A big game
Prowling the Safari Club International convention, a shrine to the blood sport of the super-rich

By David Jackson
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 18, 2005


RENO -- Craggy men in khaki vests prowled the carpeted convention hall, escorted by women in leopard print blouses and snakeskin jackets.

Videotaped rifle shots crackled from the 1,100 exhibit booths where hunt guides played kill films in mesmerizing loops.

For four days last month, the sprawling Reno-Sparks Convention Center became a glittering shrine to the blood sport of the super-rich -- big game hunters who crisscross the globe to make trophies out of lions, leopards and other exotic animals.

Visitors to the 33rd annual convention of Safari Club International entertained sales pitches for $25,000 tours of African game preserves and $4,000 weekends at Texas trophy ranches.

They clustered around the booth of hunt guide Mark Sullivan, where three TV monitors played his hot-selling DVDs: "Death by the Ton," "Death at My Feet" and "Shot to Death."

A lean, mustachioed 56-year-old with a quiet, intense voice, Sullivan recounted the decisive act of will that transformed him from an office-bound small businessman into a professional huntsman with a film crew pitching Nitro Express Safaris.

"I realized at 41 I had a choice: to follow my childhood dream," Sullivan said. "I ventured to Tanzania and East Africa, and literally overnight became a professional hunter. I knew not one word of the local dialect. I didn't hear my wife's voice for 5 1/2 months."

Sullivan reflected on the popularity of his blood-on-the-shoes hunting method -- and the disdain it earns from some of his fellow exhibitors.

"I am the most hated professional hunter the world over," Sullivan said. "Professional hunters hate Mark Sullivan because I do what they don't have the balls to do. I am the only one that willingly walks up to the rogue hippo and great old buffalo and gives them the choice of how they want to die in battle, rather than shooting them to oblivion from safety. I honor these great and noble warriors, offering my life in exchange for what I believe."

"What I am doing in my manner is elevating the sport of hunting to its highest level. Killing makes me sick, but hunting is the greatest adventure left on earth," Sullivan said.

And Sullivan in turn heaped scorn on the private Texas and Florida game ranches advertising in the booths around him quick trophy kills.

"These businesses on display here, where you pay $20,000 for a lion hand-raised as a pup -- this great and noble creature, raised in pens and fed every day in an artificial environment, then trucked out in a cage and released into an enclosure for the gallant client who will claim him as a trophy and enter him in the record book -- I think it's deplorable," Sullivan said.

But on display in Reno were a hundred ways to slay your trophy cat.

Gleaming rifles from London's Holland & Holland gunsmith -- carved from precious Turkish walnut and inlaid with intricate chase scenes -- fetched up to $200,000.

Arrayed like chess pieces across glass countertops were bullets designed to drop an elephant. Coffee tables perched on tusks were adorned with bronze water hole scenes.

From loudspeakers, public-service announcements alerted Safari Club members to seminars on "Trophy Room Design and Function" and "Protecting Your Hunting Rights in State Legislatures."

Snow-white polar bears reared on their stuffed hind legs. Mounted deer and moose heads lined the walls, their antlers scrolling toward the bright floodlights, their glass eyes gazing past the teeming selling fields below.

Price lists showed how much a client might pay to bag a lion, ibex or elephant. Some brochures estimated how many points each animal might earn in the Safari Club record book.

"We have a five-star place, excellent lodging, a full-time chef, swimming pool, hot tub, bar," said exhibitor Dennis Erskine, who manages Clear Springs Ranch, a Bandera, Texas, resort that offers "year-around hunting of trophy exotics."

At Erskine's booth, a promotional video showed a black buck grazing in the leafy preserve. With a sudden, tearing sound, the animal was struck by a powerful bullet that flipped it hooves-up in the air. The words "instant replay" flashed on the screen, and the kill was shown again. The "instant replay" sign reappeared and the buck spun for a third time.

Clear Springs promotional materials say the ranch is "well-stocked with top quality animals that will make the [Safari Club] record books." Clients can select from the elusive Central African bongo antelope (starting price $20,000), the Nubian ibex goat ($8,500), the rare Pere David's deer ($8,000), shiny-furred sable ($7,500), the kudu antelope with its spiraling horns ($7,500), elk ($6,500), the towering Dama gazelle ($6,500), the muscular gemsbok with its spearlike horns ($6,000), red deer ($6,000), addax desert antelope ($4,500), scimitar-horned oryx ($4,500), tawny Thompson gazelle ($4,500), sandy-colored aoudad sheep ($3,200) and spotted axis deer ($2,200).

`A convenience issue'

"It's like driving through Africa," said Erskine, a former rodeo cowboy with decades of experience as a hunter and guide. "A lot of people don't want to fly 20 hours to Africa to hunt. It's a convenience issue."

The 33-year-old Safari Club -- which is structured as a network of non-profits, lobbying organizations and tax-exempt charities -- finances an influential political operation that works to ease endangered species laws restricting the importing of exotic animals slain overseas.

The Safari Club's Reno convention celebrated the nobility of the creatures who ended up in the club's thick record book. Members held morning prayer sessions and lingered before paintings extolling the majesty of nature. A Sportsmen Against Hunger booth urged club members to "share nature's bounty -- give game meat and you could win one of 50 Sako 75 rifles."

Amid lengthy evening ceremonies at the nearby Reno Hilton, members heard a speech from former Secretary of State James A. Baker III that was closed to the press by club officials. Club chapter leaders accepted trophies for conservation and wildlife management.

But from every corner of the giant hall came reminders of the club's driving theme: the competition to bag exotic animals and register the photos in the Safari Club record book. At the Saturday night ceremony, the club's International Hunting Award was presented to an Alaska guide credited with taking animals from 259 species.

Safari Club officials call trophy hunting a valuable conservation tool that provides economic and political support for ecological programs. Big game hunters pay top dollar for tours, creating hundreds of jobs and pumping millions of dollars into U.S. and Third World economies. The taxes and fees hunters pay when they purchase equipment, lodging, transportation and guide services can be used by government agencies to manage and conserve the remaining wildlife, club officials say.

"There are many ways to give value to animals, and hunting is one of those," said Rick Parsons, a Safari Club director. "To put it simply, if the animal is worth something to people, people will have an incentive to assure its survival."

Environmental concerns

Among the roughly 46,000 club members and the estimated 15 million other Americans who hunt on a regular basis are many keen environmentalists who fight for clean water, open land and the preservation of threatened species.

But something more complex than the adoration of nature drew the well-heeled conventioneers in Reno. At the booth for Usangu Safaris Ltd./Tawico, which guides hunters through Tanzania, a video played a rapid-fire collage of successful trophy hunts. In one scene, a leopard gnaws a meaty hunk of bait secured to the fork of a tree. The big animal watches the camera furtively, its golden eyes flashing. Then comes the pop of a gun. The creature jolts, splays and tumbles from its last meal.

Usangu's Tanzanian owners argue that they are restoring the African big cat population by using hunt profits to enhance game preserves.

The lion needs safari hunting if it is going to survive, said 30-year-old Zahir Mulla, marketing director, professional hunter and co-owner of the family-owned firm.

"The villagers see the animals have value, the poachers get jobs as trackers, and so they become their own police," Mulla said.

The Mulla family -- who also run gemstone, mining and tea-farming businesses -- successfully bid for concessions from the Tanzanian government that allow them to harvest quotas of big game from government wildlife preserves, Mulla said. In exchange, the firm patrols the preserves to keep poachers out, and the hunters pay trophy fees to the government, which churns the money into game preserves, Mulla said. The Usangu firm also must use some of its hunt revenue for local funding.

The video cuts to a lion kill followed by a familiar tableaux: A smiling hunter leans his rifle on the noble animal's broad, lifeless ribcage, and crouches for the record book photo. The client's smile deepens as he strokes the big cat's furry ears.

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Thanks as always Kathi for posting.

"Interesting" article to say the least, it was hard to tell exactly which way he was going with the story until the end...too bad. He certainly did hit on all the "hot topics", and brought up some valid subjects that we toil over here on the forum, but he just could not get beyond the "cute-little-dead-animal" thing. Again, too bad, he was close to "getting it".

From the tribune's website, here is David Jackson's email if anybody is interested... DYJackson@tribune.com

Chicago Tribune Contacts Webpage

Hey, Chicago, where men are men, or women, or somewhere inbetween. He probably surfs here too. Not exactly a hidden subject matter. I'm sure Chicago cocktail parties are a much more rewarding lifestyle.

Don't take your kid hunting, rather let them drink while underage, do drugs, give them condoms ...become an enlightened parent!

Holy jumpin' Jehosaphat, Bill! Now wait a bloody minute!

I was born in Chicago and lived there during all my formative years. Never did drugs. Did a little underaged drinking and used my share of . . .

But there are anal orifices everywhere. Especially here in my adopted Bay State--home of the free, land of the knave. Some of us have to remind the rest that they're full of . . . themselves . . . from time to time.

Hell, things are getting so bad in the heartland, in Iowa, the Field of Dreams, for God's sake, that the state is now considering offering tax free status for anyone in their twenties who'll stay there and not MOVE to Chicago!

Still, this guy's typical of those who look but don't see, who, as Bill C says, just don't and won't get it.

Will,

Not all of us from Chicago think that way. Hell there are 25 of us in the local SCI chapter. Not bad for an area with 7 million people.

BigB

Too bad that the guy went all the way to Reno, and still just didn't "get it". More than likely, if he ever went hunting, he might just like it and get hooked.

Unfortunently, none are so blind as those who choose not to see !

This is typical of most inner city media reporters, and news paper byline writers! They know nothing, and refuse to learn anything! Yet, these people write long winded articles, that are not only inaccurate, but in some cases,are outright lies! Most of these people are hardcore members of groups like ALF, and PeTA, and their articles are not innocent ignorance, but designed to insight the uneducated to donate money to the Animal rights groups. These groups are, for the most part, only interested in liveing high on the hog on the money the good intentioned doners supply, and certainly not to binifite animals!

Then we have folks in our own corner, that are no better than the reporters who write lies, like the self centered Guy who can't wait to trash other hunters, though he has some justification for his anger. He is right, he is not well liked by most African hunters. Then to spout lies like Lions being dumped out of cages in TEXAS to be murdered by fat cats, when he knows that is not true! The animal rights folks could't buy a better poster boy than this guy. He is thier best ally , and they get his chest beating for free! It certainly didn't take this reporter long to zero in on his booth, and his bravado! All the while he thinks he got a good review from this reporter!

The ARsonists, and PeTAheads thrive on chest beaters that they can use as examples of the mostly mythical uncareing killer Hunter, who thinks he's something special! He is not viewed by their poodle lovers, as he views himself! Trouble is, that paint brush is wide, and the poodle lover paints us all the same color, as the chest beater!

You, and I both know there is nobody in the world that is more interested in the coutinued sustainable populations of wildlife of all species,than the ethical hunter, and not just the ones we hunt! The value placed on game animals is the salvation to thier continued existance. When the animal that competes with human for space, and food ,has no value to the human population, he will be removed,because the adjustment will always be in favor of people, and be replaced with something that is of value to the people. That means the plow, and cattle in Africa, or shopping center in the USA. Once the plow is taken to the land, or 20 acres are covered with concrete parking lot, the wildlife is gone forever! The value placed on the species we hunt, is the only hope of that species continued existance! The habitat set asside for game animal's use is also used by truley endangered species as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:
A big game
Prowling the Safari Club International convention, a shrine to the blood sport of the super-rich-

Does this mean I'm officially super-rich

ME TOO! ME TOO!

I agree that the inner-city columnist doesn't know much about anything hunting realted...

BUT, I'm sure this guy spent no more than a couple of hours there, and I do find it interesting that the resounding theme throughout his piece is the SCI's association with "record books."

It appears maybe they (SCI) reap what they sew.

Obviously he did only spend a few hours there, otherwise he would have found out that some people spend a bit more than $25,000 for an African safari and a bit more than $4,000 to hunt in Texas.

It is just SAD to see people so distanced from hunting. And in my view, so distanced from nature it self...

Hello all,

I took a few moments to write a reply to Mr. Jackson, since Bill C posted his email address. In my educational letter, I pointed out his emotional response to what he witnessed, vs. the facts regarding conservation/wildlife mgmt. issues and financing, and some tips on where he might find these facts for himself.

Will he follow up with research of the facts? Certainly not, but maybe we should all send him a note instead of just venting to each other; we all feel the same here, let's try to change someone else's ideas. Who knows, maybe the next convention review might be a little more enlightened.

Just a thought, now I'll duck my head, shut my mouth, and take my lickin'.

Sonny