Before you view this presentation I’d recommend you read the piece I wrote last winter on “Why I Hunt”. When you’ve done that go ahead and watch this video.
The term “Trophy Hunting” is actually a misnomer of sorts. If you’ve read my piece linked above you’ll understand that in an agricultural/industrial society all hunting is recreational and all hunting produces meat. Therefore the distinction between types of hunting lies not in recreation versus subsistence but rather in one location versus another.
That is, some hunting is done locally and some hunting is done internationally. The difference is between traveling to hunt and hunting in your own backyard.
What’s interesting about this video is that it indirectly supports capitalism as a means to manage game populations. The narrator speaks specifically about countries like Namibia and South Africa. Both countries utilize a free market model for managing game populations. While each country charges the hunter a government license fee to hunt, the game itself is actually owned and priced by the outfitter or landowner.
Each animal has a value attached to it based on abundance and demand. The price the outfitter charges to hunt/kill each animal (usually on land that he either owns or manages for another landowner) is determined in the same manner that any other commodity available on the free market is.
In 2017, we hunted a concession in Namibia that was made up of a series of properties owned by a variety of people but managed by one outfitter. They were all connected to one another and totaled about 300,000 acres in size. The primary mission of the outfitter was to manage the property as a rehabilitation/refuge project for rhinos (and to expand his land holdings). There were approximately 60 white and black rhinos living on the core of the concession (about 80,000 acres) along with tens of thousands of other game animals from a variety of huntable species (not to mention the nongame species which flourish as a result too).
Of course, you don’t have to hunt to go to a country like Namibia to see the abundance of wildlife created by these conservationists/businessmen. But the landowners and outfitters would prefer you did.
Our outfitter normally caters to about sixty hunters per year who harvest an average of about three hundred head of game annually. In order to generate the revenue for the project that these sixty hunters create, the ranch would have to cater to almost ten thousand eco-tourists. That’s a huge difference in terms of expense and infrastructure for the outfitters, not to mention the impact that such a large number of people would have on the local environment in terms of water consumption, waste production etc.
When it comes to eco-tourism, at least for these African outfitters and landowners, the numbers simply don’t add up. So while they have facilities for eco-tourists their focus is on hunting because that’s where the best return on their time and energy is.
Much of the nonhunting world has been conditioned to be disgusted by this model of resource management but the fact is that in countries like Namibia, without hunting and the profit incentive their free-market model provides, most of the game would simply die off and vanish forever. Without hunters like me who are occasionally willing to shell out the dough for the adventure of hunting in a different part of the world the combination of poaching, habitat loss and apathy would drive many species to extinction.
It’s a fact, we conserve and nurture that which we value. Destroy the value of the commodity and the incentive to do either vanishes.
Photos by Francis & Hunting Party
So should we hunt antifa members so the group doesnt go extinct?
…he asked while reloading magazines from a day at the “range”
Only, this argument stems from a false premise. In that it is the animal that needs saving.
It is us that need saving. An when man kills for sport he is showing his own depreivity. I say let the poacher have at their stupid feast. The African coon is lower then an Elephant. Stooping to their level of depreivity wont save humanity.
Anonymous, hold still for a second while I take aim
No argument from me. Animal numbers have to be controlled to what their available habitat can support. Wildlife biologists can do the math and if there are 1000 elephants living in an area that can only support 500 the elephants will either starve or be forced to ruin neighboring farmers crops. We see that in the US when coyotes and deer have to start living in our backyards and eating our shrubs and pets.
I think a lot of bad press could be avoided IF licenses for ‘big game’ were restricted to bow hunting. The guide would have a rifle of course for safety or to bring down a wounded animal, but even liberals aren’t going to freak out if a hunter has to get close enough to use a bow on a lion or cape buffalo . Shooting an animal with a telescopic sight equipped rifle with shooting sticks isn’t very challenging.
These leftist don’t care about animals in Africa or any where else . They do care about controlling and regulating men who do like to hunt. It’s all about control and power to hurt other people. So I say hunt all you want just be careful who you tell.
I have no issues with bow hunting. I used to do quite a bit of it when I was younger. Arrows and bullets technically kill the same way – by hemorrhaging. But bullets are better as they break bone, and create wider wound channels. In short, they kill more efficiently and the animal rarely suffers if shot placement is done properly. For me, I like to see game die as quickly and humanely as possible. So I’ll stick to rifles – with or without telescopic sights.
As for “bad press” it doesn’t matter what hunters do for the same reason it doesn’t matter what conservatives/libertarians do in general. The mission of the press is to demonize us and dismantle the civilizations that have grown up around our culture. In short – I no longer give a fuck what the ‘press’ has to say about this topic (or pretty much anything else) anymore.
“Thou shall not kill” doesn’t only apply to humans….
I think the real interpretation is “Thou shalt not murder.”
And animals kill everyday. That’s how they survive.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
As an income challenged homesteader striving toward self sufficiency, hunting and fishing are a large part of my livelihood. It provides me with a very significant part of the food I eat every year. I suppose I could abandon my lifestyle and go back to the rat race and take up wage slavery again, then the argument that all hunting is recreational might be valid.
As the steward of my property it is in my best interest to insure that I have a thriving and abundant deer population to harvest. Perhaps an argument could be made that what I’m engaged in is not hunting, but animal husbandry. If that’s the case then raising beef cattle is also recreational.
Not sure I would call raising cattle recreational 🙂 but from the standpoint of simply surviving it isn’t ‘necessary’. You COULD live on a diet of dandelions and soybeans and ‘survive’/subsist although it would be a sad life and I wouldn’t recommend it.
You are right about one thing though – modern game management is akin to animal husbandry – even on most public lands. In most places, we manage game to strike a balance between population and what the available habitat can sustain. It’s not called ‘wildlife management’ by coincidence.
I suppose the fuel wood I fell, skid, buck, split and stack that I use to heat my home with is also recreational.
In this day and age living rural and heating your house with wood is unnecessary. You don’t have to do it. You can live an easier life in an urban environment with electric heat, food stamps and clothing from the thrift store. Hell, you don’t even have to work. Everything you are doing you are doing because you want to not because you have to. It might be laborious but it’s recreational living nonetheless.
Most lifestyle choices one makes are optional. Whether it’s self reliance or sucking Uncle Sugar’s tit. By extending this logic to it’s conclusion you can consider any and all efforts made to survive as recreational. Because owning and operating an automobile are unnecessary does that make your daily commute recreational?
The fact that I cut the middlemen out of the equation, the feedlot, the slaughterhouse, the butcher, and instead of an exchange of currency I take direct responsibility for the food on my plate does not necessarily make what I’m doing recreation.
Yes, it does.
Your problem is you’re not thinking like a communist. A want is recreational to one degree or another and if you classify it as a need you now have to defend your position and since you can’t PROVE it’s a need (ie: 100% necessary for your survival) you automatically lose the argument.
Now. Off to the gulag with you.
Kapeesh?
BTW – I know it doesn’t seem like it but I’m on your side.
In spite of 10 years of public education I’m still unable to think like a commie. I think I might have been exposed to too much Rockwell, Rothbard, Sowell, Hayek and Mises.
Recreational breathing?? Everything we are doing, is not because we have to. For the first time in my life I am not heating with wood, the money saved paid for the groceries, uncle Sugar ain’t very generous. Sound game management is exactly that. A bunch of hunters and shooters got together, and decided that every bullet sold could be taxed to create habitat and game reintroduction programs for future generations. It worked so well in some places that animals were overpopulating, and causing massive damage to the environment and vehicle accidents. Culling became necessary and the only conclusion. The money was there, and hunters took the challenge, and the king (state) profited first.
I need to hunt!! How else can I get 60 lbs. of meat on my table for the price of a tag. I have never heard of dandelion gravy, or sprout jerky. If I WANT antibiotic, gmo meat I go to the store. I want clean wild (roundup ready) gmo corn n clover fed venison!! (dangit I said want again). I don’t eat everything I kill. Some furbearers are not that tasty. I don’t like wasting meat, but other critters can have a free meal on me. What does one do with a coyote carcass if there are no Somalis in the neighborhood??
All seriousness aside. If a man wants to save his money, go to the other side of the world to jump off a mountain, what does that have to do with me. If you want to save your money, travel to the other side of the world kill something that you deem worthy, (after looking at dozens unworthy) why should I even have an opinion on it. If I go out n in my backyard, and whack what I prefer to eat, because I NEED proper food, what does that have to do with anyone that aint at supper?? Nancy Pants Commies think they have a feel good opinion that because they don’t eat live stuff no one else can kill and eat food. Colonel Sanders would never kill a chicken, those nuggets come from a box!
The programs through licensing, and money being put into the economy over there is the revenue to keep poachers out. Is killing poachers proper game management??
Since I know you whack critters great and small, I’d like to ask you a question or two.
E mail@ yahoo
I do a post @ [email protected]
“Is killing poachers proper game management?”
In some African countries, the answer to that question is ‘yes’.
Thanks for this, Francis. Raised in Northern Canada, I was taught to eat what I kill by hunting and fishing. In other words, don’t kill an animal unless I intend to use it for food.
Until now, I never realized how organized “trophy hunting” can actually benefit wild animals in the long run. It’s a sad indictment to how humans have overpopulated this planet that we have to shoot animals to save them, ironic as that sounds.
Great article.
foxy,
this is a good article but i think we’re on a slippery slope–
yesterday we hunted 4 food,today we hunt for trophies–
what’s next,city boys hunting backyard pets w/2×4 s?
‘Trophies’ and ‘food’ are the same things since they both get eaten. I’d be a lot more concerned about city boys with 2x4s. Those fuckers are dangerous.