I think it's time we had a discussion on big game hunting, specifically elephants. Some of you seem to be losing your shit over this topic in ways that are totally out of proportion to its importance.
So there's currently a flap over the possibility that Trump will allow elephant hunting torphies to be brought into the United States. This has caused roughly 100% of Starbucks patrons reading it to instantly spit their soy lattes and angrily update their Tumblr blogs with calls for impeachment. I mean, who else besides HITLER would think hunting elephants is an ok thing to do?! What's next? Killing the unborn? (Actually they're usually ok with that.)
Let's get a couple of basic facts out of the way first.
Nothing Trump does will alter whether elephant hunting is legal or not. In some African countries it is, in others it's not. Nothing Trump does will affect that in one way or other. There is simply a ban on bringing in trophies, ie tusks.
Even if the US were to somehow ban its citizens from elephant hunting it would change nothing, as it doesn't affect the rest of the world. Aussies, Europeans, shit even the Chinese go on safari now.
Preventing trophy imports doesn't dissuade rich people with stupid amounts of money from going on safari any more than finding out you couldn't bring your Louis Armstrong bobble head on the plane home would prevent you from going on vacation to New Orleans.
With those out of the way, let's dig a little deeper.
Going on Safari is a huge business. In some African countries like Mozambique it's almost the only way they can get money to fund conservation efforts. Guided elephant hunts run around $70,000, which is by no means the total cost. We are talking about Africa afterall, where you have to constantly bribe governments just to give you permits and licensing for things you already paid for.
That's also not counting the cost of weaponry. When you go to hunt a massive elephant, you're not going to cart along your AR-15 or even your .308 bolty. You're looking more at something like a .458 mag, or even real monster rifles like the 577 Tyrannosaur loaded with Barnes solids. Hunting like this is not cheap. All of this gets expensive very fast. Yet many of the same people who would decry this as waste would have no problem with someone using the cash instead to buy a high-end Jaguar or Audi which would cost about the same, and would even spend such money on them themselves if they had the opportunity. And none of that money would go toward conservation of the very animals they claim they just LUV SO MUCH.
The cost is important because it means only a few handfuls of people can afford to do it. It's not like every Bubba in the US is now flocking to Africa to blast an elephant and wipe out the populations within a year.
Hunts are also strictly regulated. This is obvious when one considers the amount of money they get from these things. They are guided and only certain individual animals get designated as allowed for harvesting by those responsible for the conservation effort (for example, if a herd has too many bulls). So you don't just get to shoot whatever you want.
You're also not guaranteed to get anything. Like any other type of hunting, you could come home empty handed.
I've also seen people declaring angrily how it's a 'coward's sport', and super easy to just go out there and shoot an elephant. What I find funny is these same people also usually claim they don't have a problem with people hunting deer in the US. These people don't seem to understand how easy it is to hunt deer. It's way easier than hunting an elephant (and less dangerous). If drunk hillbillies in northern Arkansas can blast them away from tree stands, literally just sitting in a chair and waiting for the deer to happen to walk into the field of fire, it's really not that hard. Hell I've done it. It's easy. Also, deer are way cuter than elephants, so why aren't they angry about harvesting deer too?
Just to sum up, the hunting they do actually pays to preserve the elephant herds. In fact, the only places in Africa where the elephants are growing and the herds are healthy and doing better is where the safari hunting is allowed.
Do you want the elephant herds to grow, or slowly disappear? You certainly aren't dropping $70,000 in conservation funding in Africa are you? Shit, you still get pissy when you have to drop $40 on Steam when the game you wanted isn't on sale. Should said rich guy drop the $70,000 on one of those ridiculous 'pizzas' that is covered in gold instead? No, you'd be angry about that too. What, should they just give YOU the cash? Well, yes, you'd TOTALLY approve of that. Then you'd just GIVE all that money to the conservation effort, right?
Bullshit. You'd just go buy an Audi.
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