A lot of people in this thread are being real Dumbos about this situation

Seemed like a nice guy. Would have loved to have several beers and get trunk with him

Pun not overlooked :)

I'm glad he's dead

Youre glad hes dead because he hunted??


What?

Always amazed by the rationalization it must take to shoot a leopard (pics in article)...with a gun you didn't invent, with ammunition you didn't manufacture, using gunpowder you dont know how to make, driving a jeep you bought and consider yourself a sportsman. How can you look what you've done and not feel like a complete loser. It's like beating up a handicapped child.

That cat would own that fat **** in 5 seconds on a level playing field.

Taking joy is killing beautiful animals is psychotic. It's one thing to kill to survive..it's another to collect trophies for a sagging ego.

Nature took care of this asshole.

I glad because he sucks...**** him.

My views on this matter are highly refined, nuanced and enlightened. Yours are just shit.

He hunted animals in accord with the law. He did not hurt another human being. He complied with what biologists said would help the herd, even if you have never seen the herd, don't understand biology and have no direct evidence about what happened.

And you are glad he's dead.

What a piece of shit. I don't care if you agree or disagree. But rejoicing in someone's death when: 1) you've never met them; 2) they did you no harm, and 3) they did no people any harm, is really twisted. Rejoice when a serial killer dies? Fine. Rejoice when at the death of someone whose philosophy killed many like Marx or Mao, okay. I can understand. But to rejoice at the death of someone who does something completely legal but that you disagree with ... that's twisted.

You apparently have never lived in a place where wildlife can truly kill you, nor do you appear to understand how humans actually fit into the natural universe. You come live in remote Alaska for a couple of years and face some brown bears. Then tell me about hunting and killing animals. Until then, you don't know shit and you discredit yourself every time you open your mouth.

It is estimated that poaching alone is decreasing African elephant populations by 7% a year. Not sure where there is room for a legal hunting of elephants until poaching is under control and there numbers begin to rebound. Elephants are also among the animals that mourn their dead most intensely. I can empathize with the losses of both the family of the hunter and elephant.

Hunters pay like $20,000 to hunt an elephant. Then if you get one, you still pay a $10,000 trophy fee. A lot of that money goes back into conservation, some to the locals.

Hunters don't take the meat -- it goes to the locals.

Hunters pay for more than the elephant and that provides local jobs.

I reserve my hatred for the poachers who supply the Chinese ivory market. 70% of ALL ivory goes to China, much of it illegally obtained.

The number of elephants killed by big game hunters paying $20,000 a pop is NOTHING compared to the numbers poached for Chinese ivory. Nothing.

I would never want to kill an elephant. They are too majestic and cool for me, long lived and loyal to their mate. But who am I to tell someone else they can't kill an elephant while I am chowing down on my steak. That would be hypocritical. Just keep the quotas low so as not to deplete the herds.

The more profit locals make from hunting, the more enforcement they can afford to fight poaching. Selling hunts is an investment against poaching. Poor villages cant afford to pursue and prosecute poachers.

I am not anti-hunting. I do think as a society we are sometimes just a little quick and glib in offering our justifications for hunting. For example, it would be easy to make the case that humans are overpopulating earth and that by culling selected ones it would help all the rest. Of course I don't think we should cull humans for that reason. I pretty much think the same about elephants. Take all the deer that can be sustainably replaced.

That depends on the place. There are places where elephants are endangered. And there are places where management practices supporting here growth promote a herd size above what the land can support. It's like saying "there are no wolves in Colorado so we shouldn't allow them wolf hunting in Alaska,".

In the areas where there are too many elephants, elephants devastate the crops and land of local people and excess elephants need to be culled (killed). These practices have occurred over the last 100 years.

Again, we can disagree about the efficacy of these policies or what is the best policy, but there's a huge chasm between reasonable disagreement/reasoned discussion and wishing someone dead because they disagree with particular game management practices.

I wonder if there isn't a way to raise as much cash to support conservation another way? As an evolutionist, I don't think it is hypocritical at all to protect some animals more than others based on their cognitive development. Eat dumb cows. Preserve smart and emotionally developed elephants.