Lion hunts in RSA

Capstick said:

Whether it be a 10 acre pen or a 10,000 acre ranch its still a canned hunt, that you can't get away from. I don't see what aggression and unprovoked charges has to do with anything either thats just the animal being its self. If this is sporting then save the average US sportsman the trouble with the flight over to Africa and just set up some ranches in Texas and release them there, its the same thing. If people are happy to do this and kid themselves that its the real deal then good for them but its not something I'd ever wish to be involved in and can not class it as the good honest sport of lion hunting.

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I'm curious to know if this how you feel about plains game too? That if it's behind a fence it is also canned and that the animals have no chance of escape.

An interesting thesis with a lot of good information about the impact of hunting in RSA.

A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GAME AND HUNTING INDUSTRIES IN KWAZULU-NATAL AND THE EASTERN CAPE
LOUANN KOBUS
SUBMITTED IN COMPLETE FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE MAGISTER TECHNOLOGIAE IN THE FACULTY OF SCIENCE AT THE NELSON MANDELA METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
JANUARY 2007

"It is estimated that 13% of South Africa's total land area is covered by game and mixed game and livestock farms, compared to the 5.8% for all officially declared conservation areas and the 2.8% area covered by our national parks."

Looks like those farmers/ranchers are going to have a significant impact!

"Respondents in KwaZulu-Natal indicate that nyala is the largest economic earner for them followed by buffalo, whereas in the Eastern Cape (2002), kudu and springbok provide the greatest income for the province."

"In KwaZulu-Natal game numbers indicate that impala have the greatest population amongst the respondents, followed by nyala, blesbok, common reedbuck, kudu and blue wildebeest, whilst other game species occur in smaller numbers."

In a perfect world all game would be in healthy huntable numbers and could all be hunted on unfenced public land in any country. However such is not the case and it never will be again. To maintain healthy huntable numbers of game species requires lots of money and space that nowadays is largely held by private owners with some exceptions. We would do the various species no favor by turning our noses up at hunting on fenced properties, as in many cases this is where they thrive. Its expensive and the landowners must find some way to make a return on their investment and allowing a certain number of each species to be taken by sport hunters for a fee is how he does that. Its simple arithmetic. How we as hunters choose to deal with the situation varies greatly. When I went to RSA in 2009, it was with the full understanding and knowledge that all of the animals I wanted to hunt would be behind a fence on properties of various sizes, some larger than others. The one rule I made for myself before going was that I would not shoot any animal who was near a fence or appeared to be in any way hindered by a fence, or if a fence made escape problematic for the animal. None of these scenarios was ever encountered. There was one place when hunting bushbuck when a large male was spotted next to a ranch house, practically in the backyard, and I refused to get out and stalk it much to the wild-eyed consternation of the head tracker. The house was occupied only by caretakers but it put me off totally so I just said firmly to move on and keep looking. About two hours later under a much better situation on foot, I took a nice 13 incher with no houses in sight. I dont think we should get too combative about this. It is what it is. If you cant deal with the idea of hunting on fenced properties its quite simple; Dont do it.

Thank you Sestoppelman.

If we as hunters could only agree on a few things, those should include: 1. More animals are better for everyone - hunters and non-hunters alike - than fewer animals; 2. More animals have a cost whether in terms of public or private land, and there is nothing ignoble in seeking a return on that cost; and #3. We have enough problems with the attacks of those who would ban our sport, regardless of the impact on wildlife, without aggressively fighting among ourselves.

The bottom line is that this is legal, and it is in my (one) experience challenging and exciting. So can we agree that if you don't agree, we'll just politely agree to disagree?

By the way, there was a time when it was thought that the use of scopes on rifles was unethical, if not immoral, and that it wasn't fair to the animals.

Hank2211 said:

Thank you Sestoppelman.
By the way, there was a time when it was thought that the use of scopes on rifles was unethical, if not immoral, and that it wasn't fair to the animals.

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+1

Hopefully the world will stay free so you have the option to like dislike or say yes or no at any chance. Have your own opnion and morals and in the same breath you cannot expect everyone to agree with you but it would be good for a change if all hunters stood side by side and believe in what they do and not tell other hunters how to hunt and enjoy life. Just my opinion.

capstick i see you havent had the chance to hunt in an african country yet. from your comments if/when you do i presume even if it is for plains game you wont be doing the hunt on a fenced ranch/reserve? this is a shame as it will cut your choice of where to hunt down considerably. you say you dont care if its even 10,000 acres as that is still a canned hunt, well all i can say is bulls..t! you will be surprised how big that piece of bush becomes when you are trying to find something in it. fine if it is not for you, but dont be so opinionated about something or somewhere that you havent had experience of. i agree with jaco and louis thinking, and not every one can afford a 21 day hunt to be able to shoot a lion. these ranch hunts allow people to hunt lions that wouldnt otherwise be able to experience it. apart from that i am sure other owner/outfitters that have fenced ranchs/reserves are getting a bit fed up with the negative comments from people bout hunting on fenced properties. it would be nice if they werent fenced, but when you have game animals worth hundereds of thousands up to millions of dollars on them you cant have them running off up the road they are your assets!! lions will become more and more expensive to hunt, that is if kenya and other countries backed by antis dont get lion hunting banned, so be glad the ranch hunts take the pressure off the free roaming lions, and as has been said if its not for you you dont have to take part, but dont be negative to the people that do.

NEXT!

People talk about free range this and free range that, we do have Kruger National park 450 plus km long and 70 plus wide we talk about free range Elephant, Lion, Rhino and more in Kruger, but guys Kruger still does have a fence all around. If i do have 100 acres in Limpopo without a fence then my Kudu or Nyala is free range, but my 18000 acres fenced area with all the animals is not free range.
Sorry but i will never understand this . We had lion on our property and i did work very close with Nature Conservation and i promise you free range lion does not have anything to do with a fence if you look at what the law has to say about keeping lion and hunting lion on such a property.

ole bally if its boring or not to your taste you can always change the channel.....................

spike.t said:

ole bally if its boring or not to your taste you can always change the channel.....................

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I love a good 'cat-fight' and personally, I think Ernie's enjoying this one as much as I am..so 'NEXT'..!

Dear Gents
As long as everyone involved is honest about what's going on, it must in my opinion be the individual who themselves decide what they want to participate in.

The following link is to a hunting film made by Swedish hunter / author Jan Gulliou describing large auctions where there traded game and from ca. minute 32 refers to the breeding of lions for hunting. The film as a whole does not condemn hunting on farmed game, but shows the page as the ordinary hunter never see and is very educational.
Much of the film takes place in English speech. Perhaps some of the forum members are or may be recognizable performers.

Since all participating voluntarily, and the film has been shown on national television, I hope not to offend any of the participants.

Ps. When you see the word REKLAM on the screen it means advertising, and the film continues after a few seconds.

Guillou på jakt: Guillou på jakt del 2 - TV4 Play

Forgot to write that the movie starts with an advertising block at 55 sec.

NEXT!!!!!!!!!!! he he he Ole balle I think my ADD is kicking in!!!!

Johan agreed, maybe it comes down to interpretation in my limited knowledge free roaming should indicate no fences whatsoever, and such species have free roam without any man made obstacle.

When I think free range I think of low fences 4 - 5 ft and limited movement, I know S.A. have to an extent some free range land as does NAM but sooner rather than later there is a game fence.

This is n the way that I understand it maybe I'm wrong is there a diffetrence between free range and free roaming??

My best always.

Alas, Once again I am called upon to set the record straight and correct the tone herein.

High fence good, open range not bad but increasingly impractical.

I, once again, analogize with the Texas Experience

First, understand that there is, by percentage, very little public or free range land in Texas, Some wonderful parks and wildlife management areas but only a small few of those permit hunting.

Likewise, over the past 100 years the population of the State has increased dramatically

Yet, we have more deer and deer of a better quality than ever in the history of the State.

Further, species that were once thought to be completely gone, black bear, mountain lion and the Mexican wolf, are now showing up with some (alarming) frequency.

Wonder why?

Two distinct concepts at play:

#1 All of the wild, non-migratory wildlife is considered the property of the State of Texas

#2 the land is privately owned

Once the ranchers and land owners discovered that there was much more money in hunting than in farming or ranching the wildlife numbers began to increase considerably

Economically, and disproving one Keynesian theory, the more value you impart to "something" the more of it you have.

This will be true with the African lion as it has been with so many other species

If a rancher can get $30, 40 or 50,000 for a lion why on earth would he be mucking about raising cattle or vegetables?
Hence more emphasis is placed on raising lion and insuring the quality of their habitat.

Realistically, to have the open range in Texas, RSA or where ever as you did in Colonial Africa you would need to displace or eliminate an awful lot of people. That is not going to happen and thus the days of what you read in some book and the standards you hold for or from that era are no longer applicable.

The entire question falls to "Stewardship"

You can eliminate, outlaw or just bully pulpit managed lion hunts if that's what you want, but to do so dooms the African lion to extinction, or conversely, you can endorse, regulate and embrace this proven method of wildlife management and preserve one of the wildlife icons of the continent.

And preserve it, most likely to a level that they finally will become a problem again, which, in my estimation, might not necessarily be a bad thing either.

Capstick, I am afraid that your issue may just be that you refuse to address the reality of the situation. The term "free ranging" imparts so much romanticism and speaks of another time. Sadly gone.

However, on a smaller scale, you hear a lot about free ranging chickens, quite the chic thing at the grocery these days.
Healthier, safer, the chickens are happier, well unless a coyote or bobcat enters the equation. So how do you control the situation? If you put up a fence are you keeping the chickens in or the predators out? And, now protected, are your chickens still free ranging? The reality is that if you don't do something you will soon have no chickens.

The same is true of the African Lion,

Well Now, I guess that just about covers it

Your 'Mego
SW

nah docman repartee is enjoyable, but monosyballic is boring.

We can do and say what we like but this topic will always be around, the next time maybe it will be my son trying to explain, for me i hunt i love hunting yes the bigger the better, my 18000 acres makes me happy, i hunt lion i hunt Steenbuck i love hunting , Fence or no fence as long as i am in the sun the rain the wind i do not give a damm.
Maybe it is time we move away from the desktop and start hunting again.
Amen brothers.

True!

Study: Limited lion hunting better than outright ban

Study: Limited lion hunting better than outright ban
by Dan Vergano

Limiting lion trophy hunting in Africa, rather than an outright ban, would better benefit the species, report conservation scientists.

"Although few reliable data exist, it is suspected that the (African) continental lion population has declined by at least 30% in recent decades, while the species' geographic range has shrunk by as much as 82%," begins the PLoS One journal report led by Peter Andrew Lindsey, now with Panthera, a New York-based conservation organization, citing reports finding perhaps 20,000 wild lions remaining. On top of the lions' other woes, they are also still hunted across Africa.

"Commercial trophy hunting of lions represents an additional potential threat (or opportunity, depending on how it is managed)," say the study authors. "Lion populations are particularly sensitive to trophy harvests due to the social disruption and potential for infanticide by incoming males following removal of pride males." (In other words, shooting a male lion kills not only that one lion, but also all its cubs, soon killed by next male to move in with a pride's lionesses.) European animal welfare groups have called for a ban on lion trophy imports for this reason.

On the other hand, trophy hunting may be a way to spur conservation of lions, with trophies worth $13,000 in fees and daily hunting rates of $1,800, a lot of money in lion regions, often home to poor herders who may otherwise try to kill the lions themselves. So, the study team tried to find out whether trophy hunting was good or bad, overall, for preservation of lions.

Weighing economic costs and benefits of lion hunting, the team concludes that for some countries, lion hunts help conservation efforts, and for others, they are a losing proposition:

"Estimated mean returns on investments (ROIs) from trophy hunting were highest in Tanzania, Namibia and Zimbabwe, and were negative in Zambia and Mozambique. The majority of hunting blocks in Tanzania and (to a lesser extent) Zimbabwe were estimated to be viable, whereas the majority of those in Zambia and Mozambique were estimated to be unviable regardless of the status of lion hunting."

Rather than banning hunting, the team calls for limiting the number of lions bagged by hunters, to perhaps one lion per 772 square miles of territory in a hunting reserve, along with restrictions on shooting young lions:

"While trophy hunting could survive without lion hunting in most areas, the species is an important financial component of an industry which is marginal in some areas and vulnerable to reductions in profitability. Blanket trade restrictions would unfairly punish countries where lion hunting is well managed, and could be negative for lions by undermining the competitiveness of wildlife-based land uses and by undermining tolerance for lions which are typically a high-cost species due to their tendency to kill livestock."

For countries where lion hunting is poorly managed and is harming the species, temporary halts to hunting would allow the populations to recover while better management systems are put in place.

"Lion populations recover quickly when the pressure of excessive harvests is removed. Consequently, over-hunting is likely to pose little threat to the long term persistence of lions so long as interventions are made to address excessive quotas where they occur. Conversely, if lion hunting was banned, and wildlife-based land uses were replaced by alternatives in some areas, the long term prospects for lion conservation in those areas would be poor and reversing negative trends would be unlikely."

So overall, they find that, "(p)recluding lion hunting may therefore be a greater long term risk to lions than over-hunting. That said, urgent efforts are needed by range states to reform lion hunting management, and temporary moratoria could be considered for use as levers to promote such changes."


Source: usatoday.com

There is a remarkable difference between a 10 acre paddock and 10 000 acres of fenced-off African bush. There is also a distinct difference between a cow and lion. Come on Capstick...

JamieD, enjoy your African Lion hunt!