Don’t Hate Trophy Hunters yet? Read on…

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Super-rich kill bears for ‘sport’

TOM NEWTON DUNN
in Russia

The Sun: 12th January 2011

THE World Conservation Union has upped the Asiatic black bear’s status to “vulnerable to extinction”.

Conservationists estimate there are just 50,000 left in the world.

Also known as the Tibetan black bear, the Himalayan black bear, or moon bear, they have a thick black coat and a white V marking on their chest.

They grow to about 6ft and males weigh up to 150kg. They can live up to 25 years.

They eat berries, grass, seeds, nuts, honey and some meat.

Of the world’s eight species of bear, six are at risk of extinction.

Only the American black bear and European brown bear are considered safe.

Black Bear photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Black Bear photo Copyright Jim Robertson

In a sickening execution, a blood-crazed millionaire blasts an endangered bear to death as it hibernates.

Given no chance, the rare beast is woken in its den, terrorised and shot at point-blank range.

The grinning “hunter” then poses proudly next to its blood-drenched corpse for a twisted souvenir snap.

Hundreds of Asiatic black bears have been killed this winter in the vast forests of Siberia. And all for nothing more than sick thrills and a prized trophy hide.

The massacre of these majestic animals has become big business, flying in the face of international conventions which outlaw it, The Sun can reveal.

Yet it is not just rich Russians who are happy to exterminate their own national symbol. Well-heeled clients from Britain, the US, Germany, Spain, Poland and Finland have also booked Asiatic black hunting trips in the past year, we have discovered.

Such slayings were illegal for years, but Russian president Vladimir Putin has now relaxed his country’s ban on killing the species, to appease the super-rich.

Hunting the bears remains strictly illegal in the other countries where they live, including India, China and Japan.

Like most bears, the Asiatic black hibernates from December to the end of February, when winter snows begin to melt. Many of the females killed as they hibernate are pregnant, as they breed in the summer and autumn, ready to give birth in the spring.

In an exposé of the barbaric practice, we posed as would-be hunters to obtain shocking video footage of three recent hunts.

In an office off a busy central Moscow street, The Sun was offered a four-day trip to depart in a week’s time — with FOUR Asiatic black kills guaranteed — for the sum of £16,000.

The hibernating bears had already been located in deep forests outside the city of Khabarovsk, 3,500 miles east of Moscow.

A travel business named Slavic Trophy Club is one of a handful in Moscow that take bear hunters to the killing fields.

Slavic Trophy Club’s Nikolai Lynkov assured us: “They are there ready and waiting for you. I can promise you four kills for sure, maybe six if you are lucky.

“It is legal in Russia to hunt Asiatic black bears. There is no problem with that. You just have to be 18 years old.”

The persecuted bears do not die a quick and painless death.

To coax them out of their dens into the waiting gunman’s firing line, organisers resort to extraordinarily cruel tactics.

Lynkov explained: “We know where the bears are because we pay local people to keep track of them.

“They like to hibernate in hollow tree trunks but sometimes it is not easy to get them out.

“Don’t worry though, they always come — even if we have to cut them out.”

On one of the hunts we have video footage of, it took workers 20 minutes of torture to force a bear to climb out of its tree trunk into the sights of the hunter, standing 15 metres away.

At first, two men jabbed the animal with sharpened spears through a hole cut in the tree’s base. When that didn’t work, one of them threw a smoke grenade into the trunk in a bid to choke the bear out. That too failed, so oily rags were lit to set fire to the den. Then several pistol rounds were fired to scare the bear into movement.

Only when the workers began to chainsaw through the hollow trunk to get at the bear did it finally climb the trunk and emerge. On reaching the top, the bleary-eyed giant gave a chilling roar once it saw its pursuers.

It made a desperate last attempt to scamper off to safety — but was gunned down in the snow after only a few paces.

For an extra £800, Slavic Trophy Club promised to skin any bear we killed, make it into a rug, and fly it to London.

Or for £4,000 we could have the whole beast stuffed and shipped instead. Some hunting firms openly trade in the twisted “sport” in the West.

Sergei Shushunov is a Russian-American who runs the Russian Hunting Agency from his home town of Glencoe, Illinois. When we approached him posing as rich hunters he also promised to organise for us the killing of a bear woken from hibernation.

Trying to justify the activity, Shushunov said: “Denned bear hunting in Russia is as old as trapping. In old times it required nothing but a spear. The adrenaline rush can be incredible.”

Hunting Asiatic bears was legalised in Russia four years ago. Bored of slaughtering the more common brown bear, oil and gas-rich Russians craved a special trophy for the walls of their gaudily decorated homes and offices.

With soft and long fur, an Asiatic bear’s hide is highly prized because of the rarity of the animals.

Their numbers are now so depleted, they are all but impossible to find in the wild — which is why hunts resort to killing them in their dens.

Animal campaigners last night demanded that ministers act on The Sun’s investigation and lobby President Putin to stop the barbaric hunting.

International wildlife charity the Born Free Foundation said: “This simply has to stop. The Asiatic black bear is highly endangered, under constant assault in the wild throughout the continent, and even incarcerated in tiny cages in China to be milked for stomach bile, which is used in medicine there.

“We should all demand at the highest levels of government that Russia immediately stops all hunting of wild bears. Until then, there will be a price on the head of every wild bear in the country.”

The World Conservation Union’s bear expert Dr David Garshelis said: “There is a threat that the Asiatic black bear may soon be extinct in entire countries. We are very worried.

“It is alarming to hear that this is happening in Russia. The ethics of exactly how it is done is also a concern.

“There is clearly no sport in this practice at all. We are very pleased you have made this report.”

t.newtondunn@the-sun.co.uk

View photos and video of Sick hunters gun down bears; Gunmen laugh as they target bears; Sitting duck … terrified bear scrambles from it’s burning den into the killer’s sights Here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/762288/News-Endangered-bears-Killed-for-sport.html#ixzz2TChxbdV4

 

31 thoughts on “Don’t Hate Trophy Hunters yet? Read on…”

  1. i don’t know how to react to this. I feel disgusted, horrified and so terribly sad. How can humans behave like this, how can this be legal Is it really 2013 and trophy hunting is legal? Dear God its amazing there is any animal left on earth. Humans have made life hell on earth for other beings.

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    • I too have no idea how to react…although my first reaction was simple anger. These brave “men”…Lord how much more stupid can this slice of society get? Talk about knuckle-dragging cowards…the hunting is bad enough but this “denning”? I suspect the one of the reasons reason these guys are rich is because they have no soul, probably earning their money off the backs of others with no thought to anyone but themselves. The reason they take such glee out of this activity is they have no heart. I try to never get emotional in my responses but I’m have a lot of trouble biting back the words with this one.

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      • It is good to see this being aired again, but it should be mentioned that the Sun’s article is more than two years old. There were many petitions to Putin at the time, so anyone writing to him now should be aware of that. Sending abusive comments to Putin isn’t going to stop this, neither will appeals to his compassionate side (he doesn’t have one). Russia isn’t part of the EU, nor wants to be, but it does want us to buy its exports and give our tourist dollars! The sad fact is that only a handful of countries actually implement and enforce laws to protect animals – the rest of the world treats them like vermin, but enlightenment will come, slowly!

      • Thanks for this updated information. I knew that the article was old news and was starting to wonder if the practice still went on. Obviously it does, but as you say, there’s no point in writing Putin about it…

  3. I usually don’t watch these hunting vids, but I watched this one. I HOPE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE FUCKING SOBs DIES A LONG, SLOW, TORTUROUS DEATH, AND THEN EXPERIENCES ETERNAL TORTURE IN WHATEVER HELL HE ENDS UP IN!!!! FUCK YOU, YOU SICK, SADISTIC, SUB-HUMAN PIECES OF SCUM! YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE. I HATE YOU WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING! DIE, DIE, DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND FUCK YOU TOO, PUTIN, FOR ALLOWING THIS!

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    • I can’t watch the video. It is enough for me to read of this and the horrible pictures form in my mind. But just reading of it I feel exactly the same words as Maureen. There are two in-law hunters in my family and I am reminded of them. Will anything be left on earth when the gunshots are over?

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      • My husband is vegan but he has a nimrod sister and she is married to a nimrod. They would kill anything in the woods for the fun of it. They are not allowed in our house. They would never see the error of their ways because something is not right in their screwed up brains. They are getting on in years and will be history I hope soon. But not soon enough for all the animals they have tortured.

  4. A quick search appears to show that Shushunov is a doctor from Skokie, Il. who was arrested in 2011 for armed home invasion and beat a man who was having an affair with his wife. Polie confiscated a large number of guns, etc. Forward this link to the Sun reporters for a follow-up story:
    http://glencoe.suntimes.com/5592602-417/glencoe-man-charged-in-skokie-home-invasion.html .
    Sergei Shuhunov pled out to receive 6 months in prison: http://medicalmiscreants.com/2012/12/05/chicago-doctor-jailed-for-beating-and-threatening-a-neighbor/
    If anyone knows where he is now, post it so people can know about his record against people and Asiatic bears.

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  8. I am both disgusted by the Russians for allowing this cruelty and ashamed of all of those pathetic things using guns. This is nothing more than slaughter, you are not hunters in any sense as your prey is not allowed to defend itself, escape, or even retreat. You are cowards slaughtering adult and unborn young while they are defenceless. I hope each of you dies an ugly death drawn out as you have treated these beautiful animals doing what is natural to them. True hunters only kill for food. No amount of money will wipe the blood from your hands, or from the hands of those who help you.

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  9. I don’t get it, I just don’t. Do I have a chip missing or do they? I mean, how can this be thrilling? How can anyone receive any kind of pleasure from taking the life of an innocent animal? is there something wrong with us, or them? When, where and how did humans go astray? Not all humans mind you, not those of us who are the voice of the voiceless. How did our planet become sooooooooo infested with these human vermin (hunters et al.)? If there is any species on this planet that should be pushed to the brink of extinction it is humans — especially humans who commit egregious acts. Reading stories like these makes me ashamed to be a human. These blood thirsty hunters will not be satisfied until ever animal that walks this planet is dead. Once they have obliterated everything, then what will they do, sit around campfires reminiscing about the good ole days when the planet was ripe with prey for them to kill but due to the fact they succeeded in drowning out the animal right’s activists, regulations were abolished and all animals were open targets for hunting, even the neighbor’s family dog or cat. Unfortunately, due to everyone’s greed and lust for blood, the hunters killed every single living breathing animal…

    Ahhhhhhhhhh, the good ole days. “Jack, do you remember what deer season was like, when we could kill as many deer as we waned with no restrictions? I sure miss those days. It’s a pity we didn’t enact some control over how many we were allowed to kill, because now there’s nothing left for us to hunt except cockroaches and rats” Sniff.

    FUCKERS! If left to their own devices animals will be something children will only see in old You Tube videos.

    BTW, why don’t these blood thirsty hunters hunt all those poor bears trapped in crusher cages on bear bile farms? At least that would be a mercy kill, right?

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