Article first published as Trophy Hunters - The Lies That Hide the Cruelty on Technorati.

AMERICAN TROPHY HUNTERS – THE LIES THAT HIDE THE CRUELTY.
I am in awe at the success of the hunting industry’s invasion and occupation of the field of conservation. This enables them to exclude real conservationists, who think that conservation should be about protecting wildlife, by referring to them dismissively as ‘bunny huggers,’ ‘radicals’ or even ‘extremists.’
One strategy employed by the hunters is to get ‘prestigious’ entities and celebrities to make grandiose claims in support of the ‘sport.’ Same tactic as the tobacco industry. Not surprisingly, since propaganda is designed to confuse, it is apparent that many people who are intuitively opposed to hunting are confused by the pro-hunting arguments. This impedes efforts to get the sport banned. However, none of the claims made by the hunting fraternity to justify their cruel ‘sport’ bear intelligent analysis. There is a good expose of the hunting arguments in Mathew Scully's book ‘Dominion’ and also on our website www.cannedlion.org/
For full article see Technorati/Lifestyle/green

Chris: Thanks for posting the link to your new article. I'll also post it under news as
google searches pick up on some of the news articles. When this happens they send it out
to people on their alerts, so hopefully it will get to even more people.

Thank you for keeping us up to date on what you are doing in the field of conservation
in South Africa. It is always great hearing from people who are living with wildlife
and are up to date on what is going on and know the truth of the matter.

Hi Jan thanks for your comment. I am pasting a copy of a response I got from a hunting fan in South Africa to demonstrate the extent of ignorance and emotion aroused by anything critical of hunting. He even thinks that canned hunting has been banned in SA - I wish that were true.
Hi Chris,
We dont support Canned hunting of lions in any manner and form, and living in South Africa i am sure you are aware that it has been banned in all provinces, and we would not hesitate to investigate, and arrest any party, who are continuing the barbaric pratice. What we take exception to is your linking of all hunting operations, trophy hunting operations when you and i know that is not true, this practice was carried out by very few operators. To Accuse the whole hunting fraternity with this practice is a blatant untruth, probably used by your organization to elicit funds from many uninformed conservationists in the U.S.A. , The South African Hunting community has done more for conservation than the anti hunting Bunny Huggers ever have.[/color]

Hi Chris: Thanks for your reply. It is obvious that many of us who follow your work know
more about hunting in SA than this guy/girl does. To me all killing of wildlife is abhorent unless one is putting a suffering animal out of its misery. However, it is interesting that this guy is against canned hunting, but for sports hunting. From what I've learned from people in SA, almost all SA wildlife areas are fenced (either parks or reserves/farms) so the animal really stands no chance of getting away. This is sport?? Then what is the real difference between canned hunting and sports hunting?

Perhaps we should facetiously suggest human hunting/culling to see how outraged the SA people would become at that! It seems they have all conveniently forgotten that the wildlife was in Africa long before the people came, and thus deserve to live also.

Please continue to keep us up to date on wildlife happenings.