sandi

If anyone saw this, they showed amazing game reserves (or at first glance would appear to be) with many species that were unique and/or due for extinction, but not located in Africa. Rather 'farms' in Texas (where else... duh!)... but I was almost sick watching.

Besides the fact that these farmers had many species (an oryx I'd never seen before and quite beautiful... but many hundreds of them), that have been relocated here, breeded to increase the herds, they're open for hunters... as 'income producers.' Some animals can be had for as little as a few thousand dollars a kill, others in the $40-$50K range as the Cape Buffalo. Do tell when the Cape Buffalo was near extinction? Also seen there were giraffe (believe the reticulated ones).

When asked about conservation, unlike the woman who is trying to eliminate this practice, and if slowly, but slowly seems to be accomplishing such practices, all of the ranch/farm owners were insistent that they were preserving the game..

Oh do give me a break... you pay to transport them from whichever country, to save them, breed them and then kill them!

While there are pros/cons re hunting, and in some instances understandable (I personally have mixed feeling on this), but can you explain how if someone can afford $40K, they can't fly to Africa (or other continent) where this is legal, rather than we have 'farms' in our own backyard?

atravelynn

I saw that last night. Very interesting. It appears legislation banning some of these hunts is underway.

uhoh_busted

Ban hunting for ANYTHING in Texas? Surely you jest. They will secede from the US before ever doing that! The trophy hunters that they serve don't travel to see different places, so not going all that way to Africa is probably a plus for them.

christabir

I thought the guy was full of crap. He's breeding them for his own financial gain. But hunters consider themselves conservationists. If it was elephants, lions and rhino the public would be po'd. It's just a bunch of "deer" so no one really cares. I guess the question is the ethics of it. Since I would ban hunting in all but extreme circumstances, I don't have an open mind to answer that.

live_aloha

I watched it, and felt the same way--made me sick. There is no excuse for hunting an animal with a gun, especially for the sake of bringing home a "trophy". How pathetic is that?!

pixelpower

I think most of you know me as seriously anti-hunting, here as well as on SafariTalk. So it may surprise you, but; I am not against canned hunting. It is the lesser of all evils.

It's just in the numbers. Let's take South Africa as an example; it has about 4000 lions (max), of which about 2000 in Kruger, and the rest in smaller reserves. Of those 4000, we can rougly estimate 2000 are mature.

Then there's the lions bred for canned hunting. Since the year 2000 we have fairly reliable figures; south Africa exports more than 250 lions (as hunting trophies) per year, on average.

Let's not fool ourselves; over time, the amount of machos who feel the need to prove their masculinity by killing a lion will remain a constant, or even grow. If you ban canned hunting, where will they start looking for their "prey"? Right...

And can you imagine the effect of killing 250 lions in a mature population of 2000 individuals (max)?

You can extrapolate above example to all African countries and all specis. On average, the math stays about the same.

So canned hunting is not only a lesser evil, at this point it's a NECESSARY EVIL. And it will remain like that until morals in our western societies change.

Of course, what the canned hunting operators say is BS; they are not into conservation. They are into exploitation. The day they decide to stop their business, they will let people kill every animal on their farm, and sell the farm. If their business goes, so will their so called "conservation efforts".

B.regs,

J.

andybiggs

This is a tough issue. I do agree that if it weren't for hunting of the endangered Scimitar Oryx, they would likely be extinct. That's a tough pill to swallow, because the hunting industry allows for financial incentive to keep them around. It's more difficult to have the same financial value on the Scimitar Oryx if just for viewing purposes outside its natural habitat.

I think you have to take the emotions out of it and look at what the fate would be if hunting was not a part of the scene. In this case the Scimitar Oryx wouldn't be as abundant.

Since I am from Texas, I need to stick up for the other 26 million of us. It is publicly assumed that Texas has the most guns in the nation, which cannot be farther from the truth. We have the 33rd highest guns per capita (legally registered). Let's start from the top: Kentucky, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, West Virginia, the Dakotas and so on. Why? Probably because hunting is more popular (per capita) than in Texas. Texas has an atrociously low amount of public land. Public land with provisions for hunting will yield higher interest in gun sales. Most of the hunting in Texas is with private land owners, and likely land owners with huge amounts of property.

Anyway, just some background.

sandi

Always pros/cons - even in the Northeast, when hunting is open for a week to 10/days - deer/moose - few if any are killed to be hung on the wall or the 'photo.' Rather, for food, cut up, frozen and feeds a family thru the winter.