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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hunting traditions in Africa defended, scrutinized

The son of Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, center, teaches future wardens to conserve the game his father hunted and wrote about, in this 1965 photo. (Associated Press)
Christopher Torchia Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG – In 1909-10, Theodore Roosevelt headed a Smithsonian hunting and trapping expedition in Africa that included colleagues who prepared the wildlife he killed for shipment back to America. The former U.S. president and his son, Kermit, shot hundreds of animals.

“Really, I would be ashamed of myself sometimes, for I felt as if I had all the fun,” Roosevelt later said in a speech. “I would kill the rhinoceros or whatever it was, and then they would go out and do the solid, hard work of preparing it. They would spend a day or two preserving the specimen while I would go and get something else.”

Despite the killing spree, Roosevelt also advocated “a happy mean” between hunting and preserving wildlife sanctuaries, foreshadowing today’s debate on hunting that has become more polarized as poaching and human encroachment have vastly reduced wildlife in sub-Saharan Africa. An international outcry erupted after an American dentist killed a well-known lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe last month in an allegedly illegal hunt.

Many “Big Five” – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and water buffalo – hunters believe what they do is a sport and conserves wildlife by funneling funds back into game reserves.

“Hunters are normal, living, nature-loving people,” said Adri Kitshoff, chief executive officer of the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa. “They’re not bloodthirsty killers.”

Some 7,600 foreign hunters traveled to South Africa in 2013, more than half of them from America, according to association figures.

In recent years, poachers have killed tens of thousands of elephants annually to meet demand for ivory in Asia. In South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos, more than 1,200 were reported poached last year for their horns. Lions are designated as vulnerable on an international “red list” of species facing threats.

Brent Stapelkamp, a wildlife researcher, said he believes some hunters in Africa try to locate and kill their quarry as quickly as possible, in contrast with old-style hunting trips that lasted weeks or months.

“They’re here for the trophy more than the actual experience,” Stapelkamp said.

But for some, it is also about the experience.

“You cannot describe a wild lion’s roar,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in “True at First Light.” “You can only say that you listened and the lion roared. It is not at all like the noise the lion makes at the start of Metro Goldwyn Mayer pictures. When you hear it you first feel it in your scrotum and it runs all the way up through your body.”