Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Hunting for the experience, not trophies?

It's seems.

All of my horrns are mostly in a big box in my barn.......some I gave away

My 2014 PG hunt was 10 days and 11 different species of game

Nothing giant but not a cull hunt

Only pictures.....lots of pictures

If you sent nothing home how did you come up with all these fee's?

Re-read the post and your question is answered

Chipolopolo,

I find it astonishing that somebody who claims to have thought so deeply about sport hunting has never read Jose Ortega y Gasset.

I find it equally astonishing that you could seriously post this about taking and displaying trophy photos: "We as sportsmen have been responsible for the rapid coming end of hunting Elephants and Lions."

Trophy hunters, whatever their motivation, are among the primary reasons there IS any hunting for lions and elephants. If not for the safari industry's money and time in the field, more African wildlife would disappear, as it has in countries where safari hunting has been shut down. What happens then is poaching takes over, normally with the complicity of the country's government officials. Poaching of lions and elephants is big business these days, and can usually be traced back to Chinese demand, whether for "medicinal" or status desires. That is the real threat to both species, NOT posting photos on Facebook.

Chipolopolo - I do truly love hunting mule deer by the way...

All of them that I've hunted & killed ended up in my freezer. Some ended up on the wall. A few never even got a photo, but they did go in the freezer. Never felt a need to hang them all on the wall.

I do understand the value of a trophy. Have a couple of bear rugs, a good elk rack, a few mulie skull/euro mounts, and what not around. By no means though do all of my kills end up as a taxidermy mount.

It's the experience of the hunt I'm after. I do enjoy the meat, and I enjoy having a few "trophies" around. There's a bear skull nearby, on the bookshelf. The big elk antlers are on the wall near where I'm banging away on this silly computer..

Some of my best/favorite "trophies" though are photos of hunts with family and friends. Not the antlers on the wall, or the rug draped over the back of the couch. Those are cool, but not required for me to feel I've fully participated in the hunt.

Venison... Now that's good stuff!

Apparently opinions do vary... And that's fine. Well done taxidermy is pretty impressive. It's just not necessary for me.

Regards, Guy

In Chinyenja (Zambia) there is no native word for "game." The word they use means "meat" and that's all it is to them. If it weren't for sport hunters and their dollars giving value to the game, all there would be is meat…and not much of that.

Mule Deer,

You surely can't be serious. I don't need to have read Gasset to have deeply seeded moral and philosophical beliefs as to these thoughts. I read much and write some.

My point about Facebook missed it's mark with you. I personally have done much for conservation all throughout Africa, I dare say substantially more than most have.

The point is this; The great unwashed masses of Americans that sit on the fence about hunting for Lions and Elephants are being educated by our opposition. The pictures all over Facebook, allow our opposition to define us, we do not have the opportunity to define ourselves. public opinion my friend.

Lets say the entire universe of African hunters is 10,000 per year. (Craig Boddingtons numbers, not mine) out of that 10K perhaps 1000 shoot a Jumbo. there are right around 400 lions shot yearly. some of those Lion hunters surely contain some of the same Elephant hunters so lets say the number is 1200.

So, out of 350 million Americans there are 1200 that hunt Lions and Elephants. You think we are going to win with those numbers? I don't.

They only way to push the end as far down the road as is possible is, for us the KEEP OUR COLLECTIVE MOUTHS SHUT. (keeping the photos off social media) I am well aware of the hunter/conservation model. I served on the BOD of SCI for 11 years, so I get it. Lots of people react as you do when they first read or hear my message. What we are doing isn't working.

I hunted CAR last year for 24 days. In 24 days, I only saw a handful of Elephant tracks. All those tracks had human tracks in tow. During the days and some nights we could hear AK47's off in the distance. The Sudanese Elephant Poachers, killing Elephants to fund their human rights atrocities in Sudan. The Chinese purchase the ivory, it's no secret, there isn't a politician alive with the appetite to take on China.

These poachers are hard men, walking around in the bush, some on donkeys. They kill the Elephants, remove the ivory and walk behind the camel trains loaded with ivory to Khartoum where they sell the ivory. I ran into a group of 7 riding on donkeys. These were the fiercest looking men I 'd ever seen. Their long thin faces told me everything I needed to know. They wore jungle fatigues and berets. Their donkeys had blankets on their backs, hiding the AK's from sight. They bore no hostility towards myself or the hunting party. Just traded glances and we parted ways

Our goals are mutual, our passions the same. I just think the way to further our own effort is to keep under the radar. Not a troll, a passionate sportsman. Not afraid to engage, willing to learn.

The word is Nyama.

If you're talking about leaving the carcass there, it doesn't matter what Guy feels, it's against the law, a felony in some states. Recovering the meat for human consumption is required.

So if the meat is recovered and used by the locals, tell me again what makes a hunter more "ethical" if he makes the heads into trophies?

keeping our mouths shut is what has gotten us into this position....keeping normal hunting and butchering of critters for food behind closed doors as much as possible in order to "spare peoples feelings" is why so many think hunting is bad today....fence sitters have gone to the anit side cause we have been so polite that they think even we are ashamed of what we are doing and trying to hide it....

which is also part of the reason i live where i do, hung up a deer in my front yard and the only reaction i got was the neighbor across the street yelling pointers from their front step cause i wasnt butchering like they do but hunting is considered a normal healthy activity by the general public here cause its never been hidden to spare peoples feelings....

I appreciate the "take no prisoners attitude" Just doesn't work anymore.

The problem is simply numbers. With a constituency of 1200 nationally, what politician will take on this argument. They are spineless bureaucrats who's only goal is re-election. Fighting public opinion to support Lion and Elephant hunting isn't going to win anyone any elections.

I think we are down to just a few years left for both Elephants and Lions.

the keeping quiet attitude hasnt worked for the last 30 years.....might aswell try something else......

Chipolopolo,

Believe me, I have also seen the results of intense elephant poaching in Africa--and run into elephant poachers while on safari. All except one of the poachers were killed the next day by anti-poaching patrol, which is why they ran from us when we encountered them. (I sure wouldn't have shot any of them, but the Tanzanian game scout would have, if he hadn't left his rifle in the Land Cruiser, less than 100 yards away.) We also found dozens of elephant skulls, of all sizes, with the tusks chopped off, and very few elephants. I just talked to the PH at the SCI convention, and he isn't even offering elephant hunts anymore, in what a decade ago was one of the best elephant areas in Tanzania.

And yet you still claim that a handful of American trophy hunters posting photos on Facebook has anything approaching that impact? Or that NOT posting will delay the inevitable result of far too many other problems for Africa's wildlife? Oh, sorry, I forgot, you're trying to delay the death of our sport.

You should have read Ortega y Gasset a long time ago, because that might have prevented you from somehow falling for the notion that hanging a head on the wall somehow ennobles both us and the animal.
You have also failed to explain why heads on the wall are somehow so much better than photos on the wall. Is it because of the "educational" qualities of taxidermy that so many trophy hunters espouse? Museums have been doing that a lot longer than yet another generation of safari hunters.

I have plenty of African taxidermy on my walls, but quit bringing heads back a few safaris ago. In fact am probably not going to on any more big game safaris, though might go back to photograph in parks or reserves--which I have always spent some time doing in the days before or after my hunting safaris.

But I have taken all the African animals I ever dreamed of (which did not include lions or elephants), and hunting them took me far deeper into their lives, and the wild parts of Africa, than any amount of photography on game reserves--just as hunting elk or grizzly bears takes North American hunters into places they couldn't imagine or predict far more than visiting Yellowstone Park with a telephoto lens.

Yes, a well-taxidermed head is a fine symbol of a hunting memory, but I gave my best-ever kudu head to my PH, because at that stage of my hunting life I realized it meant more to him than to me. What meant more to me was the actual hunt, and how it led me into places I couldn't have anticipated with only a camera instead of a rifle in my hand.

He was thrilled, and I was quite happy with the photos of him and me and a fine day in Africa. But neither the head nor the photos of us have any meaning other than a stirring of the memory of hunting days, how kudu steak tastes, learning new birds and trees, and climbing yet another hill to see what's on the other side. Which is apparently something you somehow cannot understand: A trophy is only as valuable as the memories it stirs, because taxiderming a head only delays the inevitable breakdown of the animal we kill. And that delay only really means something to us, not the world at large.

I'm not saying you don't appreciate the hunt itself, or everything connected with the experience, but like Ruark you're confusing a symbol of the hunt with something deeper inside the experience of the hunt. Which is probably why you believe that not posting trophy photos on the Internet will somehow delay the inevitable decline of African big game, a decline due to issues as complex and perhaps unknowable as the essence of hunting itself.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts MD. I appreciate your knowledge and experience.

I'm not confusing the symbolism of the trophy, I'm honoring the entire process. I do not expect to change minds or see it my way. It is simply how I feel about my hunting. To me it is nearly spiritual. I feel a connection to my prey that is more than symbolic, it's…primal.

I will spend 45 days in Zambia and Tanzania this year. I will likely kill 30-35 animals and will find a way to get it all home. Some will be full mounts, some will be shoulder mounts and others yet will simply be Euro mounts. (Buffalo, can't mount any more)

The problem with internet forums are they are hostile to some extent and not open minded. Especially when it comes to posters with low counts vs posters with high post counts. Cliques rear their heads, and content sometimes isn't as important as supporting an internet friend.

I've enjoyed this lively debate but no problems were solved, seasons weren't extended and quota's were not raised.

Regards to all!

After paragraphs of babel......I agree with little to nothing you put forth

Heads on a wall do nothing to "honor" an animal

Chip,

The more you post, the more you reveal, but probably not in the way you want.

I'll take that as the insult it was intended to be. Hell it's an internet forum.