“Know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth!”
That’s what I wanted to say to the nice man who I had been having a pleasant conversation with on the bus from long-term parking to the Dallas airport before he found out I was going on a hunting safari.
“Well, I hope you don’t shoot anything,” came his reply when I confirmed for him that I was indeed going on a hunting safari.
“Well, all the hungry black folks over there sure hope I shoot something, because that means they get to eat. Especially, those kids in the orphanage,” I said smiling.
“Oh,” was all he could say with a perplexed look on his face. We didn’t speak again the rest of the ride.
It’s something I run into a lot. In fact, just prior to leaving for my 2023 safari, a co-worker told me they didn’t like me anymore because I was going to “shoot all those poor, little animals over there.”
I did shoot a few, but the seven I took home (at an expense of some $18,000), will hardly diminish their populations, and will, in fact, ensure those species all survive for years to come.
How? Well simple. Hunting is a business. Game animals are the product. Products have value. Human beings only protect and sustain what has value to them.
In 2021, dad and I hunted at a large outfit in the East Cape near the town of Port Elizabeth, SA. The main portion of the ranch was surrounded by sheep fence, although there was only a small herd of sheep on the whole place, which was more than 20 miles square.
My guide’s family owned the ranch and for nearly 100 years up until the early 1990s the land had been devoid of native species of game like wildebeests, zebras, springbok, impala and others.
The native animals had been wiped out to make way for the sheep, a cash crop animal that for many decades provided the family the income to survive.
In the ‘90’s the patriarch of the family realized there was more money to be made in safari hunting and so away went the sheep and back came the wildebeest, zebra and impala.
2023 had been a slow year for the company we hunted with as they’d just moved into their new location that year weren’t able to fill out their season with clients.
However, they had already donated some three tons of meat that had come from the animals taken by clients to the local orphanage and a nursing home.
I’ve hunted Africa three times with four different outfitters and in each case excess meat from the animals taken is donated to schools, orphanages and soup kitchens.
Sports hunting gets the black eye for the rest of humanity, but sportsmen spend more every year preserving African wildlife than all the national parks in Africa put together.
According to recent estimates, hunters spend more than $1 billion each year in Africa on trophy hunting and some studies suggest that number may be closer to $3 billion.
Across the 19 wildlife parks in Africa, only an estimated $381 million is donated annually to maintain and operate them. The high and mighty “animal lovers” don’t seem to be as loving of animals as they claim.
Sports hunters brought many African species back from the brink of extinction and those billions spent each year feed untold multitudes of hungry people and provide jobs for an untold number more.
Virtue is defined as “behavior showing high moral standards.” Sustaining native species and feeding native bellies certainly sounds like virtue to me and I’m proud I’ve had an opportunity to be virtuous a few times. Here’s hoping to a few more before I see those big hunting grounds in the sky.
