I DON'T BOTHER AND NOR SHOULD YOU

On Monday August 11th, 2015 I was extended a rare opportunity by an even rarer journalist.  It will stick in my memory for a number of reasons, not least for a particular opportunity I failed to use to best effect. 

But before elaborating, I should advise that any conversations or statements referred to below, unless otherwise indicated by exclamation marks, represent only my recollection of what transpired and may be heavily paraphrased for reasons of brevity that are already in doubt. 

The interview with journalist Genevieve (Gen) Jacobs from “Mornings with Genevieve Jacobs” on ABC 666 Canberra began with the usual primer call on the preceding Friday. 

Genevieve Jacobs

Genevieve advised, in so many words, that she’d been following the public response to the ill-fated African lion named Cecil and was hoping to bring a little depth and contrast to the emotive ‘debate’ on hunting that had ensued. 

Genevieve indicated that she’d read some of the things I’ve written about hunting, which suggested to her that I’d given various issues more than cursory thought and she hoped I might be willing to discuss some of my views with her and her listeners.

The focus, she said, would be the things that motivate hunters who do not hunt for trophies, but rather to put meat on the table, for cultural reasons, to aid the eradication of damaging pest species and so on. 

Having been burned by more than one radio journo with an agenda, I would usually have said, “Thanks, but no thanks!” But Genevieve gave me the impression of more than usual sincerity, so I agreed to chat with her.

It was a good call! 

She began the interview with a brief rundown of my form, referring to my years as a social justice advocate in the housing and homelessness sectors, which had won me an OAM, my years of service as a member of a shire social planning committee, my community service as an emergency response coordinator with the NSW Volunteer Rescue Service and so on. 

All this she did, I suspect, not to pander to my ego, but rather to establish that I was not in fact a wild-eyed, gap-toothed thug, standing with his club poised, nail gleaming in the sun, above the head of the planet’s sole surviving cuddly big-eyed fur seal pup. 

This suggests that Genevieve was all too aware of the pervading stereotypes and sought, in good faith, not to take advantage of them.

Yes, amazing, I know!

The interview, which can be found below, did not set out to give me a free ride. The journalist asked pertinent, sometimes tasking questions in a respectful and objective manner. 

I know!!

This was not a feeding frenzy orchestrated to slake the hunger of the emoting mob, but an exploration of the possibility that all hunters should not be judged on the actions of a handful of people who, if reports are accurate, are best described as poachers. 

Yes, she’s clearly a ring-in!!!

From my perspective the conversation had been productive. Not chockers with eureka moments in terms of inciting the nation to epiphany on the topic of subsistence hunting perhaps, but at least rational, inquiring and informative. 

And then the texts began to roll-in on Genevieve’s phone....the typical texts, from the usual suspects, for whom predictable slights and profound ignorance count as erudite opinion. 

“Well, he just likes to kill, doesn’t he?” was the standout. Not for its intellectual integrity and certainly not on the basis of originality, but for the fact that it’s typical of those who are incapable of distinguishing between objective reason and simple condemnation, which they believe to be the purpose of debate.

So Genevieve asked the only question she could under the circumstances; “how do you respond when people asked you to explain yourself...how do you respond when you need to explain why it’s OK to take that animal’s life?” and this is where I let the side down. 

My response was brief and to the point, “I don’t!” and it’s true; I refuse to “justify” myself to people who have proven their minds are closed and impenetrable to all but the four winds. 

But my brief reply deserved more fleshing out, because it is key to the whole hunting ‘debate’ and in particular, to the contextual analysis of the worldwide outcry that followed the death of a solitary prosaically-named lion in Zimbabwe.

Let’s be crystal clear about one fact if no other.

The outcry following Cecil’s death was not born of the public’s abiding love for animals. 

It was born of the public’s unbridled hatred for a human-being. 

Upon what do I base that assertion? Nothing better than simple logic and the evidence at the disposal of anyone who chooses to think about some obvious facts.

In the hours, days and weeks after Cecil’s death, the Twittersphere, Facebook, Instagram and text services across the planet have been fit to meltdown with demands for Walter Palmer’s blood and an end to all forms of hunting.

The same was true of the many agencies like Change.org that nurture and mine the outrage economy for profit by facilitating inarticulate online petitions with neither concern given to, nor responsibility taken for, their accuracy or intent. 

Yet despite the almost universal access we have to these modern-day wonders that might be used to effect positive change, international concern was not channelled into something productive such as encouraging the outraged to donate to African wildlife conservation agencies. Not on your nelly! 

Every tweet, every post and every petition focused on banning, punishment, extradition or vengeance - including torture - of one form or another.  Social media turned to so-many virtual pitchforks, shades of any medieval inquisition one cares to mention. 

Imagine what could be accomplished if just a fraction of the money sunk into acts of self-indulgent and largely ignorant rage such as texting insults, writing to politicians, buying $40 t-shirts that declare the individual's hatred for hunters etc., was forwarded instead to African conservation agencies.

Not only would there be so many lions on the plains that we might actually run out of idiotic names to burden them all with, but African poverty could be addressed sufficient to remove all motivation for poaching.

But where would be the dopamine driven instant ego gratifying point in any of that?

This is the point I failed to make in response to the fatuous accusations of Genevieve’s anonymous texters. 

I refuse to ‘justify’ anything about myself or my views to people whose own opinions emanate from a place so dark that even the fish with little lights on the ends of their noses, need little lights on the ends of their noses. 

It is a point we should all keep in mind when tempted to dignify the accusations of the mindless masses with our time spent in response. They do not speak for “the community”, only those among it who believe anger and hatred are essential to sound decision-making processes. 

Alas, this is the mentality the world’s media strives to give voice to and portrays as responsible. Indeed the media nurtures hate and ignorance for gain, by feeding the public information that, while not strictly false, is certainly not true and is definitely crafted to manipulate through inference and what is omitted every bit as much as what is said.

NEWSFLASH - As if in answer to a prayer, an example of the way the media, even with off-hand comments, has the power to influence a nation of less than intrepid thinkers has just gone to air.

It’s 2pm and the sorts of people who are watching television in the mid-afternoon on a weekday, looking to be captivated with the latest news about who’s cheating on whom in Hollywood, whose breasts are legit and whose aren't, or perhaps just hoping for a little advice from the other side courtesy of an oh-so reliable psychic, are tuned to 7’s The Daily Edition.

The show’s intro is followed by nearly 5 minutes of realish news from across the nation, read by an attractive, elegant young woman of the kind women everywhere would either love to be, or love to beat to a pulp for having way too much of what they don’t have any of at all. 

The last story in her update involves an elephant that’s resident at Taronga Zoo. Its keepers have fitted a wee GoPro camera to the pachyderm’s forehead, the better to see how the animal perceives the movements and actions of its keepers and, no doubt, the public too.  

Now one could be forgiven for thinking this ‘story’ was pretty harmless and viewed on merit alone it certainly was, until the aforementioned elegant newsreader decided to anthropomorphise the elephant’s plight. 

“I’d hate to have a camera on my head so everyone could see what I saw”, she said to her colleagues with a look of disapproval on her face. 

Instantly, what had 'til that point been a perfectly harmless experiment aimed at better understanding the elephant’s perceptions and responses, has been imbued with connotations of animal abuse, no-doubt associated with the denial of privacy or dignity or who knows. All because someone couldn’t resist conferring human concerns and notions of violation on an animal.

Well here’s the rub!

Elephants are not people and because they are not, they are unconcerned by the prospect of someone having access to video evidence of the bums they perv at, the tax returns they falsify, the kiddie-porn they watch on their laptops or who they’re cheating on their partners with.

Elephants are animals. They poop and pork in public, yet somewhere tonight, in a room reeking of patchouli oil, an angry little person is writing an indignant missive about the manifold cruel indignities imposed on a completely oblivious pachyderm that will form the plea for justice that graces a Change.org petition. 

This is the calibre of those some believe I should attempt to justify myself to. Well I don’t bother and nor should you!

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

Interview with Genevieve Jacobs
Mornings with Genevieve Jacobs
666 ABC Canberra
The relevant portion of the program begins approx 1-hr and 8-minutes into the program, just after the appalling 'song'.

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THE HUNTERS' EGO

“The anti-hunter is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. His is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. 

Yes, I have paraphrased one of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquies [Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5] just a tad, but each time I hear it I cannot help but think it sums up the invariably emotive and ill-considered ‘arguments’ put forth by hunting’s detractors and opponents.

Sadly – very sadly – the pro-hunting side of the ‘debate’ is just as inclined to spit abuse and ineloquent, unconvincing defences in reply, as though that somehow wins us ground. It doesn’t!

The debate is not going away and it is essential that we get better at putting our case. Not with trite responses about our ‘rights’ or unconvincing claims about painless deaths, but with sound intelligent public deconstructions of the anti-hunters’ case for various emotive animal 'rights'.

So what are ‘rights’? 

Rights come in many forms, but most fit into one of two categories. In the simplest terms they are: 

1) the moral or legal entitlement to have or do something. Such rights may be bestowed, as in the right to drive a car, which could be termed a permissive right, or right under licence, and

2) rights according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied, or transferred, or so-called unalienable rights.

In Australia at least, hunters enjoy the right to hunt under category 1. The hunter requires consent to go about his business, and not simply a hunting licence. The hunter is permitted to hunt in some places and not others, while some techniques are legal and others not. One may, generally speaking, hunt on private property, but one cannot use steel-jawed traps even on private property.

One may hunt rabbits with a gun, a bow or even ferrets on private property and no hunting licence is required, but if the property is not the hunter’s, written permission may be required and this acts as one’s right under licence of the property owner. 

But to hunt deer in NSW, whether on private property or crown lands, one needs a game licence, which is issued by the State. 

The rights anti-hunters claim for all God’s creatures, fall into the second category, unalienable rights, or rights that are automatic, complete and cannot be taken away e.g. the right to live a long and happy life, free from fear, pursuit, cruelty or murder etc.

While these rights may be considered unalienable by some and thus unable to be deprived, they are not so and in fact when it comes to non-humans they simply don’t even exist. 

For a right to have any integrity at all, it must be deliverable generally, not dolled-out ad hoc, capriciously or cynically.  If a right cannot be realised, it is a cynical right and no right at all e.g. the right to backstroke to the moon without fear of intervention. One could make it a right, but if no one can exercise it, it is really no right at all. 

This is the nature of the rights anti-hunters would bestow upon the quarry. They are not unalienable, but rather cynical because they run contrary to “natural law” and in fact natural law dictates they can be and will be “denied” in almost every case. 

While humans may bestow upon a rabbit, the right to a long life, free from hunger, homelessness, victimisation, assault etc., unless said rabbit has been abducted from its natural environment and imprisoned in a cage, no such rights are afforded or due the rabbit.

Natural law dictates the rabbit will live day-by-day not knowing if he will see tomorrow. He will have no right to safe and secure shelter; only the shelter he can create in the moment and every moment of his life will be filled with the threat of home invasion. 

He will be stalked and pursued, often and mercilessly, and unless sheer good fortune intervenes, he will be murdered horribly by an assailant who will extend absolutely no mercy. 

Nor will our bunny or his family know the consolation of ‘justice’. The fox will not be pursued and penalised for killing Mr. Bunny and no one will rally ‘round to make sure Mrs. Bunny and the kids are looked after. 

These are all human concepts of ‘rights’ and common decencies applied to creatures that have neither use for them nor expectation of them. 

The rights many so eagerly bestow upon Cecil the lion carry weight only for nature’s apex hunters and even then the weight they carry is not great. 

We can claim Cecil had a right to live and that those who denied him that right are brutal tyrants, but surely in the great scheme of things Cecil enjoyed a pretty privileged position as something of a tyrant himself? 

As a lion, Cecil was in a position to – and in fact did – deny a veritable cornucopia of rights to just about every creature on the plains.  

Cecil pursued creatures mercilessly, every day of his life. He struck fear into the hearts of all living things and he did so with no consideration to what we recognise as ethics. He killed the weak, the aged, the disabled, the marginalised and the newborn. 

He was not concerned with killing quickly and many of his victims, having evaded Cecil’s brutal attacks, will have limped away carrying mortal wounds, only to die in terrible agony some days later. That agony was likely compounded by being torn apart by other opportunistic predators that will not have waited patiently ‘til Cecil’s victims expired quietly in their sleep.

Cecil killed creatures a fraction of his strength, using weapons of tooth and claw they could not possibly hope to match. Most of his victims had few teeth, little muscle and just one defence, to run. 

In fact if one was intent on anthropomorphising as the anti-hunter does, it would be fair to contend he hunted unethically, because his victims did not have his arsenal with which to defend themselves. 

This brings me to the corollary of this exercise.   

If it is wicked to kill “another sentient being” in order to eat its flesh, why is it not equally wicked for Cecil or perhaps a fox to do it?

If it is cowardly to kill a creature with superior weaponry, why is Cecil not cowardly for using teeth the size of ice-picks and claws like reaping sickles to kill baby gazelle?   

If causing another ‘sentient being’ pain is evil, why is it not universally evil, especially given that the human hunter will at least take life with some regard to minimising suffering, whereas other predators won’t give it a second’s thought?

The answer is simple – ego – the very vice the anti-hunter says is the trophy hunters’ driving force. 

Humans have wonderfully developed egos. They tell us we are better than mere animals, regardless of what the likes of PETA may claim about respecting non-human animal equality and the like. 

We consider ourselves smarter, wiser, cleverer, more responsible, more evolved and with all that comes a responsibility to act in ways that are infinitely superior to all other species. To be gods! 

We reserve for ourselves the right to dictate that behaviour common to a vast number of other species, which fit into the natural balance in ways we long-since ceased to do, is wrong in the human species.  

We are not opposed to hunting because hunting is cruel. We oppose it because to do otherwise robs us of the sense of superiority we crave, that we have bestowed upon ourselves as stewards of all creation.

The hunter, in particular the subsistence hunter, is happy to accept he is part of the great scheme of things, rather than master of it. He does not seek to be more virtuous than the lion or more entitled than the dingo. He doesn’t see himself as a minor deity that must shine with superior enlightenment. 

The hunter is content to respect the natural balance of hunter-prey that has been established over uncounted eons. This balance works in systems across the planet and only fails when man interferes, because his ego assures him he knows a better way.

I am perfectly content to be condemned for taking life to nourish myself and my family, exactly as nature intended and as humanity has done for at least 200,000 years. Perhaps when a better model has stood the test of time....? 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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YET ANOTHER ANGRY MOB

The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. 

As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem Village to hear the cases. A total of 19 people would be tried and sent to the gallows, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused and systematically persecuted over months to come.

Artists impression of a Salem court. At time of writing, those accused of
Cecil's 'murder' have not enjoyed even this much due process.

The 19 were executed on evidence which, in these more ‘enlightened’ times, we recognise as nothing more compelling or reliable than innuendo, ignorant superstition and the opportunistic manipulation of rumour and circumstance. 

Yet for whatever it was worth at the time, the accused did at least have the benefit of a trial; an opportunity to face their accusers, to explain their statements and actions before sentence was carried-out.

This is more than can be said for those accused of killing Cecil the lion.

As in the Massachusetts of 1692-93, the clarion call has gone out. The community is outraged at the rumoured actions and variously reported and oft contradicted breaches attributed to a US dentist and his hunting party. A new-age Puritan movement has decided enough is enough! Society can no longer tolerate those who continue to embrace the old, less enlightened ways. 

They must be punished, preferably by public hanging, if PETA has its way, so they might serve as a cautionary tale.

Print and electronic medias have reported, in great detail, the unbridled anger levelled by a virtuous mob at those involved in Cecil’s death. The names and addresses of the accused have been disseminated via social media, where people, proud to be superiorly endowed with the gift of empathy, consumed nonetheless with unmitigated hatred, fantasise about executing a myriad frighteningly imaginative forms of retribution, which they consider warranted in “seeking justice for poor Cecil”.

Yet at time of writing, there has been no complete and reliable disclosure of the charges against those involved, no trial and certainly no verdict.

Ask the mob upon what facts they base their demands for swift, firm and uncompromising 'justice' and their responses betray the staggering level of intellectual incompetence inherent in almost every respondent:

“Well, they’re obviously guilty, aren’t they!”

“I hate hunters. They all deserve to die in pain!”

“I have no time for people without empathy. If I had my way, we’d shoot their children in front of them so they’d know how it feels to lose a loved-one!”

And so on. 

This was the mob mentality that prevailed in Salem Village in 1692. We read accounts of those events and shake our heads in amazement that people could have been hanged on the basis of rumour, hearsay and testimony equivalent to, “She turned me into a newt!” Yet here we are, in the Year of Our Lord 2015, still as intolerant, still as hateful, still as predictable as ever we were.

We are still hypocritical, self-indulgent bigots too.

Dare suggest a “woman’s place is in the home” and you’ll be assailed by an angry mob, torches ablaze. Suggest that hunting is a sign of dubious sexual prowess e.g. “real men shoot with cameras!” or “big gun, small dick!” and one is, of course, a veritable beacon of social responsibility and enlightenment.

Society – white, first-world, non-African society at least – is emphatic. Lions, elephants, rhinos etc., must be left to roam the plains of Africa wild and free, unhindered just as God and nature intended.  They are beautiful, majestic, noble creatures and posing no threat whatsoever to anyone, they just want to live and be left alone. 

Anyone who’s watched the Discovery Channel knows this to be fact! 

But the hundreds of thousands of impoverished people who live among these charismatic species don’t get the Discovery Channel. 

60 inch 3D plasma televisions, I’m reliably advised, can be dashed tricky to mount on the walls of your average mud hut and satellite dishes cobbled together from discarded bicycle rims and old goat skins are not what they’re cracked up to be...especially when vegans insist the skins must remain firmly affixed to the aforementioned old goat. 

But African people do live bang in the middle of the locations where so many entertaining documentaries are produced and many struggle to understand why affluent white folks, who will likely never set foot in their country, love lions to distraction, but have no regard whatsoever for the welfare of African children. 

The conservancies where regulated hunting takes place are not vast tracts of uninhabited land set aside for animals alone as National Parks are here, in the US and in Europe. They’re inhabited, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by thousands of people trying to eke-out an existence and a marginal living from even more marginal crops. 

Their children often sleep in the open fields at night, in an effort to ward-off raiding elephants and rhinos that think nothing of trampling a child who shouts the African equivalent of “shoo” at them while banging a couple of  old saucepans together.

Lions are not “simply gorgeous” to villagers who must send their kids to the creek for water a couple of times a day, never daring to wonder if they’ll make it back home, because living with the threat of losing a family member to a gorgeous lion is such an ever-present danger that if one started worrying about it, one would go very quickly insane. 

No, instead they just concentrate on having large families, while doing their best to kill the pesky lions before they pesky their way through the whole village. 

Imagine for just a moment, if you will, what it would be like if the metaphorical shoe were on the other foot. 

People the world over have seen the late Steve Irwin on the tele, talking about BEEEUTIFUL creatures from the dark continent of Australia, among them one known as the King Brown Snake. 

He has shown them glistening under the sun of their natural habitat, the Australian bush and he has even picked them up by the tail while he marvels at the various characteristics that make them BEEEUTIFUL, rare and even unique.

Sure, Steve is the first to admit “they can be a bit dangerous”, but he assures viewers they mostly avoid humans and, statistically speaking, they pose comparatively little threat. 

Of course learning that the world beyond our shores is smitten with the old King Brown, you’re going to leave him be when you find him sunning himself in your garden....aren’t you? 

You’re not going to break his back with a rake, lop off his head with a spade, shoot him with the 410 or otherwise harm Billy the Brown Snake are you, just because he may chase and bite one of the kids during breeding season?  Perish the thought!  

You’d not call in the experts to remove every last King Brown from your neighbourhood just to save a few white rugrats. That would be hypocrisy, what with your position on lions ‘n’all.

Still, we do live in the global community these days, so I suppose if the majority believes impoverished Africans should just get used to family members being killed by creatures heavier than the average family car and less amenable to reason than your typical Gray Nurse shark, so be it. 

No one is going to convince you the best way to ensure that the majority of dangerous African wildlife is here for future generations to anthropomorphise, is to make it represent something other than a daily horror that must be endured by people who consider the likes of lions to be just as mundane as rabbits on pasture. We white people are too smart to fall for that sort of thing, right?

If Cecilsteria has proven anything, it is not that the world is too enlightened to tolerate the activities of hunters, but rather that affluent white folks are still just as self-obsessed, just as committed to dictating what poor black folks must endure and just as contemptible in their willing and deluded ignorance as ever they were. 

We still find it easier to emote and hate in ignorance, than to task ourselves to look at the bigger picture and make necessary, if somewhat unsavoury concessions and regardless of the fact we may claim to be far more tolerant than ever before, we still long to hate, to be seen to hate, to hate with others and to harness our combined hatred to impose our will on those we consider to be less important.

Forget retaining metadata on the grounds that we need to protect society from the ever-present terrorist threat. Social media should be analysed pro-actively and lists of names compiled to ensure that the likes of those who have condemned the accused in the Cecil saga are never called upon for jury duty. 

They have proven themselves capable of applying all the objective intellectual rigor to the investigative process that could reasonably be expected of an intellectually impaired parsnip.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way no...  

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HUNTING DENTISTS FOR SPORT

Many things divide hunters. Not least, the question of whether hunting for trophies alone, as opposed to subsistence hunting, is ethically or morally justifiable.

Many things unite us too. Among them, respect for the principles of fair chase, regulation, sustainability and an abiding disdain for those who flout these principles, otherwise known as poachers.

I am not a trophy hunter.  While I undoubtedly take pride in the proficiency I’ve achieved, the traditional and cultural hunting skills and activities I help preserve and the self-sufficiency associated with bringing fresh, free-range, organic meat and other resources into my home, I am not driven to hang heads on my walls.

I don’t take photographs of my quarry and display them on my walls or share them on the net either, but nor are my walls adorned with glittering seascapes or family portraiture and my one and only photo-album contains pictures taken by others, long before I could hold a camera.

I am not a ‘memories’ kinda guy, but while I am not, I accept that many people surround themselves with reminders of events, people and views they consider beautiful or significant. That’s their thing.

I do not condemn the trophy hunter on noble or supposedly enlightened moral principles, yet nor do I support their activities without reservation.

This is true of many hunters, who, like me, believe we are all bound by basic rules associated with sustainability, humaneness, maximum use of the quarry, the strict observance of legality and the rules of fair-chase.

The American dentist accused of killing a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe appears to have comprehensively flouted all the rules. I say ‘appears’ to have flouted the rules because ‘facts’ leaking out of Zimbabwe continue to evolved and even contradict on a daily basis.

He is reported to have conspired with guides to lure his quarry from a protected environment, using bait to ensure his quarry would be in a specific, if not fixed location, for his killing shot.

He has failed to kill his quarry swiftly and while this may happen even when the most conscientious hunter is involved, if reports are accurate he has failed even to be sufficiently prepared to ensure a swift second shot to minimise suffering.

He has targeted an animal fitted with a radio collar and part of an active research project, which was also easily distinguishable from other members of the species he was licensed to hunt, by virtue of its distinctive black mane.

He has endeavoured to cover his activities to avoid prosecution and associated mandatory confiscation of his trophy and in the process wasted the carcass other than those aspects required for taxidermy.

To exploit the sort of emotive sensationalism that enhances readership, the Australian media refers to such people as “illegal hunters”.  Throughout the rest of the world, the media, authorities and indeed the Oxford Dictionary, all refer to them more correctly as ‘poachers’ and they are anathema to all responsible hunters.

It is natural to feel concern and even anger at the circumstances of Cecil’s death. Empathy, the new crowning glory of our species, is a uniquely human and for the most part, admirable trait.  Alas, concepts such as hatred, calculated – often frighteningly imaginative - retribution and the desire to seek revenge are also uniquely human traits.

A quick tour of social media reveals the depth of unbridled hatred harboured for Cecil’s killer.  Many people believe the American dentist should be extradited and hanged...because killing is wrong?

Some even believe he should be hanged in front of his children to teach them a lesson about...cruelty and empathy?

Society decries hunting charismatic species such as lions and elephants, yet we applaud the efforts of men and women who sally forth in paramilitary gear to...hunt and kill poachers?

As a hunter, I am often asked “what gives you the right to take another life?”  It’s a tricky question, not because it is difficult to answer, but because the questioner does not actually want to hear my answer, unless it is “No-one, sorry, you’re right. I’ll mend my evil ways forthwith!”

They do not pose the question to any other species, not only because it would be futile, but because they believe it is completely natural, even noble, for the mighty lion to kill the graceful gazelle, “because he has to” or “because he doesn’t know any better.”

My ‘justification’ for subsistence hunting is quite uncomplicated.  I hunt because I choose to. I choose not to abandon a practice that is as old as humanity itself. I choose to be a participant in the eternal struggle of life on earth, rather than the benign messianic shepherd of all I survey.

Most of all it is the example set by the ‘enlightened’ who vehemently oppose hunting that makes me very proud to be counted among the unenlightened.

Like so many other hunters who are daily subjected to the vengeful wrath of the enlightened, I do not kill a deer because I hate it, because I have judged it morally or ethically wanting and thus fit to be condemned to ridicule, death or even torture as befits my concept of ‘justice’.

I take the life of the deer for exactly the same reasons Cecil took the lives of innumerable creatures during his 13 years on earth. In fact by using hide, antler and sinew, I put my quarry to far more holistic use than Cecil was either inclined or equipped to do, however, none of this is justification enough to those who thrive on the raw meat of hatred and the malignancy of blind contempt.

The change so often demanded in the name of ‘enlightenment’, when born of emotive hatred or philosophical disdain, never serves society well.

In such cases, the claimed ‘enlightenment’ is simply a justification for intolerance and social media a stage for intimidation and ego-gratifying display.

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now...

DATELINE – Zimbabwe, where eyewitness accounts reveal a very different picture of Cecil the Lion.

Photos have emerged showing Cecil in the act of killing and eating Greg the Gazelle.

Greg was a favourite among locals and visitors at Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, where he delighted onlookers with his trademark random frolics while gaily clicking his heels in the air.

Greg was 13 years old. He is survived by his wife, Gwendolyn Gazelle, and their 7 children.  Wait, no...perhaps 6?

Confidante and childhood friend of Greg – Zak the Zebra – told this reporter, "Sure, we’ve been told folks are really upset about Cecil, but hey, let me tell you, we locals are losing no sleep over it!

“We’ve all lost friends and family to Cecil.  The guy was an animal!”

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