Big Game trophy hunting always in the headlines.

Big game trophy hunting has recently hit the headlines yet again with another American huntress causing worldwide outrage by posting photos on social media and causing widespread attention. It could be said that they do it on purpose. And of course that is exactly want they want to do. They want us outraged, and strange though it may seem, they want the publicity so that they can get the notoriety and associated celebrity they crave and social media is the best way of doing so.

The culprit this time is a lady from Kentucky named Tess Thompson Talley who stated:

“prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today. Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite awhile. I knew it was the one. He was over 18 years old, 4,000 lbs and was blessed to be able to get 2,000 lbs of meat from him.

Dead giraffe, posing hunter, Big Game trophy hunting
Tess Thompson Talley with her aged victim. ©Independent Digital News and Media Ltd.

They know what they do is perfectly legal and that they have the backing of many conservationists, wildlife experts and scientists. Many are coming around to the idea that perhaps it does benefit some animals in the long-term to be hunted for money which can be used to pay for their protection and habitat.

Lions need trophy hunting just as much as trophy hunting needs lions”

Dr Craig Packer, an eminent American professor with a passion for conserving lions is one of them and has stated: Lions need trophy hunting just as much as trophy hunting needs lions’. He believes their long-term survival depends on big money coming in to protect them and was also quoted as saying:

“Trophy hunting is not inherently damaging to lion populations provided the hunters take care to let the males mature and wait to harvest them after their cubs are safely reared. The dentist [who shot Cedric] was unlucky and not altogether to blame. Trophy hunters are no angels, but they actually control four times as much lion habitat in Africa than is protected in national parks; and 80% of the world’s lions left in the world are in the hunters’ hands”.

For the countries involved, such as Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique it apparently benefits their economy greatly. Advocates are quick to point out that by encouraging ‘hunting farms’ wildlife and natural habitat is also encouraged and not used for livestock, therefore benefiting conservation.

“you can often be sharing the dinner table with hunters who have just shot one of the animals you came on safari to see”.

Hunting farms are on the increase and are shooting galleries full of semi tame animals that are easily tracked and shot. They have the dual purpose of being ‘private reserves’ providing luxury safari accommodation for tourists. Ironically at these places you can often be sharing the dinner table with hunters who have just shot one of the animals you came on safari to see.

The subject is of course extremely divisive and in recent years we have had the story of Cedric the lion in Zimbabwe. He was shot with an arrow, then tracked for hours and finally shot dead by a trophy hunter paying US$35,000 dollars for the privilege. The main reason this story attracted so much attention was that the lion had a name making it more personal to us and was wearing a tracker collar for an Oxford University research team to follow him.

He didn’t realise the lion was so popular and had a name, otherwise he wouldn’t have shot him.

The American dentist, who committed the outrage, apologised for his actions. He said that he didn’t realise the lion was so popular and had a name, otherwise he wouldn’t have shot him. The apology was absurd as basically he was justifying his actions by claiming that shooting some other semi-tame non-celebrity nameless lion would have been acceptable, which bizarrely is probably correct.

What is noticeable is that so many of the hunters are north american, presumably because of the gun culture there and that they are bored with shooting bears, coyotes and pumas in their own part of the world.

There are hundreds if not thousands of iconic wild animals such as lions and bears being bred for the sole purpose of being shot for gain and pleasure, just like game birds. All over Africa big-game hunting is big business, with hunters lining up to pay huge sums to kill ‘trophy’ animals, so that they can display the heads and body parts around the home.

Everything I have done is legal, so how can you fault someone because of their hobbies?” Sabrina Corgatelli, another ‘celebrated’ hunter.

Big game hunting will never be eradicated in the present climate as there are so many mixed messages coming from all those who should be campaigning against it.

There seems something very wrong in breeding ‘wild’ animals to order, just to be shot to raise funds to supposedly conserve others. If that is the future for the planets’ wildlife, which it seems it is, I just wonder whether it is worth bothering to save animals for future generations.

Updated February 2020

It is killing whatever term you choose to call it.

Our complex attitudes to killing animals

Deep down in our consciences those of us with any empathy to animals are obviously uncomfortable about the act of killing them which manifests itself in our confused use of expressions to describe it. Whether a professional or layman, we seem to have a subconscious hang-up about discussing or contemplating what we mostly view as a taboo subject. For those with little empathy and who enjoy killing animals for fun and entertainment there is no issue

If we kill a fellow human without justification, we call it murder, and it is viewed a heinous crime unless legitimised by war, when we tend to use the word kill. When we deliberately and brutally kill a large group of humans, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group, we use the terms genocide or massacre and when we legally terminate the life of a condemned person, we execute them. We almost exclusively reserve these words to describe human on human killing, but when it involves animals, for some inexplicable reason we refrain from using such terms as they appear to offend our sensibilities and prick our consciences if used in this context.

Instead we prefer to use more agreeable phraseology that we feel befits the occasion and the type of animal involved, such is our idiosyncratic approach to killing millions of them each day. In order to appease our sensibilities, we even manage to categorise certain animal groups as being more worthy of our compassion.

hunting, shooting, country pursuit

The act of euthanasia for companion animals has become almost a ritual”

The most popular generic term for the act of killing an animal is euthanasia, which derives from the Greek words Eu and thanotos meaning ‘well killing’ or ‘good killing’ and has been used since the 1600’s to describe mercy killing of both humans and animals. We tend to reserve its usage for companion animals, particularly dogs and cats, which we hold in more reverence because we view them as almost human family members and our friends.

The act of euthanasia for companion animals has become almost a ritual, carried out with extreme compassion, sensitivity and veneration as suits such a situation, and it is usually performed by a qualified veterinarian in calm circumstances by injection, and with a familiar face present, often in the owners’ home, and is as humane as possible, so different to the way we treat other animals in their final moment.

Some people though, still find this term too severe and so we use more assuaging phrases such as ‘putting to sleep’ or ‘putting out of its misery’, to make it appear less callous when we are discussing it, as though in some irrational way it makes it a more pleasant experience for both the animal and ourselves.

When it concerns farmed food animals our sympathies change, and we go out of our way to distance ourselves from any emotion or guilt. For a start we call them livestock instead of animals, live’ because we have to accept they are living creatures but alsostock’ because we need the assurance that they are also a commodity for us to utilise. We then employ the somewhat ruthless word of ‘slaughter’, the definition of which, in the context of humans, is brutal killing, but with animals just means killing for meat. Slaughter is of course an apt description as it is a rather brutal and ruthless death no matter how humanely done. We are also happy to use the same term for the place where the carnage takes place, so we call it a slaughterhouse in preference to a ‘euthanasia-house’ which we obviously find strangely unsettling because of its inference to pet animals.

We find using the word ‘harvesting’ more agreeable for the act of wholesale slaughter of animals.

When it involves wildlife our compassion unaccountably changes again, and we choose tocull them and the heartlessness of this term is borne out by the word’s definition which is ‘removing an inferior person or thing from a group’ and ‘something regarded as worthless, especially an unwanted or inferior animal removed from a herd’. Culling can involve just an individual, a certain species or millions of individuals.

Conservationists appear to find the word culling a little harsh in certain instances, so they find the term ‘harvesting’ more agreeable for the act of wholesale slaughter, usually with the tag that it is implemented in their long-term interest. But it doesn’t end there as different professions where killing animals is intrinsic also try to ease their sensibilities by using other phrases such as humane killing, hunting, management euthanasia and zoonasia.

We are psychologically uneasy about the killing of animals.

It is obvious that as a society we are uneasy with our various deeds of ending their lives and prefer to distance ourselves from any thoughts of their demise, but it doesn’t stop us from committing animal genocide the world over. The bottom line is that whichever term we choose to use they all mean the same thing – the intentional and premature ending of the life of a living creature.

As already mentioned, when it is time to put companion animals ‘to sleep‘ the procedure is treated with great compassion, sensitivity and veneration as it should be, but it does seem a pity that we cannot extend the same deference to all animals by at least giving them the courtesy of using the same terminology.

Related articles:

What is Zoonasia?

Big Game trophy hunting always in the headlines.

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