AHAHAHAHA.
I hope the elephants were okay and had fun
They’ll probably remember this forever!
I too would cherish such a memory
Ethical hunters have a core principle referred to as "fair chase". The animals have to have a reasonable chance to escape, or it's an unethical slaughter, not a hunt.
For example, a dude with a bow or rifle in the forest, where the prey can run away is fair chase. It's a battle of skill, and stealth. You have to outsmart the prey.
A dude with his buddies, drones or helicopters or fenced in "wildlife" preserve are not hunters. They are slaughterers. There is no fair chase.
If this person was a hunter, then he should be pleased his prey exercised its rights to fair chase, and give kudos for making the escape through him. A bold move worthy of recognition. In a life-and-death battle of wits, skill and instinct, the winner was worthy.
If this person was a slaughterer, then fuck him, he got what he deserved.
Either way, this is a 100% win.
The article is confusing because it paints him as a "highly respected" ethical hunter and conservationist that hunts under culling licenses, but goes on to say the duiker he was hunting is rare and elusive. Wikipedia lists it as near threatened.
Man had a ~~horde~~ hoard of animal trophies too, so it seems like he just found a loophole to killing and collecting animals in a 'respectable' way
Edit: pre-coffee typo :)
It may be that the particular animal he was hunting was an elder animal, no longer capable of reproducing or one that threatened the offspring of others. Generally, when they're talking about ethical hunts, they're referring to these specific animals. Allowing rich foreigners to come in and play Safari and pay to remove those animals is a great source of funding for conservation efforts.
It's also possible he just fucking lied. Or he was lied to. Or he knew he was lied to and didn't care.
Regardless of the actual truth, getting trampled by elephants is fitting.
I think ethical conservation hunting is great, and I think trampling stupid rich people to death is even better. How great would it be if both things happened?!
While an argument could be made for "horde" because it's a lot of individual animals who would rise as an army against him if they could, the correct word for this kind of evil dragon collection is "hoard."
Just in case you need to use either word in a serious context
I did mean it in the dragon context, haven't had my coffee yet xD Thank you for the correction
Two points of contention:
There is no contention. We are completely agreed and I don't believe I've said anything to the contrary.
Ethical hunter
An oxymoron if I ever saw one.
Eh, there are times for it. Consider hunting invasive species harming the local ecosystem. I'm not saying that was what this guy was doing but if someone wants to go down to the Everglades and hunt Burmese pythons and argintine tegus I'm all for it.
It sucks that the hunted invasive animals have to die through no fault of their own, but it would be even worse for the native animals to go extinct by not hunting the invasives.
I only ethically murder babies who have a chance of crawling away from me.
Elephants doing what Americans can't. 🫡
I assure you plenty of us are really good at killing people, especially children
While i understand that licenced hunting of big game is good for the local economy and it funds the reservations so they can fight against more descrutive things like poachers and it keeps the wildlife refuges alive so nobody turns the area into highway..
..I also find it somewhat beatifull that the hunt thats purpose is to cull unwanted elements, like for example older males that cant reproduce anymore, but are strong enough to keep younger generation from procreating, ends up removing old male, that hoards recources from younger generations in a completelly differend ecosystem.
We could all learn something from this.
Well in this case that's exactly why the hunt was 100% successful
ambushed and killed
Elephants are learning Gorilla warfare
Gorillas are learning elephant warfare
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.
'Ernie had booked a hunt for dwarf forest buffalo and duikers, in particular the yellow-backed duiker and, under strict licensing laws, he could not take along his own guns.
'The hunting company would supply a shotgun and cartridges for the duiker hunt.
Gabon seems to be well respected internationally for conservation. The guy killed was a winegrower and winemaking supply seller. I don't know anything else about him, but those aren't occupations I necessarily associate with a high evil content, but you do you. People involved say all was above board and legal. Whether folks like it or not, animals don't fund protection, being as they have no idea what money is. Stuff like these hunts funds conservation.
The duiker is at the same level of threat as zebras, which most of us have probably had no trouble seeing. Near threatened means we have a bunch of animals left, but we need to conserve their environment moreso than the animal itself, something this guy has spent tremendous amounts of money to fund, even if it seems ass-backwards to you.
Conservation hunting is why alligators are not extinct in the US today. It works. It's a job that takes huge amounts of money and manpower to pull off, and it needs people willing to give that money. I don't like sport hunting. I do wild animal rescue work myself, and I also attempt to hunt one deer a year to feed our house since I think it's more ethical than factory farming livestock.
The comments here are pretty gross. There is zero evidence this guy did anything bad, and there are accounts to the contrary. He was paying to do a job that needed to be done anyway, and he died a terrible death. He didn't need to be there, he'd be alive if he wasn't there, but this was a legal hunt, for conservation purposes, these hunts are part of a comprehensive plan to manage and support healthy wildlife populations, and you guys are cheering for him being crushed to death. You don't need to feel bad, it's part of the risk of hunting, but the gloating sure doesn't seem called for in this case.
It’s hard for people to understand that conservation more often than not involves reducing population size to benefit the environment. It’s easier to believe that all hunters are evil than to understand that some animals must die to save the majority. Sadly the idea of just moving animals around isn’t cost effective or feasible most of the time and ethical hunting does in fact fund widespread conservation.
Hunting is something that can be fairly easy to manage. Count your animals, stop unregulated killing, see how many paying hunters you can support while still having the animal population still trend exponentially upward. Doing things like stopping global climate change and deforestation are problems many orders of magnitude larger. And it takes a ton of money away from rich people and puts it to a good cause. They could pay less to poachers to come along with and have more guaranteed success. I don't like people killing things that they aren't going to at least eat, but we have learned to make lemonade from the lemons, but a lot of people can't understand that.
If its truly about conservation and advocacy - donate the money and take a photo.
Good riddance, scumbag.
That's pretty much what the guy did. He preferred something more 3D than a photo, but he also contributed much more than he would have for only a photo.
How do we save these places and animals otherwise? People need a way to pay for conservation. Gabon is about 90% rainforest, and their key financial sectors are oil extraction and mining. Take away financial incentive to preserve that forest and those animals, and the real environmental destruction will happen. It sucks, but I can't end capitalism in Gabon, so this is what is succeeding at holding that off for right now.
And until I see anyone show this guy was actually a scumbag, I don't see how he's any worse than any non-vegan at least. This guy at least owned the fact he killed animals.
Thank you for your nuanced take!
I usually pass over these posts and just let people do their thing in the comments, but this was just especially ugly in here and this guy really seemed low on the potentially evil guy scale. It can be hard to wrap your head around how killing animals can save animals, and I don't ask anyone to cheer for it, but it is modern wildlife management practice. It is part of a holistic plan, and one we can have a lot of say and control over.
I would be sad to have to take part in an animal cull. This guy found some enjoyment in it and paid a ton of money to do something that ultimately benefited more animals than it hurt. For most of this guy's life, his actions likely helped more animals than every commenter in this thread, myself included, because I know I can't afford to give tens of thousands of dollars to my animal causes.
If people want to get mad at me for my response, I can't likely change that no matter how reasonable I try to be, but being on both sides of the story to some extent, I feel I know a bit of what I'm talking about.
Right.
Because there totally won't be another POS trophy hunter lined up to get his rocks off, and it's pretty clear from the photos of the douchebag's trophy room that he loved making himself feel like a big boy by shooting living things.
I understand that hunting (when tightly regulated and done ethically) is an essential part of conservation in this day and age as a necessity because of the historical excesses of the Epstein Class and its effects all over the globe, but I'm still going to enjoy reading about the very rare instances when nature wins one back.
There will always be more, and most will probably be a bigger POS than it sounds like this guy was. I'm not mad a trophy hunter got killed. I'm neutral on that. I'm just let down so many seem to be piling on this dead guy that didn't likely deserve this particular kind of death. Lumping this guy in with the Musk/Bezos rich types or the Epstein people doesn't seem appropriate here from any details we have.
I love heartwarming stories like this.
The elephant's name? Luigi.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
Now, if we could just get those Trump boys to go hunting there…
"who owns a vast collection of exotic animal heads in trophy rooms at home"
Rooms, with an S. It's always these creeps who fill their home with corpses.
c/upliftingnews
Good guy elephants joining the orca in the rebellion this is how you do solidarity,
I’m sad that it took this long.
Turnabout is fair play
Oh no...
Anyway.
Team Orca, Team Lion, Team Elephant
I like to think they were hooting: "Welcome to Africa, bitch!' in Elephantese.
And nothing of value was lost in this exchange. I just hope none of the elephants have sore feet or anything.
They didn't forget... to kill!
Good
Well done! Fking hate them!
That is wonderful news. There are the kinds of headlines I enjoy waking up to.
You what karma, Mother Nature, God which ever suits you, it all comes back don’t it.
“Well doggies, Ain’t that something “
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