Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa How should I title this post.

I really do not post very much normally. But here's a subject that has really stirred up the controversy. I probably will have as many questions as comments.

This morning, Friday June 19 there will be an "ivory crushing" in New York City.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc...p....0.0.1.24641...........0.YT77x_dmSSY

The news said one elephant is poached and killed every 15 minutes. That's 35,000 a year.

Elsewhere, on June 15th Qatar Airlines announced that it will no longer transport any game, game parts, trophy's, antler, horns, guns, ammunition, not even a hunting knife. I phoned their cargo department and it is true.

Emirates Airlines has also initiated a ban but theirs seems to be more confusing and animal specific. Only certain are banned - elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos.

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I'm having some doubts any more as to who the good guys and the bad Guys are.

The African countries have failed miserably to stop the poaching. When we look back in history the wooly mammoths and mastodon's are extinct.

Are our elephants on the same course ? What's the answer ? Over the last 50 yeas some game species have declined 30%, 50%, 90%.

It seems that increasingly game animals are being farmed, both in Africa and the USA. Farms are proliferating rapidly. Is that the wave of the future ?

We pulled the bison and wild turkeys back from the brink. And some states are reintroducing species like elk in states that haven't seen any for many decades.

In China the penalty for killing a Panda is death. What has to be done to stop the hemorrhaging before more species disappear ?

Personally, I'd like to see a bounty on poachers....

I'd much more like to see a bounty on the scuz who buy poached items. Without a market, poaching ends. Hang some Japanese executives for having poached ivory, Arabs for poached rhino horn,Chinese for poached tiger parts and black bear gallbladders. A mass hanging of those fools would go a loooong way to ending the problem.

This is typical of what the feel gooders do...
Stop transporting hunters and their related item...
Hunting starts to dry up in africa...
When the game has no economic value, it is eradicated.

Poaching is very often, if not commonly, Govt. sanctioned in the countries where it is happening

The Bell tolls for African hunting, legal hunting anyway....

At this writing there are 154 views and only three responses.

Maybe I made a mistake in posting.

Sorry.

I think I'm done here.

They know you from AR already, mebbe?

I doubt it.

I'm not good at guessing.

The message is clear.

I am not good a guessing. What is the message that is so clear to you?

Mike :

You deserve a respectful answer.

First and foremost, I'm a very long time hunter and enthusiast advocate of hunting.

The message is that I am personally very distressed about the lamentable decline in game decade by decade and the deplorable lack of effective enforcement to stop poaching.

Are you speaking of the decline of game in Africa only?

There is a saying over there..."TIA"

People shrug and say "TIA" (This Is Africa). African governments are so corrupt they make Chicago Machine politics look like a gathering of devout choir boys in comparison.

You seem to equate government/politics in Africa with systems in the developed European & American world, or that is the tenor as I hear your comments.

Let me give you a "for instance" as to how so little can buy so much in African countries.

My PH was late getting me to the airport in J'burg, and the place is notoriously disorganized. I had only 40 minutes to check in with luggage and firearms and had a 2-3 hour line ahead of me. Right in front of me were some obviously wealthy and quite rude & arrogant Spaniards. They sneered at me and tossed their noses back forward.

I sized up the situation and got my remaining roll of twenty dollar bills out. I saw a black man in a dark blue blazer with Airport credential placards pinned on. I caught his eye and he came over. I handed him a twenty and pointed to the front of my first line...to get my boarding pass...

He saw I had a gun case and small suitcase. He summoned a younger man over, said something to him, and in just a few minutes I was in a wheelchair headed to the front of the line. I gave them each another twenty as my pass was handed down to me. Their eyes smiled wide, then they wheeled me to the security checkpoint. I produced another twenty, which the security person slipped into a back pocket and was wheeled around all detectors and toward my plane's boarding area after my gun case was tagged along with my suitcase for through service to Atlanta.

In all it took me $80.00 and twenty minutes to get on the plane and into a primo exit isle seat.

Now you know why the more exotic and rare game in Africa is in for rough times ahead.

T I A

I suppose that I need to clarify that I jumped the gun on views vs posts. Upon reflection it seems that views on all posts are running about the same. Many more views and very few responses. I suppose one could say "lurkers" but I want to avoid any controversial comments.

I think I'm a little bit shell shocked by the new, and proliferating bans on transporting game parts.


I'll admit that I am trying to sort it all out and haven't as yet.

It's betwixt and between ! What is the best solution to a catastrophe for our hunters and our game ?

Jcubed:

No I'm not speaking about Africa only. I'm thinking on a higher plane. I'm including all game in every country world wide.

The massive proliferation of population, coupled with environmental changes, put all of us in the same boat. Survival for our future generations.

Yeah, and I'm also upset about the US FWS prohibiting the import of any elephant parts. Lions are probably next while rhinos are basically extinct.

I killed bull elephant in 2008 and 2011, and lion in 2011. I wanted to "hurry up" before hunting them was banned. After all, I remember when tiger hunting was still legal in India.

The population in sub-Saharan Africa stands at 1 billion now. It is projected at 3 billion by 2100. The game will be unable to survive that. Perhaps we'll be left with buffalo because there are so many of them. But strip off the hype and buffalo hunting, to me, is like several days of aerobic exercise followed by shooting a big cow. Or so it seemed to me for the two I killed. If you're a halfway decent shot, there is no danger. Perhaps I can go on a PAC elephant hunt sometime.

In Zim in 2011, I was told by my PH that we could shoot any rhino or elephant poachers we encountered. Fortunately we did not encounter any, though we found a poached elephant. A friend of my PH had shot a poacher who turned out to be a govt. minister's son. Big trouble.

The average citified wuss in the US does not understand the difference between sport hunting and poaching, and I fear it is impossible to teach them.

A worthy topic for sure but one with many twists and turns. Obviously the status of African hunting is changing if you read this forum and the one on AR. Political unrest, poaching, loss of habitat and US FWS edicts have changed the nature of a "safari".
"Ivory crushing" is a stunt that is symbolic of the disdain those activists have for ALL hunting. We realize that such an act increases the price of existing ivory both black market and legal. Just the opposite of their "reasoning".
The US FWS has become an activist arm of the anti's and will continue to influence as they see fit.
The health and population of African game seems to be more dependent on the level of governmental corruption - especially with the desirable species.
Clearly this multi-edged sword of politics, poaching and habitat loss dictate getting to Africa sooner than later.

I have been called worse than lurker. I am not really sure what you were looking for. I (and probably many more like me) read a post and move on unless we think we have something real to add. I occasionally will post a "me too" post, but I try to refrain from it.

I think that what makes most adults, that should have outgrown youths idealisms, a liberal or anti-hunter is their inability to reason. Therefore they make decisions and support positions without thinking through the real outcomes versus what they desire the outcome to be. They MAY start out with good intentions, but end up with a very different result.

Hunting won't last long in Africa as you know it, period. They don't have the management in place to be generic. Maintaining hunting here in USA is tough and we are allegedly a civilized nation. Take a look at the white tail deer. It has spread like a cancer across our country, out growing it's original habitat and encroaching on other species like Mule Deer and Moose spreading disease. Now in my home hunting area they have considered shutting the season down on white tail due to low numbers from hard winters and wolf predation.
My point; game management is controlled by a bunch of fools that don't have the hunters in mind. If you have numbers in white tailed deer populations fall off so drastically by mismanagement it can and will happen to any game animal. The only solution is a pipe dream of having hunters in charge and making the call on how to manage the game animals. It won't happen.

Seems to me, instead of the ivory "crushing", a better approach would be to take all the hundreds of tons of ivory already seized and in gov't possession, and dump it on the market at little value. The price of ivory would plummet, and the investors who bought illegal ivory would lose huge amounts on their investment. That might actually discourage people from ever speculating in it again.

To clean up an even bigger problem you could start hanging any North Americans found using drugs. Without users the supply chain would dry up.

Jim