FURTHER TO MY ORIGINAL POSTING I HAVE RECEIVED THE BELOW CORRESPONDENCE, AND HAVE BEEN GIVEN PERMISSION TO POST BY THE AUTHOR, WHOSE NAME APPEARS BELOW HIS WRITINGS.

Paradigm Shift:

Never in the history of hunting have there been more intense and continuous attacks on the professional hunting sector.
Scarcely a week goes by that there is not some press article or television production on this topic including numerous and rabid attacks on social media.

I venture to say that we are our own very worst enemies as we continuously and loosely use words and rhetoric such as trophies, scores, medals, inches, pounds, pinnacles of achievement and other chest beating utterances.

We love to coin the phrases that hunters pay for conservation, that without our industry there would be no game, we form clubs that rank a close second to any Hollywood pageant in glitz and glamour, we have associations of professional hunters and so it continues.
This is the loaded hand that we have dealt to the public and they are winning by holding these choice cards that by and large represent exactly what trophy hunting has morphed into and that is an unacceptable and indefensible form of egotism. I would be as bold to say that professional hunting is today so far removed from the true activity of hunting that they cannot remotely be associated.

There is an element of truth about good conservation deep down and under all of the above mentioned, but what is true and beyond doubt is that trophy hunting has also single handidly and systematically been the cause of the top genetics being depleted throughout Africa due to the simple fact that the success of a hunt is measured in inches and pounds.

Paradoxically we now place ourselves on a soapbox crying foul the wildlife ranching sector of the industry, who have proved that the genetics of yesteryear can be brought back from being over hunted; and yet still fail to address our own shortcomings and are quick to leap into the cages and pens and shoot genetically superior trophy animals with ear tags and micro chips under the guise of professional hunting, all the while chasing the veritable dollar just in a different environment but with the same intent and objective as in the past.

With all of this baggage that is hitched to hunting we stand little or no chance of seeing professional or trophy hunting survive.

We have very recently seen the public outcry and fall out caused by issues such as Cecil the lion, Blood Lions and driven hunts and as unfounded and inaccurate as some of the comments and articles may have been, the public has none the less hung professional or trophy hunting out to dry.

How we will come back from this all is entirely dependent on our own behaviour and the behaviour of our valued clients.
We will need to present a completely defendable argument as to why and how we can claim that hunting is an integral part of wildlife management and note that I do not mention the word trophy hunting or professional hunter.

Here is where we need to have the paradigm shift and I motivate this by virtue of the fact that hunting on other continents has been relatively unaffected by this anti hunting tirade and continue to practice their hundreds of year old traditions of hunting methods, and management, with very little if any emphasis placed on the trophy aspects, concentrating rather on the management of the herds, using hunting as an acceptable tool to achieve their conservation efforts.

I will attempt to demonstrate this by using an example of a forestry lease in Sweden where a yearly quota is set to include the hunting of a scientifically worked out spectrum of animals from yearlings, females young males and limited mature males of certain age groups, all according to the current situation that prevails in the area in terms of population, food and water availability, disease, fire and other factors.

These leases are expensive and strict control is exercised over them in terms of compliancy for the take off quota and ratios, so much so that there are massive fines levied when this is broached and all the hunters that have the privilege of hunting in these areas have to pass stringent shooting, hunting, and biology and ecology tests. The emphasis is on the management of the natural resource by good hunting practice for which the hunters are prepared to pay a premium price and not in the least about trophy or professional hunting and this is where we need to apply our minds as to how we can change our wildlife management practices in Africa in terms of hunting and have this practice become a true reflection of hunting and it's principles and valuable part that it plays in conservation.

The South African meat hunter or biltong hunter has escaped the current onslaught relatively unscathed; bird hunting and fishing is acceptable in today’s society all because there is no connotation to the word trophy and the word professional is not used.

Interestingly where the word trophy has been alluded to such as the infamous giraffe pictures posted on social media by some woman hunters and others it has unleashed a wrath of anger.

We have for the most part been indoctrinated in the professional hunting sector that the South African meat hunter was the lowest form of hunter that existed and that alcohol and bad behaviour were the order of the day, how very wrong we have been, while certain elements of this fraternity may behave in a manner clouding our judgement the South African meat hunter or biltong hunter of today’s conduct is exemplary and most importantly the activity is defensible in terms of hunting as a good management tool in any wildlife area.
Professional hunters throughout time have positioned themselves higher on the totem pole than the meat hunter exuding an air of superiority while being the very catalyst of the current situation we find ourselves in. The same can be applied to the American model of the management of the deer, elk, moose and other free range herds by hunting and the issuing of tags and bag limits that are scientifically determined and in this case often on state land that belongs to all, including the very people that pen so much hate mail when exposed to Africa’s trophy and professional hunting industry.

No reference is ever made to the word trophy animals and this hunting is for the most part socially acceptable in these countries.
The success of hunting groups such as Ducks Unlimited in the USA is phenomenal in terms of wetland conservation, a true working model of where hunting certainly does pay for conservation and where the word trophy or professional hunter has no place. Many such examples exist.

Sandy McDonald
McDonald Safaris

Crikey.... even the IUCN accepts, understands and promotes Trophy Hunting ... but apparently we have to sanitise our terminology to fit-in with PC nonsense??


IUCN SSC Guiding Principles on Trophy Hunting as a Tool for Creating Conservation Incentives
Ver. 1.0 (09 August 2012)
Citation: IUCN SSC (2012). IUCN SSC Guiding principles on trophy hunting as a tool for creating conservation incentives. Ver. 1.0. IUCN, Gland.

IUCN - Guiding Principles on Trophy Hunting

quote:

Crikey.... even the IUCN accepts, understands and promotes Trophy Hunting ... but apparently we have to sanitise our terminology to fit-in with PC nonsense??

A problem whether real or perceived is still a problem non the less.
I hate this pc bs but we must deal with it or we will be eaten alive by the non hunting public.