I’ll just be upfront about this one – I don’t get hunting.

I know it brings in money that is invaluable to the fight against poaching, and I know it helps fund conservation areas that are vital to the survival of threatened and endangered species.

These are the uncomfortable realities of hunting in southern Africa.

What I don’t understand is the urge that these hunters have to shoot and kill an animal so they can feel a little tingling sensation in their pants.

There is hunting for meat, and then there is shooting an elephant whilst it walks alongside its family unit, and the latter just makes you look like a truly horrid human being.

So, this video is on News24:

A video that shows an elephant being hunted in the Nakabolelwa Conservancy in Namibia has surfaced online. According to Namibia-based Corné Kruger, a qualified big game hunter, the video was shot three or four years ago. “I don’t know why it only surfaced now,” he said.

Kruger said elephant hunting was a sensitive issue but a “legal and sustainable” practice in Namibia. The video shows two men with rifles aiming at a herd of elephants at a distance.

One of the men can be heard saying: “Hit it between the eyes,” before they both open fire.

Kruger said the elephant that was shot was a bull.

“There is a small quota of elephants in the area and we only hunt two elephants a year,” he told News24.

OK, so this comes with a graphic warning, and also a warning that one of these hunters has a terrible moustache.

Corné Kruger, who we heard from earlier, owns Omujeve Hunting Safaris, and talks up the benefit to the local communities that legal hunting provides:

[He] said hunting had financially benefitted the communities in the vicinity of the Nakabolelwa Conservancy “hugely”.

“We employ 12 people from the community, some of them as game guards,” he said.

“The funds go to conservation and fund anti-poaching units,” Kruger said.

Not everyone is buying that, though:

Again, sadly, evidence often does point to hunting funding many forms of conservation, and professional hunters will always tell you that foreigners “may only hunt if accompanied by a registered professional hunter with registration in the province or country where the hunt is undertaken”.

Not that things don’t go wrong from time to time, like with the recent controversy surrounding the death of Skye, the Kruger Park lion.

I guess if gunning down beautiful creatures like elephants is how you legally get your kicks, then nobody can stop you.

In the same vein, nobody can stop me from thinking you’re a giant piece of shit.

[source:news24]