Posted on 08/02/2015 4:50:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
Unless you live under a rock, there is no way in Hades that you have not heard of Cecil the Lion’s dreadful demise.
Matter of fact, there has been such an international uproar over his killing that Obama is now slated to do the eulogy at Cecil’s funeral. It’s also been reported that Michelle has already contacted Cecil’s pride to give them her and Barack's condolences. It’s true. Tell everyone.
Now, before I give you my two cents as a big game hunter on the Cecil situation, right before I sat down to bang out this screed my editor pointed out to me that she just posted on my entertainment site, RedHotChaCha.com, pics of two male, Cecil-looking-lions, catching and killing a magnificent kudu bull.
It was disgusting. How could lions team up on such a gorgeous antelope and be so mean? How could this happen? I’ve never beheld lions behaving like that in a movie. According to Disney and the like, lions, warthogs and various plains game animals sing “Hakuna Matata” together.
As you will see (if you clicked the link) the lions chased the kudu down, weaving in and out of vehicles, as car loads of animal lovers with their children watched in horror as The Ghost and The Darkness broke the noble kudu bull’s neck and then commenced to crunch and munch on it in front of them like Larry The Cable Guy would a platter of nachos at a Hooter’s Macho Nacho Blow Out.
It was so sad, folks. It almost made me renounce my religion. I felt led to start a Twitter hashtag campaign I titled #KuduLivesMatter in homage to the murdered bull. It also made me say to my self, “Self, I wonder if the sweet, tender, lovable and damn near human-like lion that we call ‘Cecil' ever scared, bit and/or ultimately murdered, in a grueling and truly terrifying fashion, the food he masticated upon?” Surely not, because Cecil is our official Saint Hello Kitty and he would never ever harm or hunt an animal down like he was hunted, would he? Huh?
Being an inquiring mind I wanted to know if lions' chasing down game, scaring the crap out of it and then viciously killing it is common practice amongst the Panthera Leo's; and boy, oh boy … did I land on a stack of vicious videos of lions doing some uber-nasty shenanigans to their fellow four footed fauna.
Some PETA reps would call what the lions did “evil“ because it sure as heck wasn’t an ethical way to treat an animal. Nature is a serial killer. Fo’ real, y'all.
Befuddled, I continue to investigate further and watched several other videos of lions' eating cape buffalo calves, cows and older bulls; blue wildebeests and helpless zebras; some were actually still alive. Hello! That ain’t right. I’ve never seen that bloody display on Nickelodeon or Saved By The Bell re-runs. How can this be? Because … apparently … it be. And it be bloody, filled with suffering, screams and death bellows all doled out to innocent, beautiful animals, via some dead-ringers of Cecil The Lion. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
Speaking of being not nice, my buddy Shaun sent me a link to man-eating lions actually killing black Zimbabweans around Lake Kariba. That was heinous. I thought #BlackLivesMatter? Apparently not to lions or Twitterers because I haven’t heard squat from them regarding these jacked up fatal maulings. We should ban lions because they’re vicious to the animal kingdom and to blacks.
Ok, I’ll stop being a cheeky douche in pointing out how daft the PETA types are and give you what I really think about the Cecil scenario.
This is what I’ve been able to deduce from true sources who are “in the know” and not some Facebook warrior going hashtag nuts with the Cecil movement while also viewing fetish porn.
Check it out…
According to my sources, professional hunters with boots on the ground in Zim, it looks like the professional hunter and the black Zimbabwean landowner did not have a lion on quota and therefore the taking of Cecil, or any lion for that matter, on the Antoinette farm that bordered The Hwange National Park was illegal meaning … he poached it. And hunters, especially, hate poachers. I. Mean. Hate,
So, did Palmer know? Heck if I know. That said, the ultimate onus is on the professional hunter and the landowner. If, in fact, Cecil was poached then the PH and the land-owner should be summarily crapped on to the fullest extent of the law because what they did was illegal and it gives true hunters a bad name.
However, if we find out, as the investigation unfolds, that the landowner, PH and the hunter did not shoot Cecil illegally then I think they're due a massive apology from Matt Lauer, Jimmy Kimmel and all the other Twitter # warriors for ruining their reputations before waiting for all the facts to come out.
Finally, if one wants to really get pissy, they should seek to overthrow Zim’s President Robert Mugabe because that son-of-a-bitch, along with his generals and ministers, have truly decimated Zimbabwe's wildlife with his brutal and greedy, iron fist.
Are you saying he did this completely independent of their knowledge or assistance? Some dentist from America goes halfway around the world and breaks game laws all by himself?
If events are as you have posted, someone helped him.
If the guides or professional hunters did, it's their asses.
They are the first line of defense against breaking game laws, and are free to choose to NOT participate in an unethical or illegal hunt.
Doing anything otherwise imperils the very industry they make a living at, and no one hunt will provide them with FTW money.
Well he obviously bought their corrupt souls. I’m sure it happens a lot. Idiots all of them.
And, I'll tell you something else. Having trashed his life, I think he's now wondering why he did it. To most normal people, it just seems weird. Maybe if he came forward and explained what we thought he was doing, people might at least see that he's human like them. It can't be easy for him right now.
He did it because he did not have a male lion head in his collection. This was to be the crowing jewel. He has 50 heads in there along with a bar. It’s really creepy. I guess they were not banking on the illegally baited lion wearing a GPS.
I don't know, myself, but I am glad they will.
Here's why: The funds from that permit go to the Game and Fish Department and reduce the rates for other licenses or support the programs that keep game populations viable in the State.
It works much the same in Africa, where Big Game hunters from elsewhere shell out large fees for permits and guides/professional hunters to hunt exotic animals.
I can't see collecting beanie babies or sports memorabilia, either, but these guys are willing to shell out big bucks and provide a healthy infusion of cash into local economies for the privilege of hunting an exotic animal.
Because they do, game management programs are funded, not just for species which the locals would regard as destroyers of livestock, humans, or crops and which might be hunted to extinction by the locals because of that, but to protect those same species from poachers who would sell ivory or pelts or rhino horn for an aphrodisiac, or whatever.
The Game management gets funding to run the parks and manage the animals which bring in even more tourist dollars. They select older animals, culls from the herd to be fair game to hunt, and thus, manage the populations. The hunter gets their trophy, the locals get the meat. Win, win, win, unless you are talking about the animal harvested, which would likely either die or is superfluous to the gene pool of the local population.
Nature is not so smooth and pretty.
Any balance there is maintained at the loss of numerous individuals as predator/prey relationships are seldom perfect. If the predators are down, the prey animal population surges, limited only by food available. The predator population will surge afterward due to the lack or competition for prey animals, which creates excess pressure on prey (population drops), which in turn increases competition between predators, which drops the predator population.
It is more of a see-saw than a balance.
With a profit motive, and using legal, managed hunting as a tool (which incidentally generates revenue needed to manage game populations), that balance can be better established and maintained while still protecting the interests of local farmers, herdsmen, and villages.
To each there own. I don't understand $3000.00 purses, $50,000,000.00 paintings, or million dollar baseball cards, myself, but then I likely have some interest they would not understand or identify with, either.
I think most people understand spending a lot of money for purses, paintings or baseball cards even if they wouldn't do it themselves. But, a powerful desire to kill a defenseless animal not for food, but just to be destructive, is harder for most people to understand. Like I've said, maybe he could explain it better himself. Maybe he hates animals for some reason, but whatever it is, it's not normal.
If I wanted to donate money to preserve wildlife somewhere, I might do that, but why would I insist that I be able to execute a defenseless lion as part of the deal? That's the part that people aren't getting and that's the part he should try to explain.
*Clap*
Why some on the right have chosen this as an issue, chosen to give a damn what third world villagers think of lions, and chosen to equivocate it to Planned Parenthood selling baby parts for some reason, I don’t get it. I’ve got no sympathy for Dr. Whatshisname. Rallying around shady big game hunting is not a winning issue for us.
Now the question the article asks “What if he was wasn’t poached”.
So, a good faith mistake then? In Zimbabawe? Haha, yeah sure, I just fell off a turnip truck.
Lions, elephants, hippos, rhinos, are hardly "defenseless", especially when the device employed is a crossbow. All of these animal species have been known to reduce the human population.
And no, I don't 'get' a $3000.00 purse when a $100.00 backpack carries more and better, nor, for that matter, any of the rest of it.
But it isn't my money, and I would no more say that someone could not participate in a lawful hunt of managed game or predator populations than I would say they couldn't spend a million on a small square of paper. It's their money, and they can spend it as they see fit.
I can understand that the future populations of what actually are dangerous animals in the wild has been guaranteed by their value in the scheme of things, not because they are essential to the planetary ecology (any more than other, now extinct predator species), but because of their importance to the local economy.
The locals will guarantee the viability of those animal populations to continue to receive the benefits from the desire of others to come there and hunt them.
They will put up with occasional losses of crops, livestock, and perhaps even an individual or two rather than just wipe out the problem species, because of people who are willing to shell out $50,000.00 or more to hunt just one individual animal.
If I wanted to donate money to preserve wildlife somewhere, I might do that, but why would I insist that I be able to execute a defenseless lion as part of the deal? That's the part that people aren't getting and that's the part he should try to explain.
What people?
You keep calling lions "defenseless".
As an experiment, would you jump in the lion cage at the local zoo. You may take one pointy stick with you, less than 1/2 inch in diameter. If you live, then please tell me how "defenseless" that animal is.
If you want to donate money to the Game preserves, do so. If you want to go there and take pictures, go ahead. But let's get something straight.
These animals are not "defenseless".
For some, that may be part of the allure of engaging in such a primal human activity as hunting them, something which has been done since humans started being hunted by them and other predators.
You seem to have some other issue here, whether it is hunting, meat-eating, or whatever, I don't know.
He did it to have the record of killing the world’s biggest lion and wanted to hang the head in his shrine. It was an arranged situation made possible with bribes.
Of course, if it was legal, it was legal. I don't the know whether it was legal. All I'm saying is that the reason so many people think it is weird is because it is weird. That's why he's gone underground. He isn't proud of any of this.
Lion: four paws equipped with claws that can gut you. A mouth full of big teeth. Superior strength and speed.
The man has gone underground because his business has been destroyed, he has been convicted in the Press of axe-murdering Bambi (a cartoon character).
The full force of the Liberal Media and the full force of the commercial writers of very outfit out there which puts sad-eyed starving puppies on your teevee late at night begging for money have turned against him in an effort to demonize him and consume airtime and column inches. In a universal appeal to feelings it is also a fine opportunity to conceal things like Planned Parenthood marketing human body parts from aborted babies, the Iran nuclear giveaway, and manipulate the emotional masses a la Trayvon into a frenzy against hunting and firearms, which remain on the Liberal agenda.
There are a lot of people out there who have a lot of pent-up angst and anger, and this guy just became the poster child for all that is wrong with the world, deserved or otherwise. No doubt he is facing death threats for killing an animal, while planned parenthood gets a pass for selling 'spare' parts from killing babies.
I'd rather take on the lion bare handed than the mass media and the ginned up hate of the unthinking public.
Fortunately, there really isn't any way for us to test that, is there? ;-)
Listen, sooner or later, the dentist is going to have to come out of hiding. I want you listen carefully to what he says when he comes out. I think you're going to be surprised.
Americans, in general, used to pride themselves in their exceptional achievements. It, and the competitive spirit which pushes it in any area of concentration, is fundamental to being American. It might be as relatively mundane as bowling a perfect game, or hitting a hole-in-one or a mid-court jump shot, or as exotic as a land speed record or rowing across the Atlantic. It is the way we are.
Socialism, incidentally, removes all such rewards for being the best, the brightest, the fastest, or strongest, and tries to 'equalize' people by ensuring no matter how well they do, they will get the same outcome as the person who couldn't be bothered but is capable enough they won't be shot for complete incompetence.
As far as the largest lion: that title goes to (according to the Guinness Book of Records) the heaviest lion ever weighed in the wild was a man-eater killed by Lennox Anderson in 1936, near Hectorspruit, Transvaal, South Africa, and weighed 313 kg. (686 pounds)
The heaviest male lion in captivity was a huge male named "Simba", which measured 320 cm. in total length and had a height of 112 cm. to the shoulders. Its weight was of 375 kg and died in 1973.
Cecil might have been photogenic and have had claims of popularity, but he was hardly the biggest.
As for arrangements, if there were illegal actions on the part of the dentist, guides, officials, or Professional Hunters, for whatever reason, they should be held responsible for their actions. If officials were bribed to look the other way, they should be held accountable, too.
That said, if the hunt was in fact legal, regardless of its popularity or lack thereof, the dogs of the media might be better employed shredding the Planned Parenthood people who are avoiding being prosecuted for selling the parts of babies aborted.
One lion is trifling compared to that slaughter.
At least I can try to fight the lion.
Well, I hope that the guy can somehow put his life back together, but it’ll never be the same. And, I think he’s going to surprise people by what he says.
Well I was reading that the dentist tried to brag to some waitress that he killed the biggest lion on record. He tried to show her the picture on his cell phone and she said she just didn’t know what to say. Regardless it was an illegal hunt and Palmer is a big creep and karma alone will get him!
LOL, what a dope. Spotlight is for finding eyes at night.
Despite what your friends @ PETA say, it isn't illegal to bait cats in Zimbabwe.
You are obsessed with me, that’s fine it gives you less time to be out there poaching animals.
Look up spotlight hunting. It’s generally illegal everywhere but especially on a protected reserve. Duh
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