Steve Russell: The Great White Lion Hunter kills only for thrills

What about Great White Lion Hunter in Zimbabwe?

That Great White Hunter wanted to use a bow and arrow. Is this some kind of indigenous nostalgia? Please, God, I don’t want to hear about his Cherokee grandmother!

If he did have a Cherokee grandmother, she would have told him that you don’t take an animal without the animal’s permission, without asking in advance and expressing gratitude afterward.

Gratitude for what? Gratitude that the animal gives its life for your sustenance. Oh, right—he didn’t eat the lion. I guess I could ask if he had anything else for which to be grateful?

I’ve been listening carefully to the trophy hunters, and they make two claims about why they do what they do. The first is that they want to be congratulated for paying fees that allow the management to keep the animals from going extinct, just as the Apaches use permit fees to manage their elk population.

There’s another reason trophy hunters give: the adrenaline rush, the high adventure thrill. Maybe that’s why Dr. Strangelove, er, Palmer, attempted to kill Cecil the Lion with a bow. But you can bet that professionals toting the high-caliber rifles that eventually dispatched Cecil after Great White Hunter botched the job were surrounding the doc.

The canned hunts are even less dangerous to the “hunters,” because the prey have been raised in close proximity to human beings who are responsible for their care and feeding. Even those not really tame are not really wild, either. When’s the last time you heard of a participant in a canned hunt losing his life?