Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Education required, gentlemen

Ya know Doc, and this is gonna sound ironic coming from me, I find Guns, Germs and Steel to be speculative

I find historical facts to be on point, hence, we didn't use scientists from Africa for NASA....

Zambia Shmambia! In Zimbabwe the number of lions taken annually by trophy hunters is nowhere near enough to account for only one of eight reaching adulthood.

When I hunted out of Camp Mukanga in Dande North, we figured there were four prides of lions, based on tracks and evidence from our trial cameras. We could guesstimate how many were in each pride. That many lions needed to eat 765 buffalo each year, we calculated. The place was crawling with buffalo and the young male lions, which form their own small prides, certainly did not have to live in any "marginal areas."

And, contrary to the opinion of some, the PH did not know where all of them were or have them pinned down to specific places.

First off, congrats on some wonderful experiences which I'm sure are the envy of most here

On the topic of wild lion population demographics, somewhere all of this data must have been compiled, it is hard for me to believe lions haven't been exhaustively studied.

One would think that prides of females, in addition to having good survivorship once past the cub stage, would be expected to over time eventually increase to the point where they occupy all the best habitat, said prides accompanied by dominant pride males. But apparently your experience has been there was also room for groups of bachelor males in those same areas.

Another point to consider is that for the take to be sustainable, the harvest of 6+ year-old males could not exceed the annual recruitment of males into that same age class. If the annual take were only a fraction of the whole population of 6+ year-old males, but exceeded even marginally the number of new males entering that age class each year, then the population would decline.

I can't think of any other species where the take of some individuals also affects the survivorship of the other individuals in the social group. There has GOT to be a good and current source book for all of this data out there somewhere, compiling recent studies, if there ain't, then someone should write one.

Within Zimbabwe, from what I understand, the hunting of lions at the Hwange Preserve where the now infamous 'Cecil' was shot, had been suspended previously for a few years due to a perceived overtake and subsequent decline in lion populations.

Again, congrats on some awesome hunts

Birdwatcher

I do not believe anyone could browse enough on the internet to be a African Hunter which knows it all. There is something about experiencing the hunt for your self which could never be learned on the internet. Pictures are worth a thousand words but experience is worth millions.

This is pretty well done IMO.

Absolutely YES.

I thought so, too, and have two questions to those in the know:

1) Was the lion hunted by Dr. Palmer an "ideal huntable male lion" by the definition given by DSC as "at least six years of age and not known to head a pride or be part of a coalition heading a pride with dependent cubs.”?

2) Was the lion hunted by Dr. Palmer hunted in accordance to for example the Safari Club International Hunter Code of ethics?

As far as we know...

1) Despite his advanced age, the lion the dentist shot was a dominant pride male with cubs. So while certainly at the very end of its productive lifetime by any measure, one clause of the DSC standards was not followed.

2) How the lion was actually taken does not seem to have been unethical: It came to a bait, at night, within bow range of Dr. Palmer. I'm sure that everyone, including Dr. Palmer, wishes that the resulting arrow wound had proven more immediately fatal. The lion was found and killed with a rifle 40 hours later.

Why the hunt was illegal was because the private property (adjoining the Hwange Park) upon on which the lion was first hit with an arrow did not have a lion quota (an allocated take of lions) at that time, hence taking the lion in that location at that time was legally an act of poaching.

This violation appears to be the basis of the criminal charges against the landowner and the PH. Dr Palmer has stated he did not know that the taking of the lion was illegal at that location when he participated in the hunt. It does seem that he would be held at least initially liable under similar circumstances in here in the US.

Whether Palmer knew this particular lion hunt was illegal or not, there is some considerable irony here.

Some years previously Dr. Palmer had been convicted here in the US of illegally shooting a black bear in a zone where the taking of bears was illegal, transporting the carcass 40 miles to a legal zone, and then lying to Fish and Game officers about where the bear had been taken.

According to some folks over at Accurate Reloading this had been a guided hunt. Dr. Palmer and two other individuals involved lied at the check station, and then reportedly lied repeatedly during the subsequent investigation.

Birdwatcher

Well you don't know. If you actually read the DSC policy on cubs it clearly states "not known to have cubs". Unless the cubs are present and in the vicinity, that is virtually impossible. Aging remains the prime standard for taking a male lion (at least 6.5 years or older) and even this is hard to do, particularly if the lion is +/- the six year mark. "Cecil" was thirteen plus so in this case he was a perfect lion to shoot. The ONLY, ONLY, bone of contention of this whole mess is whether the legitimate quota the Professional Hunter had was for the area the lion was taken. Bottom line this whole mess was blown out of proportion by the anti-hunting crowd in order to ban ALL hunting and to port more funds into their cooked-books Global Warming bogus tactics. Even UC BERKLEY GETS IT:
"As points out, regulated hunting—even poorly regulated hunting, as seems the case with Cecil in Zimbabwe—isn’t the driving force in the decline of the African lion, which has fallen from a continental population of around 200,000 to fewer than 20,000 today. Unregulated hunting is the main culprit: Industrial-scale poaching and bushmeat hunting."

link

"Sigh"....

Let it be known that I wrote....

So while certainly at the very end of its productive lifetime by any measure, one clause of the DSC standards was not followed.

So your bolded quote should properly have been...

So while certainly at the very end of its productive lifetime by any measure, one clause of the DSC standards was not followed.

With respect to that particular lion, it does seem likely that it was indeed well-known locally, being a favored subject for the people driving the vehicles for the tourist photo-ops in the adjacent park.

Presumably when hunting over bait at night, the target is illuminated at least well enough to determine the general characteristics of the lion, and this lion was exceptional.

Also, the illegal hunt was arranged adjacent to that particular lion's territory.

Whether all that translates to a purposeful take of that one individual I dunno.

Birdwatcher

If by some happenstance all the 6+ year old male lions were wiped out, younger males would take over some of the prides.

There are even prides run by females. An example is the Kanyemba Pride. Kanyemba is a small village in the very northeast corner of Zimbabwe, bounded by Mozambique on the East and the great Zambezi River on the North.

Sometime around 2010 a native poacher shot the head lioness in the face with birdshot, which was the cause, it was said, of the pride turning to eating humans. After many misadventures, including a game scout being eaten, seven of the nine lions were killed and the other two, they told me in 2011, stopped preying on humans--maybe. There was a story about this pride in a recent issue of "Sports Afield."

Since then, it has been reported as late as 2015 by Ivan Carter that the pride is still active in preying upon humans.

None of this, of course, appears in the Bambi-esque media.

To the "Cecilians," black lives simply don't matter. They matter even less to the Mugabe government. All hail the great Cecil.

Getting to go after them would be an epic hunt indeed

I have heard that unknown numbers of humans are probably still taken by lions in less publicized areas, particularly refugees of various sorts.

Back in my own Africa years, just prior to the third very harsh dry season that dried even my own "personal" seep in the bush that provided steady (albeit muddy) water free of prior contributions by other humans, a German team providentially came through and drilled a borehole well in the next village.

(Much to my chagrin my students from there never told me this while the Germans were still there, I coulda cadged at least a few cold sympathy beers at least )

So, for two months at least ,every evening I walked two miles up the mountain to that village to get drinking water. A student's family there, poorer than friggin' church mice themselves, always insisted upon feeding me...

(at about the same time each evening, sitting with them in their mud-walled compound, I would look up to see probably the same satellite passing over, a study in contrasts if ever there was one).

...the point being that every night I would walk two miles back down the mountain, on the dirt road through the forest, no lantern, no flashlight, nary a care in the world.

The locals would NEVER do this. On moonlit nights you could hear the hubbub down the mountain from my village a mile away; drums, laughter and voices. On dark nights it was quiet as a tomb.

Their stated reason for avoiding travel at night and darkness in general was a fear of witches and witchcraft.

Thinking back, I'm guessing that a past history of cohabiting with big cats and venomous snakes had more than a little to do with that particular cultural norm.

Me? I must have been immortal, of course

Birdwatcher

A lot of people are killed by lions. Many never get reported. They are just missing. As for refugees, something like 1/3 of the former population of Zimbabwe has left the country due to the poverty induced by Mugabe. Many or most flee on foot thtough part of the Kruger Park to South Africa. It is said that lions eat many of these.

But then a lot of things in Africa never get reported. In the 1980s Mugabe murdered 10,000 to 15,000 members of the Ndebele tribe in western Zimbabwe. The Ndbele are a remnant of the famous Zulus and think they are superior to the Shonas, the majority tribe in Zimbabwe. You never saw much about this in the news.

Then there was my PH in South Africa. It was very cold and he complained bitterly, so I asked him why he did not wear long pants. He replied he didn't think he owned any. But the next day he showed up in some odd-looking military fatigues, explaining, "This is what we wore when we went to Angola to kill Cubans." Wha...?

Then there was my PH in Zim who formerly made his living hunting crocodiles in Mozambique along the Great Zimbabwe river. There was a civil war with the Communists holding the North bank, so he held to the southern bank and hunted at night. The communists would fire tracers at him and he would fire back until they stopped.

All of which are the reasons I think anyone who gets upset about a lion named Cecil is stupid.

maneaters arent a thing of the past.....lions that take it up are still very much a part of modern day Africa and India and anywhere else with large cats

This points to one big reason (if in fact that which is in bold is all fact) that this lion should be taken out.

By this time he is (IF he is) breeding with his grand and great-grand generations. That is not good for genetic variation and weakens the blood lines.

I find it far fetched that a 13 y.o. lion is still the dominant breeder. That's far fetched for anything outside of captivity.


So much of what has been reported ranges from false to fantasy, I can't take any of it as fact.

I've contacted some PH's in Africa to see what they know. What I've heard repeatedly is

1.- the PH's have all the paper in order

2.- In Africa, the Rule of Law turns with the payoffs.

3.- your enemies can pay off off the right people to jump on you when the opportunity arises, put you out of business, and give your business to the ones paying them. Indians are notorious for that in Zambia, Zim, and Tanz.

4. The government can use a crisis to their advantage. Zim does NOT want hunting to go away because their is too much foreign exchange involved. The Indians, who are mid level power brokers and spread the bribes around don't want to diminish hunting. Too much money would be lost. After that bogus 10 ten day ban, you saw hunting reopen. The economics of the reality quickly reached the ears and the right pockets.

5. Nothing will happen to the PH's, because they have the paper work. It may cost them some cash (Africa works that way) but it will blow over.

6. Palmer will never be extradited, but the Greenies have a bullseye on him and are out to ruin him and anyone else they can link hunting to. They got big sympathy out of Cecil-Mania.

7. Organizations like the WWF gladly will bribe any and all government officials - big or small- to get their agenda. They can buy the "Associate Minister of Martian Wildlife" and get him to make any bold statement even if he has no authority over the matter and does not represent official gov't policy. The Greenies grab the quote and make a splashy headline.

Standby, BW will be along to refute your facts with cooked data from his tree-hugging scientists...

Folks desperately searching for meaning (animal, plant, earth "well-being") in some kind of direction when they have been deceived into accepting as a [/i]rational[i], moral option (i.e.maternal narcissism) the tearing up or burning to death an in utero infant and marketing its parts.

Hatari: Well said.

Amen, and Amen.