Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa I've given it some thought

Shakari thanks for the explanation. I'm a little slow sometimes.
What I do know and wish the course of Africa wasn't heading there, is the loss of opportunity to experience it.

BG

Ain't that the truth. Africa is getting more stuffed up as each year goes by and I have to say, I'm damn glad to be retired and no longer having to deal with the indigenous problem creators!

Uncle Steve, you have been out of the business for some time now and I heard talk that if you lift your arms we can see Bushman paintings in your armpits?? Please confrim. Or deny this as a malicious rumor!

Pieter

That's about right my friend! LOL!

I'm pushing 60 now and those loooong walks are getting a bit difficult to do nowadays.

It looks like I've been talked into doing 3 last (DG) hunts with old friends/clients later this year and then that'll be it for me.

I've been very lucky to have met many fine people, seen many stunningly beautiful places and have some fantastic hunts but it's now time for me to bow out gracefully rather than struggle on like an old bull that's just waiting to become lion bait.

Mind you, it won't stop me giving the young blokes [bleep] from time to time!

Great stuff Steve. Always good to read your replies and I trust you will have safe hunts.

I will not gain any favor by this but I believe in cat farming. Lion, leopard, tiger; I'd like to see so many of them bred there was a tiger gall bladder in every chinese' bowl of noodles and still too many tigers.

no need for leopards as a species though you do for certain subspecies if you want to keep them around...there are plenty of African leopards(P. p. pardus) but less than 30 Amur leopards(P. p. orientalis) in all of their range of the Primorye region of southeastern Russia and the Jilin Province of northeast China.....

I believe they ranged India as well.

Personally, I've always wanted lions and leopards let loose in the SW USA as well.

they go all over, i just chose subspecies on opposite ends of the population spectrum to make my point.....there are another 9 subspecies:

* African leopard (P. p. pardus) (Linnaeus, 1758) inhabits sub-Saharan Africa
* Indian leopard (P. p. fusca) (Meyer, 1794) inhabits the Indian Subcontinent
* Javan leopard (P. p. melas) (Cuvier, 1809) inhabits Java, Indonesia
* Arabian leopard (P. p. nimr) (Hemprich and Ehrenberg, 1833) inhabits the Arabian Peninsula
* Amur leopard (P. p. orientalis) (Schlegel, 1857) inhabits the Russian Far East, Korean Peninsula and Northeast China
* North Chinese leopard (P. p. japonensis) (Gray, 1862) inhabits northern China
* Persian leopard (P. p. saxicolor) (Pocock, 1927), initially described as Caucasian leopard (P. p. ciscaucasica) (Satunin, 1914), inhabits the Caucasus, Turkmenistan and northern Iran[35]
* Indochinese leopard (P. p. delacouri) (Pocock, 1930) inhabits mainland Southeast Asia
* Sri Lankan leopard (P. p. kotiya) (Deraniyagala, 1956) inhabits Sri Lanka

A morphological analysis of characters of leopard skulls implies the validity of two more subspecies:[35]

* Anatolian leopard (P. p. tulliana) (Valenciennes, 1856) inhabits Western Turkey
* Balochistan leopard (P. p. sindica) (Pocock, 1930) inhabits Pakistan, and possibly also parts of Afghanistan and Iran

I wonder what African lions would do in Yellowstone?!

likely freeze the first winter.....there is one school of thought that lions are nothing really than a "tropical" tiger.....biggest difference between lions and tigers is actually just social behavior.....tigers being solitary hunters and lions group hunters because of the differences in prey they tend to hunt.....when food allows it unlike other big cats, except for lions, tigers are actually very social animals and tolerate being in groups/living closely much better than say leopards...

the best guess is lions and tigers split apart, lions staying to tropical savanna areas where prey was available in large numbers and tigers went to temperate areas where prey is scarcer and is better hunted alone....this adaptation is also adventitious to hunting in jungles which is why tigers later spread down through Southeast Asia and other warm areas....

And into Siberia...

looks like they likely went up into Siberia first before coming back down into Southeast Asia......or atleast were up against the ice sheets as they went back up....

Lions that are captive bred and released for shooting [Please note that I do not call it "hunting"!] sure make the breeders and the "Shooting Outfitter" a lot of money.

Steve is quite correct in saying that the "release" is timed to within hours before the lion shooting client arrives at the shooting venue. In the North West Province the minimum period between release and shooting is 96 hours. In the Free State the minimum time [which is, from what I hear, closely monitored] is 3 months. Give anyone three guesses about in which of these two provinces most captive bred and released lions are shot!

Steve is also quite correct about the fact that captive bred and released lion do not know the good manners to rather catch an impala, rather than a much more costly nyala. Or, God forbid, a sable bull! In fact, they do not know the first thing about catching prey at all!

Now I again give anyone three guesses about in which province, Free State or North West, the captive bred to be released and then shot lions suffer the most from hunger before they are eventually shot?

Something else many do not know or realize is that there are really two types of operation involved in the captive bred to be released for shooting lion industry: (i) The lion breeders - often on farms where 99% of the area is planted under maize or other crop and 1% is for the house and lion cages - no released lion shooting here at all! (ii) The lion shooting venues - for reasons that should already be obvious, mostly in the North West Province. I assume, but do not know or state it as a fact, that there are a few places where the breeder & re-leaser is one and the same person on basically two areas of the same property. But mostly the lion needs to be transported from where he was raised to where he is to be shot. For this transportation the lion is tranquilized with, let's just call it "Vitamin-K", to prevent him from getting agitated and breaking his teeth on the iron of the cage. Now some clever veterinary surgeons have found out that by injecting a massive [normally deadly] dose Vitamin-K, but mixed with an oily substance deep into a big muscle the continued slow release of Vitamin-K can cause tranquilizer to keep on acting for many days. Certainly much more than the 96 hours required by North West Province to elapse between the release and the shooting. How many guesses do you need to know in which province the actual shooting of a captive bred released lion is often less dangerous?

Like Pieter, I have thought a lot about the shooting of such captive bred released lion. Some years ago I used to condemn everyone even remotely associated with the industry. But now? Remember it can be, and I'll even concede that is is mostly, done perfectly legally! Who am I to condemn anyone who wants a lion trophy in his trophy room for spending the least amount of money to get it done in perfect accord with the global legal requirements? Therefore I do not put my blanket condemnation on it any more. But I will always condemn the Shooting Outfitters who sell these released lion shoots as wild lion hunting and advertise themselves as Hunting Outfitters. Shooting a captive bred and released lion has absolutely noting to do with hunting!

IMHO it also has nothing to do with conservation! Just as farming with Heatherford cattle and sending them to an abattoir for slaughtering has nothing to do with conserving the Auroch!

I sure wish I can chance upon a comparison summary of the exact legal requirements for size of the release area and time between release and shooting in all the South African Provinces. Please don't bother to tell me to do my own research - I'm not into this game and will like to know, but am not really prepared to spend a lot of time on it.

Something else that I now, after reading Steves' postings, wonder about is: What it would cost a Zimbabwean outfitter to get an entrepreneurial spirited guy with a suitable plane to smuggle a drugged lion from a Free State breeding farm delivered to his hunting concession? At the prices advertised for "wild lion hunting", the few thousand $'s likely cost for the delivery of a suitable trophy captive bred lion will surely be more than offset by the "wild lion" trophy fee? Not accusing anyone, just wondering! I know that captive bred trophy lions were smuggled and delivered by road to Botswana, so just wondering how far a light aircraft can deliver a lion?

Just wondering......