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Thursday 1st May 2008
Trophies For Losers
Louis Theroux delivered another thought provoking but urbanely packaged piece of documentary making to our TV screens last month. Louis Theroux's African Hunting Holiday saw him delving deep into the African bush and uncovering some rather unpleasant insects that like to bask in the blood and gore of big game hunting. And make a few big bucks while they’re at it.
These hunt organisers, however, insist that the hunting holidays they offer in the Limpopo Province are a legitimate "sport".
Personally I saw little that was sportsmanlike about it. Various trophy animals are raised in captivity on private game reserves for one purpose and one purpose only: to be shot dead by hunters from across the globe who wish to bag themselves the head of a rhino or the pelt of a lion to decorate their open-plan living rooms back home in Redneck County, Texas, US of A.
I’m probably being unfair. I doubt the sole customers for this type of holiday are American but there seemed to be a greater ratio of our American cousins among the hunting troupe than any other nation. And one in particular that Louis met epitomized all that is distasteful about big game hunting. Having cajoled his poor wife into taking part he enthused about the amount of blood that was produced when she bagged herself a kill at a fake watering hole – used solely to lure the animals in close enough to achieve an easy kill.
"There was lots of blood, baby, lots of blood. It was a great shot. I saw blood shoot out; lots of it. Nice going." Good grief. What virtue can there be in not only marrying Vlad The Impaler but also trying to appease him by joining in with his sick pastimes? I can’t help feeling she was more culpable than he was. He’s sick in the head but she initially felt a moral revulsion to what he was doing and then weakly gave in and agreed to participate. Anything to keep the old man happy? Sheesh!
But the repulsive pantomime didn’t end there. After the ignoble kill there was the obligatory photo opportunity where the proud hunters posed with a cheesy smile plastered onto their faces whilst holding up the limp head of their freshly slaughtered animal. The whole thing was ineffably shallow, self aggrandizing and somehow sleazily pathetic at the same time.
Of course there were the old justifications: the meat is given to the poor; these animals would be extinct if not for the breeding programmes that these private hunting reserves employ to maintain their stocks, etc... blah blah blah. All true I have no doubt and I’ve heard similar arguments for meat farming in the UK: if not for the demand for beef and lamb would sheep and cows really litter our countryside in the profusion that they currently do? Or, without any other use, would we have let them die out years ago?
Who can say? At the very least though farm animals are raised and slaughtered solely for food and not for sport and I don’t know of any farmer who doesn’t care a great deal about the animals that he raises. They are never seen as merely (excuse the pun) cash cows. The same could not be said for the majority of game reserve owners than Louis spoke to in Limpopo. One admitted that he had no love for the animals he raised at all and justified it by saying that they had no love for him. Really?! He raises them to moving targets and they have the gall not to be grateful? Wow.
At one point Louis was given a high powered crossbow and invited to sample the thrill of making his own kill. I’ve seen Louis in many dangerous situations but I’ve never seen him look as uncomfortable as when he eyeballed a small wild pig down the telescopic lens of his crossbow. The moral fight within him was palpable but it was also a foregone conclusion. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it and refused to shoot. I doubt that anybody watching was in the least bit surprised. Louis Theroux is just not a cold blooded killer.
And we love him for it.
All in all the documentary was compulsive viewing. Both fascinating and stomach churning at the same time – and raised some uncomfortable but old-known facts about our own species... basically some of us just like to kill things. That’s nothing to be proud of though and I suspect the hunters themselves were well aware of this given their furtive responses to some of Louis’ pertinent lines of questioning.
By the end of the programme I couldn’t help thinking that hunting itself is not the problem. I can see the attraction to shooting at a target and testing your skills of timing and accuracy – I’ve done archery in my time and thoroughly enjoyed it. So here’s a suggestion: why can these animals not be shot with dye pellets or paintballs if people fancy having a go at a moving target? The hunters can test their skills in the wild and these rare and beautiful animals can get to live longer and more productive lives. As one of the hunt organisers admitted: 98% of the world’s population find big game hunting distasteful. So why not turn that around? Why not sell hunting safaris where people can get the taste of a hunt but without killing a healthy animal? Maybe a substantial percentage of that 98% who find it distasteful might decide to throw some of their hard earned money the hunting reserve’s way once the moral sting has been removed? More money for the hunt organisers, more money for the preservation of rare species and everybody’s happy. A win – win situation surely?
Sadly, the obstacle to this utopia is, I suspect, to be found in the real underlying problem with big game hunting...
The trophy culture.
This lust for "a trophy" is what actually makes killing animals in this way deeply offensive to "98% of the world’s population". There is something horrifically gloating and disgustingly mercantile about someone who’ll pay big bucks just to kill a dumb animal. That such an activity is merely sating a thoroughly unwholesome appetite in the minds of the diseased few who garner great pleasure from such an activity only adds to the overall sense of criminality and transgression. Because despite protests to the contrary there was nothing sportsmanlike, noble or even testing in the way these animals were killed. There was no big, arduous "hunt" taking place. The punter pays whatever the going rate is for the animal that he wishes to bag, is taken to a concealed hide near a man made watering hole and then waits very patiently in the cool and the shade for his pray to approach. At such close range he would have to be either half blind or just extremely cruel to miss his mark and not deliver a clean kill first time.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
And that’s not sport. It’s murder.
It’s one thing to breed animals for meat. It’s another to breed them just for the pleasure a sick few may take in giving them a meaningless death.
Trophies for losers indeed.
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