Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire MN. dentist kills Cecil the lion in Zim - growing outrage.

That lion died the minute they put a collar on and named him Cecil. Just give it a few days and this will be tied to Trump.

I'm expecting that after the hoopla dies down, some rather hefty bribes to the appropriate officials will make this all go away as far as Zimbabwe is concerned.

I am expecting the PH will have to look for another line of work, if nothing else due to the stain on his reputation in the eyes of the international hunting community.

The only wild card here is if our own Administration decides to get involved to create even more distraction over here. If so, extradition of the Dentist as per Zimbabwe's request does not seem all that far fetched.

Birdwatcher

Handing over a 'rich' white American to black Africans? I bet there was a group, jerk off session in the oval office last night.

Yep. Who are the folks who decide what stories people hear about and whether or not a story will have legs? Whoever they are, they enjoy inordinate power.

Just wait until our own Injustice Department gets involved and charges him with a criminal violation of the Lacey Act. The Lacy Act makes it a federal felony to cross state lines for the purpose or in the act of a game violation.

They used it four or five years ago to prosecute a similar situation of some guy who had killed a bear or something, the details escape me, in Russia.

I don't know what the guy knew or didn't know, but I can see how it could happen easily. The game laws in Zimbabwe are Byzantine to say the least and one must rely on the guides and owners for compliance.

Quicker than I thought, "mother jones" is spouting about Trumps sons being big game hunters. African exotics, of course.


Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.......

Donald Trump, Jr., is a hunter and very low key about it.

From the Zimbabwe Game Department and their posting over on Accurate Reloading:

We have been following these threads with great interest. we emphasize we are advocates of "sustainable utilization " as a conservation tool , some Basic facts that have been verified by several reliable and credible sources :-

The operator / professional hunters in question had a valid TR2 form stamped by the Zimbabwe parks & wildlife authority. This form once stamped allows a hunt to take place, "authority to hunt"

Each and every property or hunting concession to be hunted by the registered operator/client / professional hunter during the course of conducting the hunt must be recorded on this TR2 form

All hunting Quota's are issued by Zimbabwe parks Authority, and ARE AREA SPECIFIC!!! The property in question where the lion was hunted is "Antonette", which incidentally was legally owned by Peter Johnston /Rosslyn Safaris, and was taken without compensation during the land grab. This could get Any off take of animals be it for cropping, management or trophy hunting purposes has to be applied for and approved. The land owner is then issued with a "quota" which is valid from 01/01 -31/12 of each year. Few clients fully understand the different land classifications Zimbabwe has for its hunting industry.

1.government hunting concessions
2.communal areas - campfire or tribal areas generally with human settlement within these areas
3.private land - farms,ranches, conservancies

All these areas have different regulations and rules. There is no one standard set of laws that govern safari hunting across these land classifications. Naturally this is where the foreign client assumes his hunt should or will be legal and be compliant in local laws etc. His link being the professional hunter for everything that happens on the ground during the hunt, and in most cases the "operator" or company he has contracted to hunt through would have done all the paper work for his hunt, TR2 / hunt registration etc

99% of clients will never have had sight of the areas quota, again here he is generally relying on/be guided accordingly by his professional hunter. So client arrives in camp, he has probably not had sight of this TR2, as these are acquired ahead of time, usually before the clients even arrive in Zimbabwe, all necessary information is usually taken from the safari contract form or is forwarded by client / booking agent to operator / professional hunter. He would have his basic list of main species he would be hunting. Off they go hunting.as soon as you leave camp and have rifles prepared,tracker etc. on your vehicle you are deemed to be hunting, have the intent to hunt, look for, tracks stalk etc.

Here is where the problem starts... Even if this client/hunter had shot a bushbuck, hyena, or whatever other animal/bird etc for that matter, that was not on the approved hunting quota for the said property for that current hunting year. They are technically hunting legally in terms of the authority to hunt , the valid TR2 form, but he has just killed an animal without the relevant approved and allocated quota / tag for that specific property. You have just poached that species . The onus is on the professional hunter conducting the safari, and the buck stops with him period!!


1.there is no law gazetted in Zimbabwe that specifically forbids the shooting of collard animals. It's the unwritten rule amongst "professional hunters" should the collar be visible that these animals are off limits.

2.of the 65 or so lions that have been collard in matabeleland north ( hwange, gwaai,Victoria falls,etc) in the past decade or so, 35 have died, with 24 of these being shot by either sport hunters, on problem animal control - cattle killers, man eaters etc . In the event one is killed, it's professional to return the collard to the research organization with date,location etc the animal was killed etc

3.the professional hunter/land owner did themselves no favors by trying to destroy the lions collar. No lion tag/quota , there was mention of "quota transfer ".. This is absolutely diabolical , but unfortunately is has and still happens. That's a lengthy topic which we will go in depth about in a separate post.

4. Did the client actually know the operator / land owner had no lion on quota? We very much doubt it.

5. Did the operator / professional hunter probably take a chance, hell yes!! If the lion had been cleanly killed, would we be in the PR storm we find ourselves in... Most probably not.

6.the operator and the land owner appeared in court today in hwange, and were granted bail.

Unfortunately some operators and professional hunters continue to "manipulate the system", quota transfers between areas, unsustainable quotas, with the blessing of government offices and / or use of influential political partners, moral and/or scientific conservation ethics are sacrificed for financial gain. Until there is a complete and thorough restructuring in the relevant ministry, government departments, and even our local hunting associations to a lesser degree our wildlife heritage will remain at risk.

JorgeI, I saw the Ivan Carter post this morning, as I follow him too. Most of us here seem to know his points and agree.

I can't help noticing that none of the bleating crowd complaining about this lion made any reference to the woman TV producer who was pulled out of a car and killed within the past month, by guess what? These are not pussy cats that one cuddles.

The best review of the facts I have yet seen is by what appears to be a knowledgable local. It is long, but well worth reading:

http://www.africanhunteronline.com

One point made, which I suspect is accurate, is that local park officials may have been on the take and complicit in standing by while the lion (and client) were set up. That would not surprise me at all.

BTW, I was under the impression that back in the early days of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, the lion population was completely wiped out by cattle farmers. Obviously, there are lions there now, but I am not sure what happened. Could conservationists and sportsmen had had anything to do with that? I cannot believe that the government did.

Sounds like Zim Game Dept ain't nearly as much interested in the American hunter as the Internet is.

Anjin: I had that link on my email this morning as well, but Ivan's seemed more "to the point" and less wordy. I've also posted (above) what Zim Parks had to say. As o your query of lion repopulation of the Lowveldt, that is absolutely true. Conservationists and hunters, along with the gov't and private organizations like DSC, etc, had a LOT to do with the repopulation once the cattle was removed. J

Things ain't looking up fer the Dentist that's for sure.

Hard to feel sympathy tho for a guy who shot a bear 40 miles away from legal, and then hauls it to legal where he lies about where it was shot. Says here that was an actual felony conviction in 2006 tho I dunno if that is true.

http://www.inquisitr.com/2291793/wa...lion-has-felony-record-for-killing-bear/

Whatever the facts of this lion thing, sounds like the guy is facing a perfect storm of bad karma. (From Anjin's link...)

The remains of Cecil, the 13-year-old dark-maned lion who had become a sort of rock star in Hwange national park were found in July of 2015. He was allegedly baited out of the park so that he could be killed legally. Legally, if, of course the land-owner, one Honest Ndlovu and the PH - Theo Bronkhurst - had a lion on quota or on licence. (If they didn’t - which was the case - there is an unsavoury practice known as a “quota transfer” where an animal shot in an area without a quota is recorded as having been shot elsewhere and needless to say this is illegal and unethical in the extreme.)

Birdwatcher

Jorge1,

At one stage, weren't potential clients being urged to avoid booking hunts on areas that had been stolen during Government land grabs? I seem to recall there was a question whether such hunts could ever be considered "legal"?

Regards,

Peter

Who cares? In a world starved for "dirty laundry", this is soiled underwear. You have to love a wild animal with a name. That is all it takes to bring this incident to the front page.

A school bus going over a cliff, full of school children has no value to news wires, but a lion named Cecil, now that's news...

Pete: Yes but for a different reason, if the property was owned by one of Mugabe's thugs then US clients at least were subject to prosecution under the Lacey Act. The other problem stemmed from non-Zimbabweans, selling hunts in Zim and the law there is clear on that. Zim in reality has some very good laws, regulations and requirements for PHs, but like everywhere else, there are scumbags around. I've never had an issue and literally thousands of Americans, Brits, Russians, etc go hunting there every year with no issue. Mugabe KNOWS where the money comes from and foreign hunters are left alone.

The question of is lion hunting with a bow a stunt was answered yesterday:

"
How likely is it that an expert archer can kill a lion with a bow using just one arrow?



100%, in seconds."

So you can put that aside for the future.

I am constantly amazed at what people consider "news."

I can stomach politicians, but these journalists today need to be tarred and feathered.





Travis

In their defense, they can't report on the amount of information coming out of the administration, so their target load is pretty small.

I did have a bowel movement the other day, but as of yet, I haven't seen the press release on it.

Yes, I recall that, but I also seem to recall the Parks management were very unhappy with the situation and there was a lot of legal wrangling whether the new "owners" could legally sell hunts on the ground..

I get the impression that certain people within the Parks department are still very old school, but the issue comes from Robber Bobs cronies being "parachuted" in above and below them, and also into "management" positions within the Safari company's themselves..

One thing I have no doubt is that had the denist been a supporter/crony of Robber Bob, then this would have been a non issue..

reagdrs,

Peter

Let its controllers know how you feel, like Schulman, Weiner, Levy, Rosenthal, Gross, et al.