Regarding Cecil the Lion

          Regarding Cecil the Lion

The dentist’s mistake was that he killed the wrong cat. You should never shoot a lion with a tracking collar, a name, two prides of his own, and lots of human friends. You should only shoot lions that are mateless, nameless and friendless. That’s just common sense.

No luring out of sanctuary, no spotlighting, and no slow kills; that’s cheating, punishable by doxing. And dammit, eat what you kill!

So it turns out that hunting, despite its glamorous aura of lawless freedom, is as hide-bound by tiresome custom as is civilization. It’s human nature to both make limits, and chafe at them.

Hunting is morally complex. Sure, it’s about killing beautiful animals; but those beautiful animals themselves kill beautiful animals. Big game hunters are important fundraisers for conservationism. It’s a predator-prey paradox; the predator kills individual prey but has a vested interest in the survival of the prey species. Smart hunters know this.

My critique of the dentist (whose name I refuse to remember) is not moral but intellectual; the dummy blew it. He killed an alpha specimen, not a cull; essentially Zimbabwe’s pet; that’s bad wildlife management practice, and it made human enemies for him. He should have known that 50K$ was buying him something illegal; it’s much cheaper and politick to bribe an official. Had he done that, and killed a bachelor lion, then nobody would have objected. What a fool!

Well… maybe he did know that he was breaking the rules, but he thought that he wouldn’t get caught. Still a fool.