Bad PR for the canned hunting industry on 60 Minutes tonight. Surprised I am the first to comment on it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-lion-whisperer/

I would really be curious to know whether it is true that many (most?) of the lions hunted on captive bred lion hunts in South Africa come from lion petting parks. Perhaps one of the South African PHs will weigh in.

I never watch CBS, so I wouldn't know.

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Originally posted by MJines:
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-lion-whisperer/

I would really be curious to know whether it is true that many (most?) of the lions hunted on captive bred lion hunts in South Africa come from lion petting parks. Perhaps one of the South African PHs will weigh in.

As usual, it is a load of bloody bullshit.

But, it is something to fill an empty hour with as this is what always brings good comments on the network.

They must have an awful lot of petting zoos to produce that many lions!

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Originally posted by Use Enough Gun:
I never watch CBS, so I wouldn't know.

I refer to this program as "60 Communists" and refuse to watch it. Aside from their liberal and gay co-hosts, their twist on current events reflects their deviant lifestyles.If you flashed a picture of Karl Marx to these guys they'd all get "chubbies" as the Brits would say, and would be uncaging their pet gerbils.

She got the numbers wrong though. 100K to shoot a canned lion? Try 10-15K. I guess the six figure number makes it seem more sensational.

Another Az Outdoor Writer:

I have visited only one lion breeding farm, and its lions were touched regularly by the female manager whom I saw reach through an electric fence to scratch their ears. Although she claimed she had raised them from cubs, I doubt that anyone other than she had ever petted them.

The farm was in northeastern South Africa near Kruger Park, and was not open to the public. I went there with a friend of the owner. Its four black-maned males of the same age were kept in a one-acre enclosure and fed a lot of burros and goats, judging by the bones and skulls on the other side of the enclosure's gate.

The woman said there also were a couple of white lions there, but they were under quarantine for some reason.

The owner was the young woman's brother, whom she said intended "to release them into the wild."

Sure. And the Easter Bunny plays poker with Santa Claus and a couple of elves every Friday.

Bill Quimby

Canned lion hunting in RSA is something in which I have absolutely no interest.

But, if canned lion hunting is stopped, there will be far-far fewer lions in RSA, because lion cubs - now raised in RSA for petting or whatever reason - will be euthanized as sub-adults, when they lose their value.

On Planet Earth, if it pays it stays - if you don’t pay, you're gone. That is, the law of jungle in modernity.

At least with canned hunting, lions get a chance to live to adulthood. How is that different from raising a cow to adulthood and then selling it to make hamburgers at MacDonalds, or growing turkeys to adulthood and selling them at the grocery store for a fat Thanksgiving dinner?

This is what we humans do as the actual "Kings and Queens of Beasts". We exercise our dominance over the planet. The PETA folks and the like indirectly do the same, but they are just hypocrites about it – that is, they have other humans do their raising and killing for them. Even the wildlife habitat destroyed to raise corn and the like to support vegetarians has "killed" animals - including lions.

AIU,

There a lot of truth in what you wrote. What has no monetary value is soon gone.

Look guys we all know that some pretty sleazy things go on in RSA with these canned hunts. When I first looked into a lion hunt I was offered a lion that would be released 3 days before I arrived into a 300 acre enclosure with a dead donkey to snack on. I passed on that one but there was no subterfuge. It was made very clear that the lion was captive bred and basically I'd just be shooting the lion and not hunting it.

A lion hunt in RSA that was described to me just last week was far removed from that first RSA offer I received. This hunt is offered on 50,000 acres of fenced bush. The lions are bred on the property and both males and females are released. These lions are self sustaining once they are released in that they kill their own food. The lions are hunted by tracking and you are not targeting any specific lion.

You are still of course hunting a captive bred lion but I don't see this hunt being any different than most of the RSA hunting which is put and take. Actually this might be quite a rush as 50% of the encounters will result in a charge.

At about $25,000 all in I can see this being very attractive to folks wanting a lion but not being able to book a full blown lion hunt in Zim or Tanzania because of the cost, time involved or both.

The only caveat would be that the client would have to be crystal clear that what he was hunting was a captive bred lion. The operator I talked to about this was very up front about all that.

Since '15 may be the last year a US citizen can import lions I might do one as the tracking sounds like a lot of fun.

Mark

quote:

On Planet Earth, if it pays it stays - if you don’t pay, you're gone. That is, the law of jungle in modernity.

That is something everyone should pay close attention too.

At one time people knew the difference between the terms Priceless and Worthless, unfortunately that is no longer the case.

If a $$$$$$$$ value can not be assigned, many people believe that the object has no value.

quote:

You are still of course hunting a captive bred lion but I don't see this hunt being any different than most of the RSA hunting which is put and take.

Mark, you should know better than to publish a false statement like that.
If 5% of the game hunted in SA is "put and take" it is a lot.

Think about it, the logistics of moving all that game each year. Better yet where are these animals taken from?

I agree that the vast majority of game ranch hunting in RSA is not classic put-and-take.

Most hunted animals in RSA are self sustaining, although possibly after being initially stocked to re-establish a huntable population.

The likely exceptions would be lions, buffalo, sable antelope, roan antelope, scimitar-horned oryx, and uncommon colar variant springbok & the like. These animals are bred separately and stocked for put-and-take like huntng.

Also, there is some supplementation of the more common animals - like kudu, etc. - to maintain trophy quality on the smaller game ranches.

There is a large game raising and auctioning industry in RSA.

This paradigm is the likely future of hunting on this planet. It already exists, not only in RSA, but also in Europe, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South America, and North America.

We should support this model, because it is a WIN-WIN-WIN formula for wildlife-hunters-local communities.

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Originally posted by Bud Meadows:

quote:

Originally posted by Use Enough Gun:
I never watch CBS, so I wouldn't know.

I refer to this program as "60 Communists" and refuse to watch it. Aside from their liberal and gay co-hosts, their twist on current events reflects their deviant lifestyles.If you flashed a picture of Karl Marx to these guys they'd all get "chubbies" as the Brits would say, and would be uncaging their pet gerbils.

Well put!!