Posted on 04/24/2026 4:54:55 AM PDT by DFG
A millionaire US big-game hunter was ambushed and killed by five elephants whilst hunting small forest antelope in central Africa.
Californian vineyard owner Ernie Dosio, 75 - who owns a vast collection of exotic animal heads in trophy rooms at home - was trampled to death.
He was being guided by a professional hunter in the thick forest of Gabon on a £30,000 stalk for a shot at the elusive yellow-backed duiker.
Over the decades he has hunted elephants, leopard, rhino, buffalo and lion across Africa and back home in the US he has hunted almost every species of wild deer.
But the highly respected hunter's luck ran out last Friday while in the Lope-Okanda rainforest when his hunt stumbled into five female elephants with a calf.
African elephants are the largest living mammals and females can stand 12ft tall at the shoulder, weigh nearly four tons and run at speeds of up to 25mph
The startled elephant herd immediately charged Mr Dosio and his professional hunter.
The elephants were so well hidden in the dense undergrowth they appeared 'as if from nowhere' and the professional with the high-powered rifle was just flung aside.
He was seriously injured and lost his gun in the thick bush as the elephants attacked the terrified hunter with just a shotgun who was then brutally trampled underfoot.
A retired game hunter in Cape Town who knows the victim said: 'Ernie has been hunting since he could hold a rifle and has many trophies from Africa and the US.
'Although many disagree with big-game hunting, all Ernie's hunts were strictly licensed and above board and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.com ...
If five elephants can successfully stage an ambush, we should recruit them for the US military.
As far as sympathy for the rich doofus, this came far too late.
“highly respected hunter”
By whom? Or was it just his money?
(hunts) registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.
I have no problem with ethical hunters when hunting game animals for food or thinning the population to maintain the best herd. Overpopulation of a deer herd will lead to starvation.
Killing just for sport, if not one of the two above, bothers me. I myself quit hunting. I just got tired of killing animals with the exception of vermin on my place. I will kill them in a heartbeat. My friend hunts my land and we share the deer. It is delicious.
That’s a chickenshit excuse.
Exactly...
Beats the hell out of being found dead on the toilet... 🙄
Mine too.....
If he was a true humanitarian, he would have just sent the local village a check for $35K to help fuel their impoverished region.
Instead, he gets the pleasure of mounting the head of the animal he killed on the wall of his trophy room, and the outfitter takes his cut and makes a profit from that $35K.......
Sorry, but I don't see anything cool about that trophy room with the heads of animals that were killed just to feed the ego of this rich guy.....
It’s like I stumbled into a middle school girl chat. OMG Chryztal, that man like shot that animal, then those big animals with the gross skin ran over him!! Let’s go eat some chicken nuggets!
This guy did more in one hunt to help wildlife in africa than every idiot in hollywood ever has.
“Hunting African animals for sport is absolutely amoral, that’s why.”
Even when revenue from sport hunting allows more of the same animals to exist, thrive and be protected?
Cattle would be extinct if people didn’t create demand for them.
I don’t see it as a moral issue. It’s more a wildlife management issue.
The most important thing that anti-hunters fail to recognize is that big dollar big game hunting is the only thing that gives economic value to Africa's large animals and thus any incentive to protect them in the long term.
To most Africans in the bush, an elephant is just a big monstrous beast that eats their crops and occasionally stomps somebody to death, while leopards and lions are just killers of cattle and sometimes people. With only these considerations in mind, the most logical path for Africans is to exterminate these animals (and perhaps sell the elephant ivory while they're at it).
Now enter big game hunting. You get some rich American who is willing to pay 100K or more to shoot an elephant. The local game warden picks out a problem elephant that's destroying crops or killing people, and rather than him shooting the elephant, he takes the rich American to shoot the elephant for him. That brings in 100K of revenue for the community. Suddenly, elephants are no longer just a crop pest, a threat, or a source of ivory, they're a huge source of revenue. The same applies to lions and leopards. So guess what - now the people who wanted to exterminate elephants now want to exterminate poachers to conserve the big geese laying the golden eggs.
Anti-hunters protesting deer hunting in America are equally ignorant. Without the economic value of deer hunting, deer just become a road hazard and a garden threat, so without hunting there's zero social incentive for conserving them or their habitats from development.
Leftist do-gooders and shrieking women of both sexes don't seem to recognize that the only way to preserve something is attaching economic value to it.
There's also HATING THE RICH...
;^)
Except deer hunting isn’t primarily a rich man’s pastime - you see people from all walks of life in the woods late in the fall, but it’s mostly working and middle class white guys. And these days, the Left hates blue collar and lower middle class white guys a lot more than they hate the (often socially liberal) wealthy elite. Today’s political and ideological divides are based on group identity politics and social radicalism, so class warfare against the rich is largely passe with the Left anyway.
Been a gunman my whole life. Maybe 30-40 specimens on hand. Traditional hunting..deer, elk, pheasant, geese etc...fine with me when game is eaten. Never got into hunting myself. By the way, I have an Illinois lifetime hunting/fishing license
due to VA disability..just in case I get the “bug”!😀
Went through high school in Iowa and my backyard began a cornfield....nothing between there and Pacific Ocean but wide open spaces! But I do know big city life too!
This is what separates conservationists from egotists.
Right, slowly starving to death must be a miserable death!
If five elephants can successfully stage an ambush, we should recruit them for the US military.
Lions,Tigers and Bears-—
And Now Elephants !
.
Good Thread Dean.
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