Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Education required, gentlemen

You could put a trash dumpster on every block and they would continue to throw their trash in the street. That's the way they are.

Birdwatcher will be along in a bit...

Birdwatcher doesn't know whether to wind his ass or scratch his watch on this subject. In that other thread he said he was finished responding anyway, didn't he?

He's like TRH...LAST WORD

Birdy,

A few things here I just have to comment on. Tanzania has some big maned lions, especially around the Serengeti, so a cat with a Rock Star hairdo is not necessarily a canned RSA lion.

Next, note the comment about ending hunting, both sport and native due to habitat loss and ILLEGAL hunting. That illegal stuff is poaching, much of it for meat. That is what decimates the numbers. Snares are indiscriminate. I've seen its effects first hand in Zambia. The locals use game as their own grocery store and regulations be damned. Was in on the capture of a dozen poachers in one day. Four here, two there, then another three - that sort of thing. They didn't care that poaching was illegal. When caught, they kinda shrugged it off.

Lastly, I don't see what a 21 day minimum for a lion hunt does for the numbers except to make them very, very expensive. That limits those hunts to the ultra rich, and I guess fills the government coffers.

I'm happy you think it had any effect one way or another.

What it did for a lot of folks in the sticks in those places was to give them a chance to meet actual Americans, a common comment was "we like you Americans, only your government we don't like", but then, that probably applies to lots of places that never had Peace Corps.

What it did for me and thousands of others is give them a chance to live in those places, under those circumstances.

What it was for me specifically was a splendid three-year adventure. Back then before cell phones you really did disappear from the world at your work site for months at a time (you had to come out at least quarterly for a 5cc shot of hepatitis gamma gobulin). In my case no running water, no electricity, nothing but local foods, no regular contact with outsiders or outside support.

I did get sick, everyone did to some extent, and I weighed fifteen pounds less for the duration while there than even my high school weight (where I had been an actual distance runner ).

In that setting, I was a good teacher, teaching to British "O" level curricula and standards out there on a chalkboard in the boonies. (I learned to write with both hands, there were no textbooks but mine, I practically had to write one on the chalk board).

When working with the vaccination team I can state for sure that several extra infants and kids got vaccinated thanks to my personal input.

All of that, and with all the truly remarkable stuff I got to do, and with the coup and associated hardships we had to endure, it totally rocked

Coming back to the 'States again was much harder than going. No one here could relate.

Anyways, that's what I got out of it. Make of it whatever you want.

It IS different today, the world is a harsher place, attacks on American women are more frequent everywhere, Radical Islam has penetrated even West Africa, and worst of all Peace Corps gives you friggin' satellite cell phones as they must so they can track and communicate with you because they are responsible for your safety.

Heck, even your mom can call you anytime (as mine prob'ly would have done pretty much every day )

Birdwatcher

Well hey, thanks for a reasoned response.

It is a puzzle to me why Botswana would shut down most sport hunting in response to poaching depleting antelope populations. I could be wrong, but having known some Botswanans, I had the impression that Botswana had its act together, relative to the surrounding Black African nations anyway.

Casual snaring to supplement the diet or for local sale seems damnably hard to prevent. It was widely practiced where I was too, as a normal and traditional part of subsistence farming, and what was captured was typically killed and eaten, down to the rodent-size level. In fact little kids would customarily harvest the village weaver bird colonies for grown nestlings much as our kids might collect wild apples. One evening in a remote village, a freshly snared and still warm porcupine was butchered and cooked for myself and a buddy before our eyes (it was so strong-tasting as to be almost inedible, but good manners dictated we eat of it).

The twenty-one day thing puzzled me too, maybe that recommendation was to allow local lion populations to be thoroughly canvassed before choosing the most appropriate target. But then, if that is the case, why shouldn't the PH's be allowed to do that independently (as I presume they do already) before the client comes in to shoot?

Birdwatcher

I have heard that Botswanna was paid off by the WWF and other Anti's that convinced them that photo safaris would solve all the problems.

The poaching I described above was organized meat hunting, complete with drying racks and hundreds of pounds of meat. They would pile it up on bicycles and walk the bikes out of the parks and GMA to a road and get picked up and the meat went to market.

The 21 day thing in most counties is a nod to revenue. Cats are glamour game and the allocations are small. These countries have them, and want the hunters in country spending $, so they make it that way. Also, must give the PH's a reasonable number of days to produce one. Takes the pressure off.

Hard to imagine now but I did not have a camera while in Africa (this was way before digital, and even those who had 'em took photos only sparingly, sources of film often being far away).

North of the Mission Hospital where I worked school holidays was a sparsely populated ninety-mile stretch of plains reaching to the next paved road, the middle fifty miles of this stretch being wooded Savannah devoid of even dirt tracks for vehicles. Even the Mission Hospital had no accurate maps as to what was back there.

But, like I expect most wild areas in Africa it was exploited by the surrounding locals. In the patches of forest where oil palms grew, the fermented sap of this tree was distilled into crude alcohol, and poachers killed and dried "bush meat", both dried meat and drums of alcohol being carried out on the heads of porters who made a poor living that way.

Me and a buddy of mine took a week to cross it on foot, in the rainy season so we would have both cloud cover and water. We brought little food, depending upon the customary hospitality of any anticipated locals. We did pack bags of ordinary sugar (bought ahead of time at a supermarket in neighboring Togo) in our backpacks to give out as gifts in return for lodging and hospitality, sugar being a valued commodity back in the sticks.

To cross at all we first had to ask permission via the bush telegraph through an African acquaintance who lived at the edge of the plains, and then wait each day of the trip for people going in our same general direction as we would otherwise have become hopelessly lost.

Walking on established footpaths was the only option as the elephant grass (that was what we called it) was at that season both dense and sharp-edged, crowding the path, about five feet in height.

Fortunately my buddy did have a camera.

Anyhoo... this is my favorite Africa photo of the few I have...

A poachers' collection of huts where we stayed one night, somewhere in the boonies, Ghana, 1981. These guys brung out the best they had for the photo...



This is the best blow=up I can get of the low res scan of my old print. The gun is a Greener smoothbore on a Martini-Henry action. These guys reloaded round lead balls over black powder in the brass shells.



Besides running lines of snares what they said they did is go out with miner's carbide lanterns at night, spotlighting game.

That trip was the closest I personally ever came to wild elephants, or was told so. At one point we came to a place where it looked like two large objects had pushed through the grass across the savannah, crossing and travelling perpendicular to our footpath and passing on out of sight. The guy showing us the way, a fast-walking poacher carrying a gun (a crude locally produced percussion muzzleloader) and with a small black and white dog trotting at his heels, told us elephants had passed that way the night before.

Note the long sleeves, the most valued article of clothing back there that we saw were London Fog raincoats and the like, the tall grass crowding the paths was friggin' sharp, and a substantial raincoat gave good protection against the grass as well as conferring some protection against tsetses and other biting flies.

The poachers told us they generally didn't mess with the elephants, not having anything big enough to shoot one.

At the time remnant populations of both elephants and lions were said to still exist in that area, I am sure they are gone now though.

Birdwatcher

You say race is irrelevant in regard to general qualities yet place "Germans near the top."

The best and brightest leaving isn't the complete answer either as this is a centuries' old phenomenon.

Anyway, I have digressed enough.

No, it was Jorge says that about the Germans, I have problems with any theory that doesn't elevate the Native Irish to Master Race status

And the "best and brightest"; to me the salient point is that there IS a best and brightest. Like that former Zimbawean village boy now studying Biochemistry in university here and wondering why the heck Americans are all bent out of shape about a dead lion.

Others see "races", I see a crapload of individuals.

Birdwatcher

Man is a product of heredity and environment.

I've been all over the world, South America, Africa, Asia. You will find the poor, peasant, natives living in primitive conditions throughout.

Part is poverty, part is IQ, part is race, part is religion. There is just a certain segment of the population that doesn't have the gray matter upstairs.

All of the underdeveloped countries, and some developed, have similar circumstances - certain groups like the aborigines, primitives, still partially nomadic.

I'm not as bashful about sounding racist. There IS something to believing some races are just not as capable as others.

That is EXACTLY what happened and they are already re-considering, particularly with the amount of destruction the overpopulated elephants are doing and of course, since there is a LOT LESS money to pay rangers due to the photo safaris which bring in about 1/10th of what sport hunting does, the poachers are running rampant.

Could centuries of malnutrition have contributed to the lack of or development of intelligence or higher IQ in some of these areas?

Problem solving is non existent and instead the round peg just falls through the square hole.

The experiment involved 5 Obama son's, a cage, a banana, a ladder and, crucially, a water hose.

The 5 Obama son's would be locked in a cage, after which a banana was hung from the ceiling with, fortunately for the Obama son's (or so it seemed…), a ladder placed right underneath it.

Of course, immediately, one of the Obama son's would race towards the ladder, intending to climb it and grab the banana. However, as soon as he would start to climb, the sadist (euphemistically called “scientist”) would spray the Obama son with ice-cold water. In addition, however, he would also spray the other four Obama son's…

When a second Obama son's was about to climb the ladder, the sadist would, again, spray the Obama son with ice-cold water, and apply the same treatment to its four fellow inmates; likewise for the third climber and, if they were particularly persistent (or dumb), the fourth one. Then they would have learned their lesson: they were not going to climb the ladder again – banana or no banana.

In order to gain further pleasure or, I guess, prolong the experiment, the sadist outside the cage would then replace one of the Obama son's with a new one. As can be expected, the new guy would spot the banana, think “why don’t these idiots go get it?!” and start climbing the ladder. Then, however, it got interesting: the other four Obama son's, familiar with the cold-water treatment, would run towards the new guy – and beat him up. The new guy, blissfully unaware of the cold-water history, would get the message: no climbing up the ladder in this cage – banana or no banana.

When the beast outside the cage would replace a second Obama son with a new one, the events would repeat themselves – Obama son runs towards the ladder; other Obama son's beat him up; new Obama son does not attempt to climb again – with one notable detail: the first new Obama son, who had never received the cold-water treatment himself (and didn’t even know anything about it), would, with equal vigour and enthusiasm, join in the beating of the new guy on the block.
When the researcher replaced a third Obama son, the same thing happened; likewise for the fourth until, eventually, all the Obama son's had been replaced and none of the ones in the cage had any experience or knowledge of the cold-water treatment.

Then, a new Obama son was introduced into the cage. It ran toward the ladder only to get beaten up by the others. Yet, this monkey turned around and asked “why do you beat me up when I try to get the banana?” The other four Obama son's stopped, looked at each other slightly puzzled and, finally, shrugged their shoulders: “Don’t know. But that’s the way we do things around Fergason”…

The "normal" ratio of adult male lions in a wild lion population is around 30%. In Zambia in those lion populations protected and sustained by hunting it reportedly got down to 10%.

The question arises as to what is the normal annual mortality rate of male lions as this directly determines how many survive to age six ie. legitimately huntable males.

Given the sex ratio at birth is close to 50/50, obviously about half of all male lion cubs do not survive long enough to make that normal 30% of the population, likely most of this mortality occurs shortly after leaving the birth pride.

OK given that countable 30% male of the whole lion population probably starts at around age two. If we assume a mortality rate for adult male lions not owning a pride at 25% per year (likely an underestimate of mortality) only about one in three wild male lions out there would be in the huntable age 6 and above age bracket.

If male lion mortality is greater than 25% annually, the proportion of age 6+ males would be correspondingly less, maybe as low as the 10% take recommended by Oxford University people.

Obviously, if wild male lion numbers fell by 2/3 from 30% of the whole lion population to 10% of the whole lion population as occurred in Zambia, more than the 6+ age bracket was being taken.

Birdwatcher

Birdy,

Your conclusions are inaccurate because your assumptions are speculative.

You "assume" 25% fatalities per year among male lions with no evidence. In fact I suspect the mortality rate, after they become adults, is very low for a few years and then accelerates as they acquire or attempt to conquer prides, and gets still higher as they get old.

Further, a reduction from 30% of the population to 10% doesn't withstand the reality test. I don't know about Botswana, but the statistics for Zimbabwe-the total number of male lions taken by hunters each year compared with the total estimated population--come nowhere close to accounting for 20% of the estimated total population, whether male, female, cubs or LGBT lions are counted.

If you haven't read the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, you should. It's not considered a politically incorrect book, for reasons that escape me...

Indeed, out of general interest, I've been looking all over for survivorship curves for male (as opposed to female) lions. Surely young adult male lions are most often obliged to occupy the most marginal of habitats.

The Jouberts, those famous Belgian filmmakers out of Botswana, claim only one in eight males make it to "adulthood", however they define that.

But, if one is out searching for a 6+ year old male lion, and one finds twice as many younger male lions in the whole area population, then my speculative mortality stats would hold approximately true overall.

Anyhoo... the 10% figure (also quoted as 8%) comes from a hunted lion population in Zambia.

Birdwatcher