Reply to Should boycott that Trump Apprentice Show....this is horrible!

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[quote=Anonymous]I've actually been to one of those game camps (was in a remote area when traveling in southern Africa and needed a place to stay - didn't hunt, couldn't have afforded it even if I wanted to).  And like anything to do with conservation in the developing world, this kind of "rich men pay to kill big game" stuff is more complicated than it looks.  Those game parks do exist for wealthy people to kill exotic animals.  However, they also protect vast swaths of land that would otherwise be given over to cattle grazing, thus driving out native wildlife.  The economics of hunting protects a lot of land, vegetation, and, ironically, wildlife.  I had a lot of candid conversations with the guys that ran the place, and they were probably candid with me because I was NOT a hunter.

They told me a lot of stories of rich men (in these stories, it was always men) being guided to kill the animal, most of the time from a vehicle with little risk to them - some were competent marksmen, but many were not.  Often, the guide had to finish the animal off to end its suffering. It didn't sound very sporting, and my hosts didn't seem to have a lot of respect for such inexperienced clients. Whether the Trumps fit into that category...who knows.

The big $$ animals on the property tended to be gleaned from overpopulated game parks, where they could live and roam free (at least for a while) on thousands of acres rather than being immediately shot by rangers or starving, and lower cost animals were local to the land.  The land was native habitat and plants, which protected many smaller creatures of no interest to hunters.

Staying there destroyed many of my preconceived notions, and I left with a much more nuanced outlook on big game hunting, though I must admit I'm still not too partial to the people that pay to do it.

Personally, I don't have a problem with hunting in general, though I think pure trophy hunting is odious.  If you're not going to personally eat some of the meat or use the skins, and especially if you're not going to gut and clean the animal, which many of these clients don't, I don't have much respect for someone that just shoots it.  You absolutely CAN be a conservationist, animal lover, and a hunter...but a conservationist and a trophy hunter?  IMHO, not so much.

I gotta say though, in all of those pics, the Trump boys kinda look like tools.[/quote]

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