Originally Posted by
HDP Safaris
I also don't know if Mark Sullivan actually wounds animals on purpose etc, the point of my post on this thread is that he is under fire for POSSIBLY wounding on purpose because of the content of his dvds and that he his not under fire for other stuff.
If I understand it correctly (in it's simplest form) his expulsion from SCI is because he allows animals to suffer when he could have finished them off sooner, and for the possibility that he allows animals to be wounded in order to elicit a charge that makes for a good dvd, and other SCI things that he was in breech of in terms of the content of his dvds.
I also believe it is quite strange that someone would wound on purpose, however, there are clear and distinct incidence in his dvds of him having ample opportunity to finish off an animal but instead tells the client, "wait lets see how he wants to die..", I assure you that the animal does not want to die, therefore a tired and wounded and defensive animal like a buff will charge indefinitely. So as far as not finishing off an animal when he or his clients could, whether wounded intentionally or not, I think it is safe to say there is cause for concern there. As far as wounding intentionally to elicit a charge, there is no evidence of that.
Granted buffalo and the like don't always go down on the first round but for it to happen so many times for one PH has got to raise some 'questions' in your own mind. But maybe it happens more often to him because he is always hunting DG, so it would naturally occurr more than often in comparison to other PHs who dont hunt DG as often, so is it fair to draw such a comparison? I wouldn't know as i'm not a DG hunter or a PH...
Like I said I don't know if he is guilty of wounding on purpose because there is no hard evidence of that and it is a strange notion as an animal can just as well bolt off into the horizon never to be seen again as oppossed to charging indefintely, so such a decision to wound on purpose instead of taking the cleanest shot is a questionable notion and someone would have to be very knowledgeable of what they were doing, or just plain dumb. I cannot bring myself to even think of a hypothetical situation where I would wound on purpose, it's just not logic in any way. I do think that there is enough evidence in his dvds to show that on those specific hunting trips on the dvds he sometimes did not allow his clients to finish off the animal when needed and instead waited for a perfect 'charge shot', and there is also hard eveidence in his dvds that he provoked charges for the sake of getting a good dvd clip, I think of one hippo clip specifically. There is simply no way around those two facts because he had it filmed and then he had it published and its on hardcopies for all to see. I think SCI expelled him because this is not in the spirit of hunting: provoking charges, delaying the finishing off shot, then also the machoism and other that go with it...to air this to the public as 'hunting' is not what SCI sets out to achieve.
Mark Sullivan has reached more of the non-hunting community than most PHs will ever do in their entire lives, and this is good because it gets hunting out there in the world and causes awareness and business. On the downside Mark Sullivan has misrepresented hunting in this way and also fuelled our anti-hunting community with more ammunition, but, all other hunting dvds are also used as ammuniton against the hunting community, so is it fair to even bring that up??? And this is not pertinent to his expulsion from SCI.
There are clips in the very dvds under question that I have seen where I don't think there is any foul play at hand and perhaps it is just his demeanour that sets people off, for me I think he is a bit too much about "Hollywood" but I try to see that this one thing I dislike about him is not the sole reasoning for me seeing other faults or exaggerating other incidences et. Because I dislike a way about someone or because they just rub me up the wrong way is not cause for suspiscion unless I have hard evidence. To discredit him for the sake of the current hype I think is useless. Work with facts.
I think James has the right questions there, 'How many charges? How many hunts? How many clients?'
All this said, nothing can change what we have seen on dvd and I was not impressed with certain clips where he had more than enough opportunity to end off the quarry but never did, because it was 1) Prolonging the suffering of the wounded animal; 2) Obviously for the purposes of marketing a dvd.
I don't know him personally, and i'm not questioning his personal character or moral values outside of this specific topic.
