Gentlemen,

We may have an opportunity to provide some positive input. This morning the Chicago Tribune ran a piece on the op ed page pertaining to the response received on an artical they ran about elephant hunting. The Trib wesite requires registration so I have cut and past below.

I wonder if we could get some knowledgable members to send an email to this writer and provide an informed, non vitrioloc, point of view from our perspective. We could use any help here in the Peoples Republik of Illinois as this large urban environment does not hear both sides in the popular press. The writers name is Don Wycliff

Here it is:

The following message was left on my voice mail last Thursday by a reader who identified himself only as John O'Halloran:

"There's an article in today's Outdoor section about shooting an elephant. This is the most disturbing article I've ever read in the Tribune. ... Please don't print this stuff in the future."

The reference was to Lew Freedman's "On the Outdoors" column that day. Headlined "Aiming for cats, finding elephant," it related the story of Mike Wilmet, a big-game hunter from Long Grove who last summer went to the southwest African nation of Namibia and, for the second time in his career as a hunter, slew an elephant.

I hadn't yet read Freedman's column when I listened to the phone message. But I read it immediately afterward and understood right away why O'Halloran felt as he did.

Wilmet's action was entirely legal under the laws of both Namibia and the United States. Namibia, Freedman explained, is one of five African countries "where Americans can hunt African elephants legally and bring home a trophy."

But legality aside, there was about the whole episode something deeply, disturbingly wanton.

Having killed an elephant in South Africa in 1995, Wilmet wasn't planning to shoot another when he went to Namibia. "Wilmet had lion, lioness and leopard on his mind," Freedman wrote.

But when this bull elephant--Wilmet's guide said he was the biggest he had ever seen in Namibia--turned up ... well, the hunter just couldn't let the opportunity pass. I guess the animal just looked like he needed killing.

It took just three hours and four shots for Wilmet to kill the beast. Three hours and four shots to turn one of nature's most vital, spectacular creations into an inert, decaying mass of flesh and bone.

John O'Halloran was not the first reader to express distress over one of Freedman's columns because it dealt with an activity that some readers consider cruel toward animals.

Late last year, following a Nov. 27 Freedman column on animal trapping, Fred Szponer, a resident of Wayne, Ill., wrote and asked, "Was this a joke? Do you actually believe that this is of interest to your readers? Is the Tribune aware of the fact that the year is 2002 and not 1850?"

Be assured, Mr. Szponer, that we are aware. It would be unfair to Freedman to leave the impression that his columns are always--or even most of the time--celebrations of blood and gore. They are not.

He writes often about adventurers--on a trip to the South Pole, an ascent of a mountain peak, a visit to Yellowstone. He writes of necessity about politics and government--the appointment of a new head of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the problems of a sclerotic bureaucracy that can't seem to cough up licenses in timely fashion.

But the fact is that hunting and fishing--and to a lesser extent trapping--are the bread and butter of the outdoors beat for Freedman and for just about every other outdoors writer at any newspaper in the country.

In part that's because it has always been that way. These activities were the essence of the outdoors in America's pioneer days and, even as the nation urbanized, the old definition stuck.

Probably more important, it's because these activities pay much of the freight for state conservation activities through fees for hunting and fishing licenses. This even though the number of hunters and fishermen--known generically as "sportsmen" in the federal bureaucracy--has declined over the last 11 years to just under 38 million nationally from 40 million. (The decline has been especially sharp among hunters. Their numbers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fell to 13 million in 2001 from 14.1 million in 1991. And in the 48 years since 1955, the U.S. population has grown by 71 percent, while the number of hunters has increased by less than half that amount, 31 percent. In Illinois, the number of hunting licenses sold has fallen to just under 300,000 in 2000 from more than 488,000 in 1975.)

At 66.1 million in 2001, participants in what the Fish and Wildlife Service calls "wildlife-watching activities" far outnumber hunters and fishermen, but nobody requires birdwatchers to buy licenses.

Freedman, who says he personally is not a hunter, is unapologetic about his choices of column topics. He notes that the "hunting and fishing people have been unhappy because it [his column] isn't all hunting and fishing." And he seems resigned to the fact that his is a no-win situation, in which he'll never please everyone.

I find myself somewhere between Freedman and his critics O'Halloran and Szponer. A small-game hunter myself in my youth, I have nothing in principle against hunting--for food, for self-protection.

But to kill a magnificent creature like an elephant solely for the pleasure of it--well, that seems a cause for shame, not celebration.

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E-mail: dwycliff@tribune.com

[ 03-27-2003, 18:54: Message edited by: Westman ]

I doubt that there is much you can do to convince people that grew up watching Disney and playing video games: the real outdoors.

You should send the article about Zim that 500Nitro posted about a 70% loss due to poaching, partly due to cancelled hunting and poaching patrols. I wonder if this more ill-defined and less symbolic problem would equally disturb these people.

Will

[ 03-27-2003, 19:13: Message edited by: Will ]

Freedman is a pleasant but mousy fella who admits to not having had a gun in his household for nearly 20 years. He came to Chicago from Alaska and really should be relegated to the travel section of the paper. I doubt that he could bait a hook without injuring himself and he doesn't have a clue about guns. Please remember that the Chicago Tribune also happens to be an insanely anti-gun newspaper whose editor hired him with a mandate that he not be a ''hook and bullet'' writer.

I wasn't there, but I doubt the elephant ended up decaying. The meat is always used by the natives and they are very happy to get the food. Not like a great many of the people in this country, who if the food isn't of top quality they turn their noses up at it. I had a friend who a few years back offered (after his family had all they wanted) his small garden patch to others to gleen and you guessed it they complained that the produce wasn't of top quality. How many of us have taken a trophy by chance, eh.

OK, I gave it a whirl and emailed this to Mr. Wycliff...

Mr. Don Wycliff,

I am a hunter. I have not hunted elephant yet, but I intend to do so one day. I see elephant frequently in the bush in the African safari countries that I hunt.

You see the death of one elephant as described in your paper, and cannot get past it. I see one dead elephant too, yet in that death I celebrate the lives of all elephant. All living elephant will die, just as all hunters alive today will one day die too. But what you do not realize is the species of elephant are paying their way in the economics of Africa today with the death of that individual elephant. Your reader John O'Halloran was outraged by Lew Freedman's story in his "On the Outdoors" column, titled "Aiming for cats, finding elephant," and the story of Mike Wilmet's second elephant.

The elephant pay to live with the only currency they have. The dead elephant is turned into meat that will be consumed by the local people. The trophy of the elephant -- hide and tusks -- is turned into hard currency by the trophy fee that the hunter pays to shoot. This is a huge amount of money; it goes ultimately both to the tribes that must put up with the ravages of the rest of the elephant, and to the government's conservation program for all the flora and fauna.

In Africa today where elephant are hunted, they are valued and plentiful. Where they are not valued by hunting they are poached by criminals, and they are few. This is the reality of that one dead elephant, killed by a hunter like me. One day that hunter will be me, but only after I have saved enough the substantial amount of money needed to contribute to the continuing life of all the elephant in Africa.

The hunter is the true conservationist, and the elephant hunter contributes in a way that very few people can do. One day I will contribute directly to the conservation of elephant in Africa; what will John O'Halloran do?

Jim Dodd
Hunter
San Diego, CA

Jim

Absolutely Outstanding.

Jim Dodd

Very well put my man!

I'm glad you sent Wycliff a copy, but he may just trash it. Your reply is really very good -- you MUST send it to the Chicago Tribune as a Letter to the Editor! Perhaps I can help:

Chicago Tribune Letters to the Editor

Note that you have to register before you can submit a letter to the editor (most newspapers do this so than can verify that you really sent it before printing). It only takes a moment, and you will be helping your children have a chance to hunt.

Your post is short, punchy and thus likely to be published by a newspaper! As hunters, we need to get more erudite replies like this published to help the public see us in a better light.

jpb

Jim
Very well written!!!
Thanks!!
K9

I did receive a short reply from My Wycliff, and he and I are now corresponding.

jim

Jim,
Very eloquent!! I'm going to save a copy of that response in case I ever need to respond likewise.
Cross

Mr. Dodd,
Sice we have never met, it wouldn't be right for me to call you Jim, but let me say that your response is a great piece of writing. I have never been to Africa, though I do wish to go there someday on a hunting trip. I hope that The Chicago Tribune decides to print your response, so that MAYBE some people might see the other (read, true) side of the story of elephant hunting. Good Hunting!

Rick

Thanks for taking the time Jim,

I was hoping some one more eloquent than I could add some support.

Unfortunately, the anti crowd is much more willing to write and voice their feelings and I don't think writers like this get enough feedback from our side.

There are many who can write and express the positive side of African hunting on this board. It's their help I was looking for.

Thanks again!