“A big cat poacher has been killed and eaten by the pride of lions he was hunting at a private game reserve in South Africa,” Daily Mail reports. “The hunter was heard screaming for help as he was attacked at the Ingwelala Private Nature Reserve in Hoedspruit outside Phalaborwa.” . . .

Police at first thought the dead man was a tractor driver who worked at the game reserve.

But when he [the tractor driver] turned up alive, they realised he [the guy who got eaten] may have been a poacher. A hunting rifle was found close to what was left of the blood drenched body.

A clue! A good clue! But that wasn’t all . . .

Police Lieutenant-Colonel Moatshe Ngoepe said: ‘The process of identifying this body has already commenced and it might be made easier as his head was amongst the remains found at the scene’.

A local worker, from a nearby nature reserve, described the area as lion territory and added: ‘The head was still there but the lions had eaten most of the rest.

Fun fact: lions kill up to 250 people a year in Africa.

That said, more lions are killed by people than the other way around (an estimated 20k African lions remain in the wild). And it’s not legal hunters doing it. It’s poachers looking for a payday.

Their bones have become highly prized in the the Far East with a skeleton fetching up to £7,000 and the skin £3,000. Teeth can fetch £500 each.

Once again, ethical licensed hunting is the best way to manage wildlife, regardless of the market for illegally killed creatures’ body parts or poachers’ economic desperation. A point that the Young Turks almost make . . .

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54 COMMENTS

  1. Past time to institute ethical, licensed hunting of Far Easterners. I hear their scrotums make a powerful aphrodisiac.

    • I’m sorry. I must have missed the memo where a poacher can “hunt.” Back when I was just a wee law abiding citizen, poacher could only poach. If they were hunting then they were hunters and not poachers.

      Poachers cannot hunt anymore than hunters can poach without being poachers.

      • What definitions of hunt and poach are you using? A poacher isn’t by definition a hunter, but is almost certainly one. It’s kind of like how a pharmacist is a drug dealer but the other way around in that the pharmacist isn’t doing something illegal.

  2. I would consider this a happy ending equivalent to a bad guy getting shot by the gas-station clerk he is trying to rob at gunpoint.

    • I could almost agree if the lions killed the poacher within a few seconds and then ate him. Sadly, lions have a gruesome habit of holding their meal in place and casually eating it alive — a process which can take several minutes to end the life of their meal. (A poacher who puts an accurate shot on a lion results in the lion’s death within about 10 seconds or less.)

      Even a poacher does not deserve a death like that.

      • Um no, actually they do deserve a death like that. They are criminal scum, nothing more. Taking up valuable oxygen.

      • I wonder what causes white people in the west to be against culling the herd?
        Is it their racism?
        Do they believe that 250 dark skinned people are less worthy than a lion for a long life?
        I know the atheist socialist leader Adolf Hitler was a animal lover and vegetarian. You don’t have to support gassing Europeans, but it seems many white people in the west don’t care if hundreds of Africans are killed or injured in lion attacks.

        It is a good day when a poacher is eaten by his prey.
        India also has a similar problem with tigers, leopards and other big cats eating people.

  4. Every hunter, whether he is hunting legally or is a poacher, must make peace with the fact that on any given hunt he may become the hunted.

    I’ve crossed bear tracks so fresh that water was still seeping into them. When I was hunting quail. Saturday morning I flushed coyotes while on another bird hunt. I’ve encountered bobcat and mountain lion.

    If you don’t want the risk, stay out of the boonies.

    I will not celebrate this poachers death. But unless he was a complete retard he knew the risk and chose to take it.

    • jwm,

      I touched upon this recently: I am somewhat freaked-out now about heading into the woods in absolute darkness for deer hunting. Bucks, mountain lions, coyotes, feral hogs, and bobcats all lurk in the shadows and could strike at any moment. I would be hard-pressed to stop any of them in total darkness when I have no idea they are coming.

      • Nothing quite like ‘country’ dark.

        Another reason I prefer a short revolver. If I’m on the ground with something over me trying to eat me I want all my shots to work. No jams because of limp wristing or being in contact with the big ugly.

        I’m not going to quit hunting, camping, gold panning, etc. until I’m just too damn old to do it.

        So I accept the risks.

        • +1 for gold panning. I’ve got some favorite spots to go to. I can usually get around 1/4 ounce in a good weekend.
          Saw my first cougar in the wild on a panning trip.

        • Holy cow, finding 1/4 ounce of gold on a weekend has a value of approximately $325!

          I would say that covers your expenses of your trip!

          And now we know how Tom in Oregon can afford those African safaris.

        • Yep, Tom. Up to my belt line in cold water and look up to see a tweaker watching me. I don’t care how deep into the boonies you go in CA the feral tweaker is never far.

        • jwm,

          Tweaker as in a punk/drug addict? I thought Tom in Oregon only mentioned seeing a cougar while panning for gold.

        • Uncommon. Yep. I’ve encountered scandalous drug addicts more than once in the boonies. It’s why I have my main weapon for hunting plus a j frame in my pocket and a knife on my belt.

          I hunt public lands. I’ve found homeless drug addled folks in those areas.

        • jwm,

          I am also thinking that I would want that short barreled revolver in hand as I walk in the woods in complete darkness: if a cougar jumps into me I won’t have time to draw a revolver from a holster, especially when wearing and carrying all of my hunting equipment.

        • Uncommon, he was probably referring to a female tweaker past her prime. They’re more common than you’d think and, even though they don’t move as quickly as they did when they were younger, they are still to be feared.

    • I like to remind my customers sometimes, “Nature was not present at the conference table when mankind decided we were at the top of the food chain.”
      🤠

      • I’ve run across several coyotes hunting but never more than one at a time. If three or more were together, I would probably go ahead and start shooting. (I leave them alone typically for two reasons. First and primary reason, they have yet to give me a clean shot! Second reason is I don’t want to spook deer shooting at a coyote.

  5. Things like bullfighting and hunting dangerous game would be boring if not for the fact that a mistake can get you killed.

  6. Seriously if you are “poaching” just to survive in your horrible country it ain’t poaching-it’s hunting. The Liberte glee at African death is offputting…

    • It would be much more appropriate if they were staked out on an ant hill and eaten alive by the ants, flies and beetles.

    • Darkest Africa IS the S__thole the MSM dreamed up. Never going to change. “Africa” had a BETTER opportunity than the Chicoms to develop and prosper but diddly squat.

    • You have to wonder if there weren’t other ways to survive that might be harder and less lucrative but wouldn’t involve poaching. Like the guy selling heroin on the corner, this guy probably made plenty of choices to get where he was.

    • Nine out of ten lions prefer their Africans poached. Personally, I’ll stick to poached salmon and poached eggs.

  12. “Their bones have become highly prized in the the Far East with a skeleton fetching up to £7,000 and the skin £3,000.”

    Far East my ass. It’s China. Koreans & Japanese aren’t frothing at the mouth to buy lion bones and rhino horns.

    Sad to say, the rapid rise out of poverty of such a huge chunk of China’s population means they’ve managed to make enough money to fund their village idiot beliefs, instead of just having it be an unattainable fantasy.

    I know how my people think.

    • “Sad to say, the rapid rise out of poverty of such a huge chunk of China’s population means they’ve managed to make enough money to fund their village idiot beliefs, instead of just having it be an unattainable fantasy.”

      Just read a book about a fish called the ‘Asian arowana’, where rare red examples can cost in the hundreds of thousand of dollars each.

      Demand from Chinese buyers flush with money is so high, illicit gathering of live examples is wiping out native populations around the world. They have a very slow reproductive rate and it is feared the colored ones will likely go extinct. There are fish farms in Asia where people raise them, security against theft is so high they look like prisons with barb-wire and armed guards.

      It was an interesting read :

      “The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish”

      https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Behind-Glass-Obsession-Coveted/dp/1451678959

      Evolutionary-wise, they are a very ancient fish. Not very attractive, they can grow over 3 feet and can leap out of their water as high as 10 feet…

      https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/dragon-fish-most-expensive-arowana-emily-voigt/

      • Someone needs to get Shannon to promote the stiffy benefits of the Asian Carp. But then again she isn’t very effective.

    • Very simply, bringing even a fraction of China up to 1st world standards of living has accelerated the end of a livable planet.

      I’ve opined on this topic for years, and despite the “media”, more people are understanding this every day. Chinese industrial fishing has decimated oceans already in steep decline. Not to mention the Chinese herbal medicine industry, killing rare animals by the tens of thousands for boner medicine and other voodoo. Not to mention millions of sharks for soup.

      For all the long-term vision the Chinese government demonstrates, the things they allow the populace to maintain power are stripping the planet of fish, fowl, and fauna. The West has done lots of irresponsible things in this regard, but we have learned some lessons, and have at least made an effort to set fisheries as right as we can. The oceans won’t survive thousands of industrial fishing boats with all the latest tech, and effectively no rules at all.

      We are the last generation to ever know plentiful seafood, enjoy the sushi while you can…

  16. In a bit of sad irony, experts believe the poacher might have avoided this fate if only he’d been wearing pink camouflage.

  19. They found his head. That is fukn funny. Well them lions are now man eaters it won’t be long before they’re put to rest that’s to bad because that would sure liven up going to the mudhole to get a half of pale of mudwater. On the Chinese, I’ve kinda thought them PETA bastards ought to sell poisoned rhino horn, kill off a few billion and the rest might become skeptical of rhino horn

  20. “Their bones have become highly prized in the the Far East with a skeleton fetching up to £7,000 and the skin £3,000. Teeth can fetch £500 each.” – While my math, and google, may be wrong, that’s $35,000.

    The average black South African family makes $8,700 a year as of 2011. (I don’t know why all the top search results were for black South Africans, but they were).

    I know the poacher isn’t getting market price for the lion, but at that price, I’d be tempted to shoot a protected animal that comes along when I’m out hunting. And I don’t live in a s-hole.

    Poaching wouldn’t be a huge problem if people were allowed to breed these animals and sell the parts.

  22. …A hunting rifle was found close to what was left of the blood drenched body…
    Because we all know, this being a gun blog and all, that a POACHING rifle is just so, yesterday or something…

  23. Meh, fair game to me. If he was willing to kill they had to assume the risk, it’s how it always is.

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