Riiiiight.
Posted on 07/09/2004 10:58:54 AM PDT by dead
Professional hunters are capitalising on the Kruger National Park's growing elephant population by selling "canned" elephant hunts to wealthy American clients.
Police and conservation officials are investigating the "hunting" of a Kruger bull within hours of its delivery to a safari outfit in North West province. Sedated and disoriented after being plucked out of the wild and transported hundreds of kilometres, the bull was reportedly shot by a Texan oil magnate.
Three other bulls have been delivered to the Orion Safari Lodge and farm near Rustenburg in the past fortnight, where New York hotel and casino tycoon Donald Trump is among the clients expected soon.
They may arrive to find their intended trophies have fled the "postage-stamp size" property where they will be hunted. Two of the bulls have already escaped and one travelled about 200km northwards before both were recaptured and returned to the property.
The hunters charge their clients up to $50 000 (about R303 500) to shoot a mature Kruger elephant. Their own costs involved in buying the elephants and moving them to the hunting destination are unlikely to amount to more than R100 000.
"Taking an animal like this out of the Kruger park, transporting it hundreds of kilometres and then shooting it within hours is immoral and unacceptable," says a conservation official who did not want to be named.
"If it is an issue of too many elephants, then they should rather be honest and cull the elephants on their home ground. But, of course, there is not as much money to be made in culling. This is a false pretence. It is not the way South Africa should handle its wildlife."
The four bulls were bought by hunting outfitter Hugo Ras from the Sabi Sands game reserve on the western boundary of the Kruger. Home to luxury tourism lodges such as Mala Mala, Sabi Sabi and Londolozi, the reserve says it has an overpopulation of elephants coming from the Kruger.
Sabi Sands has sold about 80 elephants to private buyers in the past two years and plans to sell off more family groups. Controversies around culling Kruger's elephants, which was stopped in 1995, have resurfaced recently as scientists say there are too many elephants in the world-famous park.
Gavin Hulett, warden at Sabi Sands, says it was a condition of the sale to Ras that the elephants would not be hunted. But it is clear Ras did not feel obliged to abide by this condition - he obtained a hunting permit from the North West authorities even before the bulls arrived at the Orion premises.
Ras has also recently acquired a small family group of seven elephants, which he bought from insurance tycoon Douw Steyn's reserve in Limpopo. Breeding herds of elephants need about 1 500ha per elephant - Orion, which Ras is in the process of buying from fellow professional hunter Johan Botha, covers about 4 500ha and now has 10 elephants.
Ras admitted to the Mail & Guardian this week that the elephant bull was shot within hours of being offloaded. He said it had broken out of a camp and was causing mayhem.
"I am no elephant killer. I am a farmer dealing in wildlife," he said.
Ras has faced a number of charges of illegal hunting in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. Limpopo officials say they are investigating him in connection with further irregularities in that province.
They are also trying to find out the fate of four lions Ras has moved to Orion. The lions were wild-caught at a reserve in Limpopo and the condition of their sale to Ras was that they must be free-ranging.
For years American hunters have been complaining about corruption and a lack of ethics in the South African hunting industry, including "canned" lion hunts. These complaints led to Safari Club International (SCI), the biggest hunting organisation in the United States, opening an office in South Africa nine years ago, says Linda Venter, SCI's Africa office manager.
SCI still outlaws records of lion-hunting trophies from South Africa as a result of the scandal surrounding canned lion hunting. SCI will be part of a high-level annual Africa Wildlife Consultative Forum discussing hunting and other conservation-related issues at Sun City early next week.
It will not be surprising if canned elephant hunting in South Africa becomes part of those discussions.
Be a man and hunt them on their own turf.
Be a REAL man and bow hunt them!
Lame indeed.
I once read an account of a famous African hunter who would lead tourists on elephant hunts. He said nearly every person wept after killing one. He said it was an inexplicable response, but he himself had experienced it. Something, maybe, to do with the grandeur of the beast. I don't know, but thought it was interesting.
Jeez, the Pygmies hunt them with spears.
If any of you guys have read some of the hunting records of yore (where people would brave life and limb hunting down lions/leopards/buffalo/elephant/rhino, with only their skill in arms and tracking to help them) it becomes apparent that shooting an elephant or lion in an enclosure, with the animal being drugged in the first place, is not hunting. There is no difference between shooting a drugged elephant and shooting at a paper target.
Hunting has to have an element of risk .....the risk being either that you'll be hurt (eg the olden day Big 5 game hunt where in many cases at least one member of the hunting party would lose life or limb after tracking Cape Buffalo through the African bush), OR there has to be the risk of the game escaping (eg hunting deer or duck. There is always the chance the animal will get better of you and escape). But shooting a drugged animal in an enclosure is not hunting. There is no safety risk, and the animal has no chance for escape. It is shooting fish in a barrel.
What irks me though is that this guy will probably say how he tracked the elephant for days, before shooting him with both barrels as the tusker came charging at him.
Be a super DUPER man and hunt them armed only with some brass knuckles.
Jerks.
I've never had a desire to shoot an elephant, but I've read that where it is legal, it is so expensive that the income generated is sufficient to nurture and protect very large and healthy herds. Poaching is despicable, especially of endangered animals.
Interesting you bring up Pygmies. It is really interesting how they used to hunt elephants (used since nowadays they have become more or less tourist attractions). The hunted Forest Elephants (which are taller and lankier than the Bush Elephant - most Elephants people see are Bush elephants, which are bigger and bulkier than their forest bethren). Anyhoo, the way they would hunt them is by tracking the herd through the forest, and once one got seperated from the rest they would go above into the trees. Then two 'runners'armed with knives would drop down and sneak behind the elephant, before breaking into a run and trying to slash the tendons in the elephants back legs. If successful the elephant would be limited in movement. Then, the bravest one of them (usually a young man who wanted to prove some point) would grab a spear (the spear looked more like an Assegai ....a very short shaft and a very large sharp blade) and charge the elephant from the front! Go under the front legs, and plunge the spear into the elephant's belly.
As you can obviously imagine Murphy's law is also effective in Africa, hence many things used to go wrong. For one they mgiht make some noise and the elephants would just disappear (elephant feet have a soft pad that can be hardened or softened, and when soft a herd of elephants can walk 5 feet to your right, through twigs and scrub, and you would never hear a sound!). OR, the 'runners' could mess up and be killed by an elephant (and getting killed by an elephant is probably one of the worst ways to die in Africa .....barring an encounter with a Hippo or a Buffalo. An encounter with a hippo or a buffalo is an automatic gate pass to heaven. St Pete would feel so sorry for what was done to your mangled body that he would just let you pass carte blanche!). Now, even if they runners were successful, the guy who was going to do the coup de gras had to charge the elephant from the front. The front of the elephant has its tusks, its trunk, and its fore feet! It is not a place you want to run toward, especially if you are a pygmy.
Anyways, those guys were brave.
Next week on the Animal Show: How Masai teens became men by hunting lions while armed with a spear and a shield. LOL.
My nuke is bigger than yours.
Elephants also have very close family ties. The surviving family members will openly mourn. They also have been known to recognize individual people after many years of separation. Killing these animals for "fun" or to make oneself feel macho is utterly immoral. When they really have to be culled due to lack of space and food, it should be done by professionals, with entire family groups taken out at the same time.
There's film footage of a cull done many years ago, by shooting from a helicopter. It's really horrible to watch as the elephants try to protect their younger family members, and get killed because they're on the outside of the protective huddle they've formed. Once the adults have fallen, the terrified youngsters on the inside are killed. They really had to be culled, as the herd had grown way to large for the preserve they were on to support them -- they would have begun starving. But we really need to find better ways of doing it, and better ways of controlling the reproduction of the herds.
I don't really have a problem with this. Call it unsportsmanlike, say it's not real hunting, but it's a pretty big reach to call it immoral. If the herd needs to be culled, why does it matter who does the culling? Would the elephant be any less dead if it was culled by a sharpshooter from a helicopter? At least this way some money was made (the park sold the elephant, the ranch paid to transport it, someone paid the ranch to shoot it). I hunt every chance I get, and I have no interest in taking part in a canned hunt. However, if I don't have a problem shooting a deer in the woods, how can I be against someone shooting a deer inside of a fence.
Just my opinion, donning flame proof suit.
Oh, someone wants to 'joust?' Hmmm, beware who you pick a cockfight with! Sometimes 'crossing swords' with the wrong person can leave one without a .....leg. And I'm pretty good a kicking people ...with my size 15 shoes.
LOL.
Take care Laz and God bless.
Canned hunting is for whimps. However, Kruger Park elephants are VICIOUS and of course they need them drugged otherwise they'd get stomped.
Riiiiight.
Be safe.
Capturing individual elephants out of family groups, especially for so disgusting a purpose as letting some pseudo-macho tourist shoot the animal while it's still drugged and disoriented, is immoral. If culling needs to be done, it should be done to whole family groups so as not to traumatize elephants who are not being culled. And nobody should be doing it for fun or as an ego trip. Unwanted dogs and cats have to be euthanized every day at animal shelters, but we recognize that this is sad state of affairs, and we wouldn't stand for the shelters inviting people to come and pay for the opportunity to torment the animals and then kill them for fun.
Exactly. They may as well go to a garage sale and purchase a stuffed elephant head to put on their wall.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.