CANNED HUNTING MAKES DREAMS COME TRUE

"The bullet slammed into the lioness and she spun into the air, falling against the electric fence behind which she was confined. Standing on the other side of the fence were her three young cubs - she had been separated from them an hour earlier.

"The overseas hunter fired another shot. She slumped to the ground in a crumpled heap. Both times, the hunter shot from a vehicle. He then posed with the dead lioness and pulled at her mouth to show her teeth."

collage by Betsy Seeton showing various hunters in the United States with their trophy kills from canned hunting lodges

This is how Gareth Patterson described a scene that some of you will recognise from The Cook Report TV documentary on canned hunting. (Source captiveanimals.org) But you don't have to go to Africa to kill the animals of your dreams. You can do it right here in America. There are over 1000 canned hunting sites available for your killing pleasure in the U.S. All kinds of rare, exotic animals are fenced in on commercial hunting grounds that you can shoot just about any which way you choose -- for a price. Zebras cost somewhere around $4,500 to put a bullet through. Lodging costs are on top of the kill price. Killing a Transcaspian Urial Sheep will set you back upwards of around $17,000 while a Siberian Ibex is more than $19,000.

The Blah Blah Blah Hunting Lodge advertises that their hunting adventure: 
".... allows the opportunity to hunt and harvest the Trophy Zebra you'll want to hang on your wall...this hunt will offer 100% opportunity for a Mature Zebra. Year round, we offer hunts for beautiful Grants Zebra. There are no seasonal restrictions on hunting the Zebra in Texas, which makes it a suitable trophy year round."


( I guess the new word for kill is "harvest" .... )

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I grew up eating elk and venison my entire childhood courtesy of my father who was an avid big game hunter. My brothers and I, along with my mother, helped pack out the meat from the forest and my father gutted/cleaned and packaged the meat in our basement using a band saw. But one thing he would never do, and would never support, is canned hunting. He hunted to put food on our table. He loved the hunt. He really did. But he told me if he had money he would not have hunted. He did it to provide for his family. He would not have done it for the joy of killing. 

The caption for this posting is what some or even most canned hunters feel. Trophy hunters often have their wish list -- a bucket list if you will -- of animals they want to kill during their lifetime. I cannot fathom this mindset. 

Canned hunters must have a perverted sense of joy and twisted sense of accomplishment  along with what I can only describe as scary egos. These exotic animals are transported from their natural habitat and some are farm raised to continue the species for future hunting. They are on grounds that have fences. They are not living a natural life and they die a quite unnatural death. I will never understand the soul of these people. How they stand by their trophy kill with those "look-at-me" grins  thinking they are powerful or strong or whatever it is that they believe they are. The whole concept of canned hunting is beyond my comprehension.

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Canned hunting seems so obviously wrong that it feels almost silly making that point. Hunters I know would never go to a commercial lodge where animals had been stocked like fish in a pond and where the grounds are fenced. There's no real challenge. It's not 'real' hunting. It's disgraceful. The whole thing is a barbaric, inhumane way to make money and be entertained at the great expense of amazing wild creatures. "Harvesting" animals on canned hunts should not only be illegal it should be viewed as  horrendously shameful.

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