I don't oppose hunting. Culling the herd, eating the meat: at that point, if you also want to take a trophy? Well, it's a little creepy, but that's another part of the animal that won't go to waste, I guess.
But every time another detail come out about this story, it just gets worse and worse.
Palmer claims he was on a legal hunt, with all the proper permits. That's bullshit - pure, unadulterated bovine fecal matter. Palmer is so full of crap his eyes are brown.
At what point did anything about this hunt seem legitimate? They dragged a dead animal behind their jeep to lure an endangered animal out of the preserve. That didn't seem a little questionable to him? They let him shoot a 200 pound lion with an under-powered crossbow. When, as anybody who knew anything about hunting could have foreseen, the lion didn't immediately die, it took them almost two full days to track it down, as it slowly bled out, suffering and in pain. They tried to destroy the radio tracker around the lion's neck, but couldn't even do that right.
Nobody eats lion meat by choice. It's a predator, which means the meat is tough and stringy; it's a carnivore, which means the meat is rank. The only reason to hunt them is because you think you deserve to kill any damned animal on the planet.
Palmer isn't a hunter, he's a sadist. He's been charged for illegal hunting before, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his basement was set up as a torture chamber for the squirrels he could trap around his home. He was probably the type of evil kid who giggled after jamming firecrackers up a cat's butt or stapling a duck's beak shut.
I've got to admit that I don't have any problem with the fact that, in the uproar, he's had to close his dental practice, and protesters are setting up a memorial to Cecil the Lion outside it. Palmer is an evil, overprivileged bastard, and he needs to learn what the inside of a Zimbabwean jail looks like.
Beyond objecting to speculation about his personal habits, which is a Straw Man argument and unnecessary. Illegal hunting and poaching for trophies and not food is repulsive. With an endangered species? For a 'trophy?' Feed him to the lions at the zoo.
ReplyDeleteIt's repulsive enough to hunt any lion but being bad enough at hunting to have to track the thing for days? There's no excuse for any of it and any self respecting hunter would agree. You're right, a lion is not a prey animal. They are not adapted to an environment where there population can be or needs to be replenished quickly. They're already being squeezed out of existence by human expansion as well as by hunting or more likely poaching. Most African countries take it so seriously that poachers are shot on sight without benefit of a trial. Too bad this idiot escaped without the load of buckshot he's earned.
I'm not sentimental about lions any more than lions are sentimental about lambs but I don't want to see their inevitable extinction rushed along for "sport" and the days owhenTeddy Roosevelt or even Earnest Hemingway could call it sport are long gone.
A Zimbabwe jail seems fitting to me. That's a country where outsiders have been coming in taking what they want for a very long time and not kindly disposed toward the "White Hunter" pretensions of some Midwestern dentist.
We have to recognize though, that most poaching in Africa is more sinister, more local and more widespread. We can say goodbye to certain rhinos and probably most megafauna in Africa and tigers are fast disappearing on the subcontinent.
What a piece of work is man!
I was just a whim away from turning this dude into Frisky's Buffet. A good thing he shut down his dental practice; someone would have knocked his teeth out.
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Dr. Happy Tooth didn't do this on his own. Illegal exploitation of wildlife is worldwide and some of it is organized. If he didn't know he was breaking the law,and who knows, maybe he didn't, others did and in some degree he was set up.
ReplyDeleteIf others in Zimbabwe and elsewhere are selling illegal, fake permits to hunt lions they are just as guilty and I would hate to see this guy used as a smokescreen to hide a nasty enterprise. Poaching is a huge industry in Africa and when they go after animals with a low reproductive rate, it can be enough to cause extinction.
Are some "dirty" Zimbabweans using the dislike for and suspicion of white people as a distraction? Are we having so much fun with the scapegoat we're not asking?
I don't see the tooth devil as a victim ... neither "set up" nor used as a "smokescreen." People like him create the market for poaching. Furthermore, since he has become an infamous anti-celebrity and more info about him has emerged, this is what we now know. He has a history of poaching -- having been previously prosecuted. There were charges filed against him for spousal abuse and sexual abuse. He doled out something in excess of $100,000 to have charges dropped.
DeleteBottom line: The man is a bastard with a history and a moral character disorder. Frisky's Buffet, I say!
Feed him to the lions.
DeleteFor every White Devil there are thousands of native poachers. Making it all about him takes attention away from them. He didn't do it to sell ivory and he didn't do it without being aided and encouraged every step of the way by Africans.
DeleteIsn't that what they call the 'genetic' fallacy? He's been a bad boy so it's all his fault? The biggest danger to wildlife of all sorts is economic development and farming.
Agreed Captain.
DeleteI guess you could look at him as the poster man for a-holes, the symptom of the underlying problem.
Even though I think Bwana Simba's contribution to extinction is a very small one, I don't want to sound like I think the guy should get away with it and even though I think he shares blame with others. I would be very surprised if Dr. Crossbow is extradited, but if it can be proved he bribed an official and/or if he brought back any part of that lion, he could face big repercussions here in the US. I think there's a good chance there and I hope it happens. I read that his associates in crime said he wanted to go after an elephant next.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe apparently is going to prosecute the guys who aided and abetted and encouraged him and without whom this wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes as I think the word "prosecute" might mean something more than it does here in the US. That's a start and if this incident galvanizes world wildlife enthusiasts maybe that old lion didn't die in vain.