“Sport hunters, those who kill animals for recreation rather than out of necessity, imported more than 1.26 million trophies to the U.S. in the decade from 2005 through 2014, according to a new analysis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s import data by Humane Society International and the Humane Society of United States. That’s an average of 126,000 trophy imports a year, or 345 a day.” Although the room depicted above is a little freaky, I have no problem with sport hunting. I consider it key to wildlife preservation. Here’s someone who doesn’t quite see it that way . . .
“What we hope the report accomplishes is that we shed light on the scale of the role we play in killing some of the world’s vulnerable and endangered species,” said Masha Kalinina, an international trade policy specialist at Humane Society International . . .
Conservationists, animal welfare advocates and many scientists say sport hunting puts pressure on vulnerable populations, disrupts social networks, and doesn’t pump up local economies as much as hunters argue. Many also argue that destroying wildlife for pleasure is unethical.
The NatGeo article — funded by the mysterious BAND Foundation (link not found) and the Woodtiger Fund (part of Communist sympathizer Henry A Wallace’s legacy) — has a lot of new statistical info on trophy hunting. Like this:
And this:
The text of the article conflates issues of poaching with trophy hunting. Because hunting. Still, it presents excellent insight into the health of the trophy hunting industry, which, if managed properly, could do even more to protect our wildlife heritage than all the anti-hunting activism opponents can muster.
Very nice trophy room. This man pays a crap load of money To get the permits And the Safari Equipment And supports entire communities By doing these hunts in Africa. A lot of the money almost 100% of it in fact goes to conservation to expand wildlife habitat and protect the habitat from poaching. I have absolutely no problem with people traveling to Africa to sport hunt. It’s been a way of life since Teddy Roosevelt went on Safari there. And before that.As long as you pay for the permits And for any Thing else you may need on the trip I don’t see a problem it’s legal hunting is what it is
And he’s got the trophy wife to go with the collection.
It is a pretty freaking awesome collection.
“And he’s got the trophy wife to go with the collection.”
Perhaps he’s a trophy husband… 🙂
Good bet that she is the most expensive thing in his house.
Tribal people’s have been trophy hunting since recorded time. Men wearing lion hides as a symbol of manhood within their tribal culture is no different than what this man has in the photo.
Well, it used to be dangerous and a test of manhood
This seems less so
Ever been 30 yards from a lion that wasn’t separated from you by a pen surrounded by a mote and 20 foot tall walls? Even with a big rifle and a couple guys with their own big rifles to back you up, that’s a sensation you won’t confuse with anything but the fear of becoming lion poop. That is a particularly powerful flavor of fear and very distinct from the fear that you might have left the gas on when you went out on safari.
In Africa everything bites and people are not consistently at the top of the food chain. Occasionally, hunters using modern equipment and tactics are killed by the very critters that people for some reason permit to freely run around Africa. I would proffer therefore that it’s still quite sufficiently dangerous even if it’s less dangerous than it might have used to have been.
Heck, even being within that range with a very sturdy cage separating you, a tiger, at least, can give a distinct impression that you look like a good meal, and the realization that only that cage is preventing it from being so. Well, technically, in my case it was my son that the tiger clearly considered food, rather than me, but it just as clearly felt I had no capability to prevent it from eating him.
Big cats are no trifle; I imagine it triply so when they have the home field advantage.
During my senior year in high school several of us who were in Animal Behavior together volunteered at the local zoo as an internship towards the end of the school year. I chose to volunteer with African animals; elephants, tapir, big cats including Bengal tigers, etc. it was a lot of fun scooping elephant poo with a snow shovel into a miniature daihatsu dump truck, hauling ass in reverse as I raised the dumper bed and slamming on the brakes to unload the truck… Point of the story is the elephant house shared a roof with the tiger house. Which I did not know. I walked around the corner an BAM CLANG SNARL the old onry male tiger reared up and slammed the gate about 8″ from my head. I felt real small and prey-like.
Damn…..i just found out out what happened to old scruffy, he’s in the corner…..and mom said he went to doggie land when i was ten…..tears.
Yeah, I thought I saw Butters my pet kitty by his shoulder. Wondered where she went.
My Nyala should be home soon…
Why import a mallard?
Word.
Or a Canada goose..
I think they are stating the figures of those species declared at borders…so, with waterfowl, we are talking meat, not usually “a trophy” per se.
What impresses me is the number of black bear from Canada….I would have guessed maybe 20,000 tops.
100K+ Snow Geese imported as trophies? Really? Is there another category for birds imported as meat?
Anyway, do these people realize the overpopulation of snow geese is wrecking the tundra? This is why there are no-limit, no plug required conservation seasons for them.
My thought exactly. A friend of mine went to Canada last year for a hunt and brought back almost three dozen in coolers. Is that importing trophies? Because if so, we ate a lot of trophies….
No shell limit, Sounds like fun.
I was whipping out the card to book a murder fest of snow geese hunt as soon as a read that. But it turns out it is quite cold when you have to hunt them. So, they win. Fly over Texas when it’s above 40f and you are mine, winged devils.
You should see the heads that that wife has on her wall. She’s eyeing his head next!
Canada geese as trophies? Jeez. Have you ever stood in a field when a flock of Canadas flew over? It’s like London during the Blitz.
I think they are counting every pair of frozen goose breasts brought back from a hunting trip as a “trophy” import.
Just found this in the article:
“Wildlife imports are coded by the USFWS as to the purpose of the import;
for this study, we selected species under wildlife description TRO, which means “Trophy (all the parts of
one animal),” and imported for two recorded purposes, either “H” (Hunting Trophies) or “P” (Personal).”
Does seem to suggest these are whole geese and not just meat being imported. However, only the head and cape of African animals are generally imported. I’m not sure how this counts as “all the parts of one animal.”
Still, it seems unlikely to me that over ten thousand snow geese are being mounted by taxidermists every year in this country. That’s not even counting any that were shot here.
Waterfowl must have a head or wing attached (usually a wing) for identification at border….so I think they are counting every “meat” bird declared.
Further, yes trophy hunters are bringing only parts of the animal back, failing to note that the meat is given to indigenous peoples (and it would probably be illegal to import the meat anyway?).
Good God!! In New York State, during September 2015, an individual could kill 15 Canada Geese….A DAY!! Not exactly endangered species territory.
Exactly… Any use of firearms in the wake of Canadian Geese is an act of self defense!
I don’t know if I’d consider snow geese, mallards, and Canada geese to be true trophy game. I do my best to drop Canadas here in SE PA every winter, but it’s not like it’s anything special, IMO. The waterfowl are certainly not in the same league as African game animals. I’m assuming a lot of those waterfowl “trophies” are from Canada. As far as the USFWS is concerned, we can’t down enough snow geese, and I’m sure Canada thinks the same way. In Delaware the migrating snowies can pile onto fields so densley you could walk across and not get your feet muddy.
While they are not trophies in the sense we would use the term, male mallards and snow geese are beautiful birds and I suspect prized for decorative purposes. This allows the anti-hunting crowd to classify them as “trophies” the way the anti-2A crowd classifies suicides and gang-banging as “gun violence” for statistical purposes.
They can be pretty, but I very much doubt that 28k of the relatively mundane geese and ducks are being imported AND mounted every year. That makes me suspect that these folks are using a very loose definition of “trophy” to suit their agenda.
Unethical.
I wonder if this is coming from a pro-choice liberal.
That ones always a little rough to swallow.
But they could have avoided making the pro choice decision if they would have….
I appreciate this response.
There’s not enough struggle and hardship in the world when people have time and resources to but into the legal activities of others as if they had a right to.
Time for a world wide plague.
Alas, the pathogen that targets only idiots and asshats doesn’t exist yet.
Some people might point to HIV-AIDS, but I couldn’t possibly comment on that.
That plague is already here and it’s called authoritarianism.
It’s been around ever since human beings banded together in social groups.
I don’t see any stuffed groundhogs in the photo. People who have never hunted groundhogs are just faux hunters.
I killed groundhogs out of the farm fields back home when I was just a kid with an iron sighted .22 from the sears catalog. To this day I’ve never shot a groundhog with a scoped weapon. Got 1 with a .410 once.
Cool room. I don’t see a problem here.
Hmm, is that a Trophy wife also?
I’ll give you five-to-one odds that certain parts of her are stuffed, too.
Better have AWESOME A/C. One of my customers was a big game guy, A/C went out, house smelled like 100 wet Labradors. Evacuated to Marriott until Trane came through with parts.
Now that’s funny! Makes a strong case for pictures only…
A person like this is mentally ill. He loves animals so much he just has to kill them and hang their corpse on his wall.
You a vegan, there, kev?
Kevin, Every single one of those animals was going to die in the semi-near future, and it wouldn’t be as neat as bullet-to-the-whatever.
As long as it is controlled and taxed I really don’t see the problem. The real issue is the Chinese, who fund the poacher trade by purchasing everything for their ‘remedies’ and their ‘status meals’ (which will eliminate sharks in less than a decade).
So Kevinj, I would bet, though, you fully support a woman “right” to murder her unborn child. Now that is “mentally ill”.
Unnecessary rich dude holiday. However, the human populations need some thinning out too, so when do rich human dudes start hunting lethargic and starving humans?
Another statist wanting to tell others how to spend their money and time.
Is that a baboon off dude’s right arm?
Looks like either a small one or a shoulder mount.
I’m hoping for one this next trip.
These people are morons. There is no specific code for human consumption which I guarantee you is the actual reason for a significant portion of these animals. Not that I have any problem with strict trophy hunting. However their portrayal is simply dishonest.
http://www.fws.gov/le/pdf/3177instructions022011.pdf
Many months ago, the anti-hunting zealots were screaming about a Texas organization that auctioned off a rhinoceros license for the price of a fair sized house. The animal to be killed was an old bull no longer able to impregnate females but still tough enough to keep young, virile bulls away. Without human intervention, there would have been no calves in his herd until a younger, stronger bull took him out. Someone had to kill him for the benefit of the species. This way, the Africans got the license fee instead of paying a professional hunter to do the job.
I worked on a few outdoor projects in the Detroit area. When I commented that it was neat to have Canada geese wandering around, the locals told me they hated them. They said the geese were bad tempered enough to attack people and their droppings were a health hazard.
General Jimmy Doolittle, of World War Two fame, was also a trophy hunter. I was shown his trophy collection in Manhattan Beach, California. It wasn’t as big as Krottinger’s but there were still many impressive heads. You wouldn’t catch me wandering around the African bush without a rifle of adequate caliber that I could shoot well.
Although I don’t hunt, I have no objection to it as long as it is managed for a net benefit to wildlife. When people bitch about it, I ask them if they would be willing to pay higher taxes to replace the funds hunters provide for conservation through license fees and organizations like Ducks Unlimited.
I seem to recall reading, probably here, that questions had been raised that particular hunt was misrepresented and was being investigated.
So am I the only one who thinks the guy looks like Robert Englund?
This makes me want to hunt geese next year.
I’m surprised that somewhere between the Gembok and the Bontebok over the last decade, they didn’t mention all the Shiner Bock I took as trophies.
I laughed.
I wonder if he’d part with four inches or so off the bottom of one of those tusks so I could make a few nice sets of ivory grips…
For God’s sake, won’t somebody think of the goslings?!
Perhaps licenses should be issued to go after the poachers…
Great room. But it absolutely pales in comparison to a couple of them I’ve seen over the years. The biggest, and most impressive, was here in Texas on a private ranch I got to hunt at a couple of years ago. I was just there to support a friend shooting a hunting TV show there, but they threw in hogs, turkey, and Orxy for me, you know, since I was walking around anyway.
To give you an idea of the size of the room, the pillars on the walls are actual full Cypress tress, half cut lengthways and placed against the wall to cover the structural supports. There was a full, live mounted bull elephant and a full, live mounted hippo, and several crocodiles in the room. And they did not take up much of the room. The only thing I’ve ever seen compare with it is Clayton Williams place, which is awe inspiring.
So, the vast majority of these “trophy” imports are common waterfowl (mallards and snow geese), mostly from Canada. Which means they weren’t “trophies” as all in the usual sense; they were just being brought back to eat. And black bear, of which there are probably a million in Canada. Snow goose populations have exploded to the point they’re eating up the tundra where they nest and an effort is being made to greatly reduce populations, including spring seasons with daily bag limits of up to 20. So far, they aren’t making a dent.
The other big export country is South Africa, where wildlife is ranched for hunting. The African species in the chart are mostly prolific, easily ranched species. Hunting ranched wildlife in no way imperils truly “wild” populations, and represents a stock from which wild populations could be restock. Such as when blackbuck antelope from Texas were returned to the Indian subcontinent.
The “BAND Foundation” . Though the various public documents say the founder’s name was “Laphan” it appears that is a typo and it should read “Lapham“. Information about the BAND foundation is mostly to be found in various online pdf files.
Thanks for that, Google-Fu master.
Funny(or not) I didn’t peruse this yesterday. And now we have the Nugent bruhaha. The mighty white hunter with canned hunts. I’m not anti-hunting(at all) just ostentatious displays of wealth(or ghetto behavior of certain losing NFL QB’s). This guys on his own…
By shooting those majestic lions, he saved countless zebras, giraffes, wildebeasts, gazelles, antelopes… oh, wait, he shot those too…
Disclaimer: I am not a hunter. That said, hunting wild animals for food and/or population control is understandable by all but the most devout of PETA folks. I love animals, but I enjoy venison and a nice game bird as much as the next guy. This type of “sport” hunting turns most peoples’ stomachs and does no favors for gun rights. It’d be like a fisherman mounting a whale shark and a pod of dolphins on his wall.
So…who remembers Ace Ventura 2 starring Jim Carrey?
(Not against this room or trophy hunting, but it was a funny movie with a scene containing a room like this)
I prefer Roadhouse.
“A polar bear fell on me.”
it looks remarkably similar, might even be the same room.
hoepfully he did it all legally and doesnt have any endangered trophies in a secret room somewhere, which im sure he does. it is a little concerning though.
How can he have Ivory tusks?? I
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