As many of you know, I am no fan of such trophy hunts. I often hike in remote spots to see bears and other animals in their natural habitat. We have previously followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by an American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota as well as subsequent controversies of an Idaho hunter taunting animal advocates and killing giant elephants or giraffes or famed wolves or mountain goats or hundreds of hippos for trophies. Now, a disgusting videotape has emerged of a trophy hunter shooting a sleeping lion and then celebrating as the lion writhes in pain.
The Twitter clip on @Protect_Wldlife shows a guide referring to a “Mr. Goney” or “Mr. Gooney” as he talks about how this is a “nice lion.”
The video shows the lion sleeping when the trophy hunter shoots him once. The lion wakes in pain and seems to look around from what happens. The hunter however is a far distance away with a high-powered rifle. After celebrating over the first shoot, the hunter shoots the lion two more times.
+8
The guide keeps saying “a very nice lion” as he makes sure that it is dead.
I will say it again. I cannot understand the joy of killing one of these animals or the challenge of shooting them with a high-powered rifle. I seek out these animals and take pictures with the same ease it would be to kill them. Yet, many feel a tremendous release in killing these animals and posing with their dead bodies. As an avid hiker, I often go many miles to see such animals in their natural habitat. The idea of then pulling out a rifle to kill one of them is as foreign a notion for me as would be cutting a painting out of its frame at a museum to possess it.
There is some perverse thrill kill in shooting a lion at long distance while it sleeps. That is treated as some type of weird accomplishment.
The “sleeping” part of story should be the line crossed that everybody can agree on. You had me at “sleeping” Jon Turley. Effing disgusting act by guide and “hunter”.
Jonathan to tell you the truth I’m unimpressed with your woodsmanship skills. You went out in the hot desert and had to be rescued due to being unprepared. You’d no idea how to travel in the desert during the day when it’s hot. Likewise taking a photograph is a heck of a lot easier than shooting an animal. If you’d done both you’d know. And what exactly is wrong with shooting a sleeping lion? Maybe they aren’t that easy to kill, ever considered that? Like people get mauled trying to shoot them, they’re frickin lions.
4/5 of African Lion habitat is on private land adjacent to preserves and national parks. Lion habitat is maintained to take advantage of the trophy business. After that dentist there were a lot of lions culled. Demand dried up and lots of lions died. Lions eat lots of other animals that would pay better sold to hunters. Lions also kill hundreds of local people a year. So basically it comes down to trophy hunting or no lions.
I’m a meat hunter who would never travel to hunt because of the carbon foot print and Walmart is cheaper. I’m also a conservationist, and you aren’t.
Trophy hunting is not for me. I despise the subset of trophy hunting, the canned hunt, as well as the next step up where guides and packers do absolutely everything in the bush and then plop down someone so they can pull the trigger on a gun someone else prepared.
I can’t even process a chicken. Various members of my friends and family are subsistence hunters. They work extremely hard to provide food for their family, and enjoy it like people enjoy fishing. There is pride and success in providing a meal with your own hands, especially when good meat is so expensive. The meat is organic, depending upon the environment, and the animal lives a wild and free life, spared from the feed lot and slaughterhouse.
Although the trophy hunt appeared to be legal, it was not an ethical shot. It’s not that the animal was sleeping. A clean shot would have killed it without any fear or suffering. Rather, the animal was not in a position to take proper aim. There was no way that was going to be a one shot kill. As mentioned, I’m not a hunter myself, but it’s my understanding that with game you aim for the heart/lungs or brain.
It’s almost as if the hunter was afraid to go wake up a sleeping lion to get a better shot.
My personal belief is that animals should only be killed for food, protection, or culling an overpopulation that is becoming problematic. However, trophy hunting remains a legal, if unpopular, activity. I have absolutely no idea why this area allows trophy hunting of lions. Are they over populated? Bred for canned hunts? Minding their own business and in danger of being wiped out from over hunting?
What I do know is that most of these countries won’t turn down money for trophy hunts. It’s easy to judge them from the safety and security of the West, where the (non homeless) poor live extremely well compared to the rest of the world. These areas of the world are also rife with corruption, for which anything can be had for money. Another is that what we find exotic, can be commonplace. I love lions and would see them safe and left alone. I don’t live near African lions, that can be extremely dangerous to those living there. Not everyone who lives in lion country loves lions. Well, a caveat. I live in mountain lion country, and can remember with vivid clarity my own close encounter with one.
Professor Turley feels very strongly about trophy hunting, as do many people. I feel sad when I see the photos of the beautiful animals, that were not killed for food. Rather than publicly shaming people for engaging in a lawful activity, it might be a good opportunity to discuss various efforts that replace revenue streams from trophy hunting with other measures. Follow efforts to stem trophy hunts. Discuss methods of limiting predator populations on reserves where there is not enough land for nature to take its course. Perhaps talk about the pros and cons of allowing trophy hunts in conservation efforts, as well as the difficulties of corrupt regimes who could care less about conservation.
All you have to do is put this article in his home town news paper and he’ll be ran out of town
@bruce
Do you work for the $PLC? They love hunting people down, doxxing and getting them fired for inappropriate activities including “thought crimes”.
antonio
“Run,” dude, “run.” Good idea too.
What would we call a hunter who hunts trophy hunters? Killer? Murderer? It’s about time we start applying these definitions to humans who kill across the species barrier.
Who videotapes this kind of thing? Sick.
at the same time I am not against hunting. just perverse filming of it.
It’s like our crazy First Amendment exception to sex work. Illegal prostitution, unless it’s filmed! then its a constitutional free speech right. Crazy! Perhaps a healthier society might make private sex work lawful, but the public display of sex unlawful. Oh, say, like it was in most places throughout history. But we believe today is better! the myth of progress. sad.
Not very sporting. Shooting a sleeping animal from forty yards with a scoped rifle and a stand, I wonder if the guide cocked the rifle for him.
Of course he did, why get his hands dirty. The so-called man with the rifle is lord and master. He can go home and tell the story how the beast was charging and to protect his trust-fund he HAD to do it.
Fishy:
Stereotype much? My guess is he’s a Chicago liberal from the lake front fantasizing about a Bear’s win over the Detroit NFL team. BTW, I have about as much evidence in my surmise as you do.
This guy really was a dumb a$$. Talk about a lack of ethics.
The shooter needs to be shot between the eyes with a bow and arrow.
So Turley wants it to be safe, legal, and rare. Do I have that right?
Wait, where have I heard that phrase before????
I think it’s an obsession. Some people collect cars (Jay Leno); some collect Flintstone stuff (Yabba Dabba Do homeowner), some collect porcelain animals, usually one kind of animal, horses or dogs or elephants, or cats and may have a hundred or more; some collect quilts or antique hankies. Think of something, someone collects it. These hunters have more money than they know what to do with it, are probably bored with their lives so relieve their boredom or boost their ego by collecting real animals.
“I will say it again. I cannot understand the joy of killing one of these animals or the challenge of shooting them with a high-powered rifle. I seek out these animals and take pictures with the same ease it would be to kill them.”
I READ YOU REGULARLY AND GET IT. YOU DON’T LIKE HUNTING (OR HUNTERS) FOR THAT MATTER. Why can’t you just be “pro-choice” about it as you are about abortion? I love leftist “tolerance”.
BTW – I go dear hunting every fall, legally and use safe hunting techniques, eat what I harvest or donate the meat. Let me guess, you probably want to ban that also. And doxx me so I can’t make a living, right?
antonio
Which dear do you hunt, your wife or your mistress?
You make a lot of assumptions while not being able to differentiate between killing a sleeping lion for giggles and deer hunting which you claim to perform in an ethical manner.
@acromion
Sir, first of all you know absolutely nothing about me or my hunting practices and frankly it is none of your d@@n business whether I do so legally, ethically or otherwise (though I actually do).
I realize good social justice types tend to be busybodies who wish to interfere with others lives, particularly if the targeted individual possesses an incorrect opinion about race, immigration, Islam, Donald Trump or etc.
You misunderstood me, I am totally “pro-choice” on sport hunting and while I would never engage in the practice myself, I would also not interfere in other’s “choices” provided animals are hunting in a responsible manner, fees are paid, licenses are obtained, and not to extinction. Let’s keep sport hunting safe and legal.
Let me trigger you (and other s@@tlibs) further. I went on a buffalo hunt in the Crow Indian Reservation back in 2009. Paid dearly for a permit to shoot a bison and enjoyed every minute of it! And could care less if you think I’m a “bad person” for doing so. And the steaks were delicious!
And furthermore, I’m Hispanic, a member of a recognized “victim” group, you still have to like me whether you want to or not.
antonio
Go antonio! Go!
Antonio – I am greatly concerned about the spread of wasting disease in North American deer. The prions can live for years in infected pasture. Compare that means of transmission with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) where an animal has to consume infected tissue, or else the mutation can spontaneously, but rarely, occur on its own.
I don’t know why this is not more in the news. This could impact a food supply for a lot of Americans. If they don’t get a handle on it, they might one day have to purge the continent for a few years. God help us if it jumps to cattle. The entire economy would take a drastic hit.
What’s your opinion on it? The people I know who are hunters tell me that they know to discard obviously diseased deer. I think they said they are supposed to turn the carcasses in to fish and game. But it takes time for the disease to make its outward appearance. In addition, I am unsure if the prions are as infectious as BSE, which is resistant even to autoclaving. When neurosurgeons operate on Creutzfeldt-Jacob patients (the human version), they have to throw their instruments away. Nothing they can do will ever render them free of contagion. I do not know if the chronic wasting disease is caused by a similar prion, or if it is as resistant to sterilization, but if it is, all it takes is for one diseased carcass to go through a processing facility or a home hunter’s tools, and it would contaminate other meat.
I was interested in BSE, and followed it for a number of years.
To clarify, I was referring to a massive deer cull if the disease spreads to too many animals or jumps to cattle.
The wasting disease is the result of the removal of the natural predators. They go after the sick and weak in contrast to hunters going after the best specimens. It is significantly likely that the prion cross over has already occurred. Loma linda university hospital has said they believe the majority of Alzheimer cases are miss diagnosed CJ
BSE was likely mediated by feeding cattle remains to cattle. The law forbids it now so they feed cattle remains to chickens and feed chicken remains to cattle. Now add a little roadkill in there ( deer)……….
So who is going to be the first morally bankrupt poster that says,”it is good fun and legal”.
Antonio’s implied belief.
Do not lock him up for being insane. Shoot him between the eyes from close range and then kill his kids. Then laugh.
A disgusting exhibit of the worst possible side of human nature