Katie,
I'm glad you liked the videos. I think they do a great job of summarizing a very complex issue in a precise manner. That's why I included them.
In regards to your above quoted statement. It's OK to be biased. We all are, and I don't think any hunter on here will fault you for being biased. It's hard to be completely altruistic in your objectivity when dealing with such a complex, and oftentimes emotional subject.
I am certainly not the spokesperson for this forum by any stretch of the imagination, and don't pretend to be. There are so many more on here that have much more experience when it comes to African hunting, and hunting in general. However, I think it's safe to say that no one on here is trying to force their love of hunting on anyone, or trying to convince someone they have to be "pro-hunting". In my case, my father was a quail hunter, but never really cared for big game hunting. My brother has never hunted, and was a vegetarian until he was in his late teens. As far as my children who knows. My youngest will definitely be a hunter, but my oldest, I'm not so sure. However, it will never be forced upon them. I carry them with me if they want to go, and I encourage them to spend time with me outdoors doing both hunting, and non-hunting activities, but beyond that, they will be allowed to make up their own minds. It's hard to say how I ever really became a "big game" hunter. Had it not been for a close personal friend of my father who was there to show me the ropes as far as whitetail hunting is concerned when I was 10 years old, I likely may have never tried it. However, after the first time hunting whitetail, the innate desire inside of me was sparked, and I have been a hunter ever since.
I think what most hunters hope, and it certainly seems as though this has become the case with you, is that non-hunters can gain a different perspective on hunting, and hunters, that is currently so lacking in the mainstream and social media environments. You don't have to understand hunting. You don't have to like hunting, or hunters. We don't ask you to. But what we ask is that you take an objective look, as best as possible, at what hunting does for animals and species as a whole. It is so much more than just killing for the thrill of it, and then slapping a head on the wall to boost an ego. Like I've said before, if it was the thrill of killing animals that "got us off", I'm sure we could find voluntary employment at any of the vast number of slaughter houses around the world that feed the human need for meat. I'm sure those factories would love to have free labor from the pool of the 30+ million hunters nationwide to slaughter all of those cows, pigs, chickens, etc.
No it's not all about the killing. But you have to kill to have hunted, and it's part of it. As so many have explained, there are a myriad of reasons why we do it. But there are also many benefits to the practice as well. Not the least of which is providing vast sums of money, and effort to support the conservation of those few remaining wild places and animals that are left on this planet today. The hunting industry has warts no doubt, and there are a lot of things within it that I'd just assume see go, and that I don't support. There are certainly some slobs out there that give all true sportsmen and women bad names. But what I hope you can see is that you can't throw the baby out with the bath water. Without North American leaders and hunters who stepped up over a hundred years ago, and said we have to change things to conserve what we have left, the iconic North American animals such as the Whitetail Deer, Rocky Mountain Elk, North American Wild Sheep, no to mention the vast sundry of waterfowl and all of the habitat these species inhabited, would have gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon (look it up). It is true that in select instances, hunters and the hunting industry, have done themselves very little favors in the way they portray themselves in the public eye, but overall, I will argue until I've taken my last breath, that there has been no greater force for good when it comes to conservation of animal species and habitat preservation. Africa is on the forefront of this fight today, just as North America was over 100 years ago when Teddy Roosevelt was president of the USA.
As I said before, most hunters and hunting organizations would be more than happy to work with Eco-tourism industries, and preservation groups to find common ground in order to come up with sound, scientifically based management strategies to deal with the problems that human overpopulation has brought to the Dark Continent and it's great and beautiful animals. These animals there are literally being run out of house and home. They have no where to go, and their being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces. However, as so often the case, so many of these "so-called" animal protectionist groups have no real strategy when it comes to dealing with the true problems. All they know how to do is yell, scream, and call hunters murderers (as if that was really a concept outside of human existence and definition), as well as throw vast amounts of money (that was obtained under false pretenses) to corrupt government officials and agencies who have no real interest in solving the problems. In the end, these organizations and NGOs may be able to say, "they showed those damn evil hunters", but when they look around, they'll ultimately have to face the reality that they did nothing to stop these animals from being decimated from the African continent. That will be a very sad time indeed, and one I pray to God I don't have to witness.
