This is disgraceful. It takes no skill to shoot an elephant dead. The creatures are gentle; they generally won’t charge a human (a lion is a different story).
So this piece should make you sick:
In a video of the hunt, Makris spots an elephant in the brush, walks up and shoots it in the the face twice. After a short chase, Makris fires again and the elephant is dead.
The NRA lobbyist then takes a moment to pose with his .577 “Tyrannosaur” rifle and the dead pachyderm.
As the episode ends, the group of hunters enjoys a glass of champagne while watching the sunset.
“To hunt an elephant and to harvest and elephant and to bring the ivory back to camp is a very, very special occasion,” one hunter says.
Actually, it’s not special. And that’s the pity. We’re hunting these animals to extermination. Were there a challenge in such a hunt, maybe — probably not, but maybe — one could praise the hunter for his (or her) skill.
But in my experience (3 visits to Africa, each included major time in Botswana looking at elephants in the wild) . . . shooting an elephant is a nothingburger. One shouldn’t be proud of it.
In fact, one should be shunned for doing such a thing, by 7 billion human beings.
CONSIDER THIS FACT: Along about the time I was born, there were 2 billion humans on the planet and perhaps 1 million-plus elephants in Africa. Now, there are 7 billion of us, and maybe 500,000 of them.
We didn’t kill them for food. We killed them (and still kill them) for “sport” and for ivory.
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