation of these species, just the opposite could be argued. So much for that Pavlovian retort.

1) Click Bait Title...updated? Clarified?

2) Probably a good idea to leave the opinion out of the title, maybe?

 djones520 wrote:
Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

I think there is a really, really fair distinction to make between

guys who are hunting deer, moose, and so on for food, and to keep the populations in check

people who hunt varmints like feral hogs who destroy crops, or coyotes who are harassing livestock

people like the Jimmy Johns CEO who pay great amounts of money to kill one of the last examples of a hyper-endangered species

One of these is a lot different than the others.

 Ouze wrote:

guys who are hunting deer, moose, and so on for food, and to keep the populations in check

people who hunt varmints like feral hogs who destroy crops, or coyotes who are harassing livestock

There is very possibly an element of this-the elephant populations have greatly increased due to the various protections afforded to them. There are places where elephant culls are undertaken, and quotas are issued to generate money from them.

While not definite, it is possible. Basically all sanctioned trophy hunts are carried out on populations capable of sustaining the losses, although it's only really elephants that are also culled as issues.

In all honesty, if it's is a quota cull, I've got no problem with people paying to take the kill. There's not enough info about this case to make a judgement.

Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

Trophy hunting isn't my thing usually. I hunt to kill varmints or feed myself. If I were to bag an unusually large buck, I may mount the head, but it's not my primary purpose.

I don't like trophy hunting, but I don't knock it either. It's legal, it's supporting local peoples, and it is helping the species itself.

In the case of rhinos in particular, the target is chosen by the government/park ranger/etc., not the hunter. This animal is usually all ready targeted for termination whether someone is paying or not. The thing is, when male rhinos get old, their fertility drops, but they become territorial a-holes. Although they can't breed themselves they will prevent younger males from breeding, sometimes to the point of killing younger males. In cases like this terminating an animal helps the species. Why not throw $300,000 into the local community while they are at it?

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

Trophy hunting isn't my thing usually. I hunt to kill varmints or feed myself. If I were to bag an unusually large buck, I may mount the head, but it's not my primary purpose.

I don't like trophy hunting, but I don't knock it either. It's legal, it's supporting local peoples, and it is helping the species itself.

In the case of rhinos in particular, the target is chosen by the government/park ranger/etc., not the hunter. This animal is usually all ready targeted for termination whether someone is paying or not. The thing is, when male rhinos get old, their fertility drops, but they become territorial a-holes. Although they can't breed themselves they will prevent younger males from breeding, sometimes to the point of killing younger males. In cases like this terminating an animal helps the species. Why not throw $300,000 into the local community while they are at it?

This is one of the great canards to the whole "Trophy Hunting helps Species/Conservation/Communites" spin. I said it in my post before and I'll say it again, it's nothing but bs that I've been hearing for 40 years and it's as false now as it was when it was first spun to put an acceptable face on taking animals solely for trophy purposes.

As far as the "The money goes to local communities."/"It helps conservation efforts." lies: Of the roughly $200m a year that is paid for Trophy Hunting in Africa, less than 3% goes to local communities and the amount allocated to conservation efforts is negligible. Most of the money goes to middlemen, corporations and governments. Lies. Trophy hunting makes up only about 1.8% of tourism income in Africa. The vast majority of tourists to Africa come for non-lethal appreciation of the wildlife and the activities of that paltry 2% actually contributes to depletion of the reason that generates the other 98% of that tourism income...great business plan! Real life example? Botswana essentially banned game hunting in 2014 after comparing the costs of game hunting with the income generated by photo/nonlethal tourism: The photo tourism season is longer, makes better use of the wildlife and employs vastly more locals. In it's first year of the ban, over $344m was generated from nonlethal tourism.

A previous poster tried to brush this post off as just a "Hunting bad, err." thread, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I hunt, I eat what I kill, but taking wildlife for trophy purposes is just fundamentally wrong and makes no economic or conservation sense when held up to the light of fact.










Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

I think there is a really, really fair distinction to make between

guys who are hunting deer, moose, and so on for food, and to keep the populations in check

people who hunt varmints like feral hogs who destroy crops, or coyotes who are harassing livestock

people like the Jimmy Johns CEO who pay great amounts of money to kill one of the last examples of a hyper-endangered species

One of these is a lot different than the others.

This. Exactly this.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

If (hypothetically) someone paying $500,000 or whatever to kill one of the last black rhinos is an altruistic gesture to help save a dying species, why not donate the money without killing the rhino?

Djones tried to establish that this thread was a smear against all hunters, which is too wide a brush. Some hunters are actually helping their ecosystem, some hunters are at least neutral, and some hunters are huge donkey-caves who found a legal avenue to do something gakky. We don't have to make lame, weak excuses for the last category.

Specific to this thread, I don't think elephants are particularly endangered, but I don't feel too guilty about having a chuckle over a guy who made a living using dogs to herd animals into rich dentist's penis extensions being hoist on his own figurative petard.

 Ouze wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

If (hypothetically) someone paying $500,000 or whatever to kill one of the last black rhinos is an altruistic gesture to help save a dying species, why not donate the money without killing the rhino?

Djones tried to establish that this thread was a smear against all hunters, which is too wide a brush. Some hunters are actually helping their ecosystem, some hunters are at least neutral, and some hunters are huge donkey-caves who found a legal avenue to do something gakky. We don't have to make lame, weak excuses for the last category.

Specific to this thread, I don't think elephants are particularly endangered, but I don't feel too guilty about having a chuckle over a guy who made a living using dogs to herd animals into rich dentist's penis extensions being hoist on his own figurative petard.

I agree. Nothing screams "I feel inadequate" like flying halfway round the world to murder an enormous animal.

If it were about anything other than tiny manhood compensation, why not hunt with a camera? Chicks dig well framed photos of animals.

 djones520 wrote:
Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

Killing stuff for pleasure never paint anyone in a good light. At least not in my eyes.
Also meat is murder.
.

 feeder wrote:

If it were about anything other than tiny manhood compensation, why not hunt with a camera? Chicks dig well framed photos of animals.

I'm guessing because aiming a camera is much harder than aiming a firearm. At least, in my experience.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

Trophy hunting isn't my thing usually. I hunt to kill varmints or feed myself. If I were to bag an unusually large buck, I may mount the head, but it's not my primary purpose.

I don't like trophy hunting, but I don't knock it either. It's legal, it's supporting local peoples, and it is helping the species itself.

In the case of rhinos in particular, the target is chosen by the government/park ranger/etc., not the hunter. This animal is usually all ready targeted for termination whether someone is paying or not. The thing is, when male rhinos get old, their fertility drops, but they become territorial a-holes. Although they can't breed themselves they will prevent younger males from breeding, sometimes to the point of killing younger males. In cases like this terminating an animal helps the species. Why not throw $300,000 into the local community while they are at it?

This is one of the great canards to the whole "Trophy Hunting helps Species/Conservation/Communites" spin. I said it in my post before and I'll say it again, it's nothing but bs that I've been hearing for 40 years and it's as false now as it was when it was first spun to put an acceptable face on taking animals solely for trophy purposes.

As far as the "The money goes to local communities."/"It helps conservation efforts." lies: Of the roughly $200m a year that is paid for Trophy Hunting in Africa, less than 3% goes to local communities and the amount allocated to conservation efforts is negligible. Most of the money goes to middlemen, corporations and governments. Lies. Trophy hunting makes up only about 1.8% of tourism income in Africa. The vast majority of tourists to Africa come for non-lethal appreciation of the wildlife and the activities of that paltry 2% actually contributes to depletion of the reason that generates the other 98% of that tourism income...great business plan! Real life example? Botswana essentially banned game hunting in 2014 after comparing the costs of game hunting with the income generated by photo/nonlethal tourism: The photo tourism season is longer, makes better use of the wildlife and employs vastly more locals. In it's first year of the ban, over $344m was generated from nonlethal tourism.

A previous poster tried to brush this post off as just a "Hunting bad, err." thread, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I hunt, I eat what I kill, but taking wildlife for trophy purposes is just fundamentally wrong and makes no economic or conservation sense when held up to the light of fact.

You're still barking up the wrong tree. If you want to be angry about trophy hunting then be mad at the authorities that allow it and offer people the opportunity to buy trophy tags. Nobody was breaking the law on this elephant hunt, it was all legal and approved by the Zimbabwe authorities. If the people in charge of protecting the elephants think it's ok to sell elephant tags then why are you mad at the people who buy them? If you're disappointed in how Zimbabwe spends the money it collects from selling tags to big game hunters then why are you blaming the hunters? It's Zimbabwe's fault that they don't make smarter decisions regarding the spending of trophy hunting money collected from hunters.

Nitpicking about trophy hunting is silly. Nobody uses the whole animal they kill and nobody packs the entire carcass home with them. Whether you kill an elk and just mount the head in your living room or eat some of it or eat most of it the animal is still just as dead. I honestly don't care what animals hunters kill or what they do with the carcasses as long as they're legally obtaining tags/licenses and aren't poaching.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, one is different than the others. One is making a difference that helps an endangered species.

Trophy hunting isn't my thing usually. I hunt to kill varmints or feed myself. If I were to bag an unusually large buck, I may mount the head, but it's not my primary purpose.

I don't like trophy hunting, but I don't knock it either. It's legal, it's supporting local peoples, and it is helping the species itself.

In the case of rhinos in particular, the target is chosen by the government/park ranger/etc., not the hunter. This animal is usually all ready targeted for termination whether someone is paying or not. The thing is, when male rhinos get old, their fertility drops, but they become territorial a-holes. Although they can't breed themselves they will prevent younger males from breeding, sometimes to the point of killing younger males. In cases like this terminating an animal helps the species. Why not throw $300,000 into the local community while they are at it?

This is one of the great canards to the whole "Trophy Hunting helps Species/Conservation/Communites" spin. I said it in my post before and I'll say it again, it's nothing but bs that I've been hearing for 40 years and it's as false now as it was when it was first spun to put an acceptable face on taking animals solely for trophy purposes.

As far as the "The money goes to local communities."/"It helps conservation efforts." lies: Of the roughly $200m a year that is paid for Trophy Hunting in Africa, less than 3% goes to local communities and the amount allocated to conservation efforts is negligible. Most of the money goes to middlemen, corporations and governments. Lies. Trophy hunting makes up only about 1.8% of tourism income in Africa. The vast majority of tourists to Africa come for non-lethal appreciation of the wildlife and the activities of that paltry 2% actually contributes to depletion of the reason that generates the other 98% of that tourism income...great business plan! Real life example? Botswana essentially banned game hunting in 2014 after comparing the costs of game hunting with the income generated by photo/nonlethal tourism: The photo tourism season is longer, makes better use of the wildlife and employs vastly more locals. In it's first year of the ban, over $344m was generated from nonlethal tourism.

A previous poster tried to brush this post off as just a "Hunting bad, err." thread, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I hunt, I eat what I kill, but taking wildlife for trophy purposes is just fundamentally wrong and makes no economic or conservation sense when held up to the light of fact.

You're still barking up the wrong tree. If you want to be angry about trophy hunting then be mad at the authorities that allow it and offer people the opportunity to buy trophy tags. Nobody was breaking the law on this elephant hunt, it was all legal and approved by the Zimbabwe authorities. If the people in charge of protecting the elephants think it's ok to sell elephant tags then why are you mad at the people who buy them? If you're disappointed in how Zimbabwe spends the money it collects from selling tags to big game hunters then why are you blaming the hunters? It's Zimbabwe's fault that they don't make smarter decisions regarding the spending of trophy hunting money collected from hunters.

Nitpicking about trophy hunting is silly. Nobody uses the whole animal they kill and nobody packs the entire carcass home with them. Whether you kill an elk and just mount the head in your living room or eat some of it or eat most of it the animal is still just as dead. I honestly don't care what animals hunters kill or what they do with the carcasses as long as they're legally obtaining tags/licenses and aren't poaching.

I can be disappointed/disgusted with both the authorities that facilitate and the sad sacks that provide a demand for this pathetic "sport".

There is also the fine ability to think something is wrong while realizing that it is legal.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Ahhh, another one of these "hunters are bad, and they deserve bad things to happen to them." threads.

Killing stuff for pleasure never paint anyone in a good light. At least not in my eyes.
Also meat is murder.
.

Animals are not humans are shouldn't be considered as such. Hunting is and should be a sport whether you like it or not.

 d-usa wrote:
There is also the fine ability to think something is wrong while realizing that it is legal.

Now that doesn't sound like the OT I remember.

 daedalus wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
There is also the fine ability to think something is wrong while realizing that it is legal.

Now that doesn't sound like the OT I remember.

It's been too long, but stuff being wrong despite being legal was the basis of every US politics threat we've had

Trophy hunting, purely for that sole purpose, isnt my thing, and I dont have much respect for it. Hunting that is intended to harvest the animal for useful purposes (e.g. I'm gonna go hunt some deer and use that meat for a while instead of buying beef from Walmart) or to control invasive species (e.g. feral hogs) or the like is absolutely fine with me.

That said, if done cleanly and in a sustainable manner, well, ok, then its just predation of sorts, even if a stupid sort.

The problem with a lot of these sponsored hunts and the like is that oversight is often very poor, and lots of things that are at least outwardly portrayed as being sustainable things where the gobs of money raised will go to conservation are fictions for canned hunts of shelter animals or simple payoffs of government officials for the privilege, often the overwhelming majority in fact, essentially unsustainable poaching with some legal cover.

No idea if that was the case here or not, not making a judgement on that, but either way, I'm having trouble generating sympathy for someone with both the resources and desire to go out and engage in a dangerous activity and shoot an elephant, knowing the state of their population decline, just for recreation.

Prestor Jon wrote:
If you want to be angry about trophy hunting then be mad at the authorities that allow it and offer people the opportunity to buy trophy tags.

Nah we are fine feeling like that guy who got killed by trying to kill other beings for thrills got what was coming for him, thanks.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Animals are not humans

Well, except when they are, but I am failing to see how that is in any way relevant to my message that said nothing about humans.
[edit]Oh wait that was because of the meme Meat is murder? Ahah I see[/edit]

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Hunting is and should be a sport whether you like it or not.

And you'll have to bear the crushing weight of my moral judgment nonetheless .

Is crushing kittens with stilettos a sport as well, or do they need to mount the heads of the kittens after killing them for it to be a sport?

 d-usa wrote:
Is crushing kittens with stilettos a sport as well, or do they need to mount the heads of the kittens after killing them for it to be a sport?

Reducing the population of feral cats is a positive all around. Killing kittens reduces the cat population, so braining kittens isn't terribad in my book. Killing kittens in a manner that induces suffering solely for the sake of suffering is immoral and unethical but giving kittens a quick death via blunt force trauma to the head isn't bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
There is also the fine ability to think something is wrong while realizing that it is legal.

Being able to recognize that thinking something is wrong is a fine subjective opinion is also a fine thing. The State allows people to buy tags to hunt big game, people are willing to pay for those tags, companies are created to help people buy those tags and make good on them. Some people can find fault with that but some people won't and neither is some absolute definitive sentiment.

People are splitting hairs over arbitrary self serving definitions of hunting. How much of an animal do you have to eat to make it food hunting instead of trophy hunting? If you eat a decent percentage of the animal but also display parts of the animal in your home as trophies does that equate to "regular" hunting or "trophy" hunting?

What harm is caused by a hunter not eating most or some or any of the animal killed? The ecosystem is going to consume whatever the hunter leaves in a perfectly normal and natural manner.

The legality is important to bear in mind because the State that is responsible for the preservation of the animals and environment have a vested interest in determining whether or not its worthwhile to sell hunting licenses and tags for the animals. I'm not going to get all holier than thou over govt of Zimbabwe deciding that its ok to let X number of elephants be hunted in a given year. They know their country and their resources better than I do, I'm not going to get all ethnocentric White Hunter about it just like I wouldn't give a hoot if Kenyans were getting upset over the black bear population in California. We don't need to rush off and save Africa from themselves.

There isn't One True Way to hunt and every other variation is doing it wrong. Just because you dislike something doesn't mean it's objectively bad or that supporting it is wrong.

I see nothing wrong with trophy collecting as long as you also don't waste the meat. Which is what happens with these safari hunts in Africa, the meat gets donated to local villages.

It's really undeniable that responsible hunting is both necessaryand helpful for wild populations. Now there could be corruption siphoning some of that money away from conservation, but that's not problem with the hunting.

Especially for many highly endangered animals, culling older members can be highly important. You don't want an older sterile male animal maintaining his breeding rights when there are fertile males available. So controlled hunting of these older trophy males is both helpful, and it can also bring in some cash.The population is made healthier, the tourist gets his lion skin rug, and the conservation efforts get some much needed cash. Hunters have far more incentive to preserve the environment than anybody else actually.

If the animals are going to be culled anyway there is no harm, only benefit. As was mentioned earlier, you need to give the locals incentives not to kill many of these animals. Lions, elephants, giraffes, etc... They're not viewed as endangered animals there. They're pests at best and dangerous threats at worst. Tourism and legalized sport hunting, which brings in revenue, is all that can make people view these animals as an asset to be protected. Simple tourism alone isn't enough, sport hunting isn't enough, you need both.

The only time you wouldn't want any hunting is if the population is too low to lose any individuals, even decrepit old individuals, but few animals actually fall into this category currently.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I see nothing wrong with trophy collecting as long as you also don't waste the meat. Which is what happens with these safari hunts in Africa, the meat gets donated to local villages.

Nothing wrong with it, except the fact that some poor dumb animal has to die to compensate for some stupid d-bag's inferior sense of self.

Again, just take a damn photograph. Why does killing the dumb thing need to be part of it?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Animals are not humans

Well, except when they are, but I am failing to see how that is in any way relevant to my message that said nothing about humans.
[edit]Oh wait that was because of the meme Meat is murder? Ahah I see[/edit]

I thought he was referring to Feeder's post:

Nothing screams "I feel inadequate" like flying halfway round the world to murder an enormous animal.

'Murder' would very much imply the victim is human.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Animals are not humans

Well, except when they are, but I am failing to see how that is in any way relevant to my message that said nothing about humans.
[edit]Oh wait that was because of the meme Meat is murder? Ahah I see[/edit]

I was so ready to give you some Frazzled-Tier rambling.

 CptJake wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Animals are not humans

Well, except when they are, but I am failing to see how that is in any way relevant to my message that said nothing about humans.
[edit]Oh wait that was because of the meme Meat is murder? Ahah I see[/edit]

I thought he was referring to Feeder's post:

Nothing screams "I feel inadequate" like flying halfway round the world to murder an enormous animal.

'Murder' would very much imply the victim is human.

That would've been the train of thought, yes

Ah, I see. In my case, I used the term "murder" to indicate an unconscionable, immoral act. Not to indicate I think animals are people.