What is “Real” Hunting?

Iknow my concept of ‘real’ hunting will get mixed reactions, but killing animals, birds, or even reptiles, just for the thrill of seeing something die, or to collect a trophy goes against my grain. Of course, here in Arkansas, we don’t think much about trophy hunting, but maybe we should take a closer look at the subject. However, first let’s take a look at just a few of the worldwide excesses in current trophy hunting, and

I’ll start with Cecile the lion. The idea that you would shoot a zoo animal, which Cecile was close to being, is about as foreign to our understanding of hunting is anything we can imagine, and when you and a guide drive up to an animal and the guide says, “Shoot the big one on the left.” I don’t call that hunting. A lot of the trophy hunting for lions are “canned hunts” where lions are raised in captivity and then trotted out for the trophy hunter to shoot. How far is that from real hunting?

You might be surprised at how much of what is called hunting by some is just a step away from hunting in a zoo. Is shooting quail that have been cage-raised and just let out where you can shoot them—-if they can make them fly? Is that hunting? Or paying an African government $50,000 to $250,000 to shoot a large animal such as an elephant or a rhino? Of course, trophy ‘hunters’ aren’t hunting for food when they go on a safari and kill a leopard or a water buffalo, or go on a bird “hunt” in Argentina and shoot doves, and then don’t even bother to pick up the dead and wounded birds. Most of these doves are left to rot. What a disgrace! Sure, they will tell you some are picked up my local villagers to eat, but thousands upon thousands are just left on the ground. The world dove kill record is over 15,000 birds in one day by a single American ‘hunter’. Of course, with that many birds slaughtered for weeks on end those ‘hunters’ are involved in a passenger pigeon hunt, and what seem like an endless supply of doves will soon vanish.

You can’t legally hunt snow leopards now, but you can still buy a snow leopard pelt, killed by a poacher and smuggle it into the country. There are less than five thousand snow leopards in the wild, and their numbers are dropping at the rate of one a day. Another vanishing animal is the elephant. The elephant population is dropping dramatically, and soon it may get to the point where it can’t be reestablished. In a recent count of elephants the overall worldwide herd dropped 30% or 144,000 elephants in only 7 years. Recently, the current administration proposed to do away with the regulation that prevents Americans from bring home endanger species parts, such as elephant tusks and leopard skins. However, after an uproar, the proposal has been put on hold.

Some of the Trophy ‘Hunters’ will tell you hunting endangered species is beneficial to preserving them. This is their lie: The amount of money that a Trophy Hunter pays to shoot something like a black rhino is supposed to go into conversation efforts in that country, and it will encourage local tribes to protect the endangered species. Of course, that’s not what actually happens, and the proof is the daily loss of endangered species the villagers are supposed to be protecting. The villagers are the poachers! Poachers don’t fly in from France to shoot black rhinos and sell their horns to the Chinese!

Here in Arkansas, we love to hunt and the idea that we would kill an elephant just to slaughter a large animal is foreign to the way we hunt, or is it? Is black bear hunting trophy hunting? If it’s not then why would you want to kill a bear? Bear steaks? Come on; accept the obvious. Bear hunting is trophy hunting.

Your definition of hunting may be a little different than mine. This is what I call hunting. I grew up hunting squirrels, rabbits, ducks and other small game as food for our family, and I gigged frogs and fished nearly every day during my teens and twenties. As a teenager and as young adult, I still-hunted squirrels, which required me to move through the woods undected by the squirrels until I could get close enough for a shot. That’s a hunting skill that requires hours of practice in the woods. When I was at the University, two good friends of mine wanted to go squirrel hunting with me, and they professed to be “hunters” and showed me their shiny, new shotguns, but I really had my doubts, and we made this bet: “I will use a .22 and the two of you can use your shotguns, and I’ll bet I will kill twice as many squirrels as the two of you put together.” Long story short: it was dry and I knew better than to stomp through the woods, so I stayed on game trails and on a couple of dim roads moving very slowly. Hunting squirrels with a twenty-two is tough and hitting a moving squirrel requires a bit of skill. I struggled to kill four squirrels, but I would have killed my limit in a couple of hours with a shotgun. There were plenty of squirrels. However, my two friends stomped through those dry leaves and didn’t see a squirrel until there were walking back to the car and one ran across the road. I heard the shooting and it sound like a war, but they finally did bag the squirrel. I won the bet with four squirrels. I was a hunter who hunted, and they weren’t.

I do have one regret when I look back on my early hunting. I was 18 and squirrel hunting with my dog late in the squirrel season when the leaves were off the trees, and Sniffer treed in a thicket under a small tree. I walked up to the tree, and looked up into the face of a big bobcat. I guess it was just a reflex action, because I shot it quickly and it fell at my feet. I carried it home, skinned it, threw the carcass in the back yard for the possums to eat, and sold the skin to a fur buyer for a few dollars, but that bothered me and even now when I recount it, I regret shooting that animal. Yes, it was an Arkansas trophy kill and my justification was no better than the guy who shot Cecil the lion.

I have some suggestion about deer hunting, which will help put deer hunting back into real hunting category: (1) Stop baiting deer, prohibit deer stands, and quit using dogs. That will put you on the ground and make you a real hunter.

We won’t change the way we hunt overnight, but just as we changed our attitudes about game management from the turn of the century until now, one day trophy hunting will disappear and maybe then we’ll get back to real hunting.

Richard H. Mason of El Dorado is a syndicated columnist and author and former president of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation and the state Pollution Control & Ecology Commission. He may be reached by email at richard@ gibraltarenergy.com .