by Tim Robison
News Editor
I am writing to respond to the letter from Larry Wood regarding the story I wrote on the local big game hunter and the picture of the fallen elephant (1/2/08 Local Sportsman Tells Tales of Hunting In Africa). Mr. Wood’s letter was one of a small handful we received and I felt the subject needed a response.
It seems the fundamental problem everyone had was with the size and exotic nature of the quarry. I am concluding this due to the fact that over the years the Progress has received few if any complaints about the many hunting and fishing stories we have run in conjunction with pictures of dead fish, deer, elk, and other animals. I think an elk is every bit as majestic as an elephant; only a few hundred pounds smaller. The elephant, though, is not one that we can regularly see bounding across the roads of the United States.
In Mr. Wood’s letter, he talks about the disgrace of killing an animal for anything but for food consumption. Most hunters I know do not go starving if they do not get their deer; they go down to Lin’s and buy a t-bone.
The article mentions, however, the fact that the animals killed in Africa were used for food. Dan Hopkins said that every meal he ate at the South African lodge where he stayed consisted of some kind of game. Next to the elephant picture, perhaps we should have put the picture Hopkins took of the shop where the game meat, which included elephant, was sold. As in the United States, the Government of South Africa heavily regulates its wild game population. It does not allow for the wholesale slaughter of animals a-la hunting in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike the United States with its vast economic resources, South Africa depends somewhat on hunters coming from around the world to play a part in keeping its national economy going. It is not likely that they are going to allow their big game animals to be hunted into extinction, thus losing an important part of their national economy.
I am not trying to tell anyone what to think on the subject of hunting or meat consumption; I like elephants just as much as anyone does. I am only saying that before casting stones at people, perhaps we should understand the motivations and national economics behind these things. I suppose one should also think about what the difference is between an animal that weighs several thousand pounds and one that weighs only several hundred pounds, other than a few hundred pounds.
