http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/hunters-debate-whether-cecil-backlash-hurting-sports-standing-n413931
“In my opinion, he’s doing more harm to public opinion on hunting than any anti-hunter could ever do,” said Mark Duda, executive director of the public opinion research firm Responsive Management, referring to the Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil with a crossbow after guides allegedly lured lion out of a national park. “And it’s too bad because it hurts … ethical, legal hunters who contribute to conservation and care deeply about wildlife.”
Duda, a hunter whose firm has tracked Americans’ attitudes about hunting for two decades, said the actions of Dr. Walter J. Palmer of Eden Prairie, Minn., suggested he had “read my newsletter on how to talk to the public about hunting, and did everything the exact opposite.”
Not all hunters who spoke to NBC News about Cecil’s death agreed that the ensuing controversy had damaged support for the domestic sport. But none defended the way the lion, a popular attraction with visitors to Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, was reportedly killed.
Dale Hall, CEO of Ducks Unlimited and director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President George W. Bush, was one of many hunters saying that Palmer should be prosecuted if an investigation reveals illegal activities.
“First of all, let me say that if unethical activities took place – if that’s what the evidence ends up showing – then I would be 100 percent for full prosecution,” Hall said. “Because we ethical hunters believe ethics is defined by what we do when no one is watching.”
Other hunting proponents say animal rights groups are using Cecil’s story as propaganda to press their anti-hunting agenda.
David Allen, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, said animal rights groups “lay in wait for any opportunity to take issue with hunting in America.” But he doubts the Cecil controversy will stick to U.S. hunters.
“I think it’s going to be a huge stretch to try and turn Cecil, whatever happened, into that’s what’s wrong with North American hunting and fishing. It’s a huge leap,” Allen said.
But Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said hunters and pro-hunting groups should be concerned because the outcry reflects changing attitudes toward killing wildlife.
“I don’t think they had realized that once was this was exposed … that people would be as upset as they are,” Newkirk said. “And they fear that the same rage and disgust is going to erupt if people stop buying the myth that hunting in America is to put food on the table.” PETA calls hunting unnecessary and cruel, and advocates for more humane methods of wildlife control.
Exposing the Big Game 
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t it actually legal to do the same thing here in the U.S.? Hunters lure animals out of our state and national parks and trap and kill them even if they have a collar. Has anyone ever been charged or prosecuted for doing this to the Yellowstone or Denali wolves?
Yep, here and in Canada
Yep, and slavery was legal too, but it wasn’t right and it had to be stopped. Yep, women used to have to voting rights and they were their father’s and husbands ward but that didn’t make it right. Hunters are delusional sub-humans that live in a past when hunting was the only way to put meat on the table. What they do today maybe legal but is not right and they must be stopped.
The unethical and non legal and unsporting killing of Cecil the lion brought to light the nature of hunting and trophy hunting. It was a catalyst for the public to take a look. Hunting is quite simply the recreational killing of wildlife. It is not a wholesome thing to do for man or wildlife. It is a primitive and barbaric pastime, not a sport, not sporting, not ethical. There is no such thing as ethical killing of wildlife for fun; no such thing as sporting and ethical game farming in the wild or on game farms for recreational killing. Hunting leads to game farming in one form or another and a distortion in apex predators in the natural wild and trophic cascade. Man is not an apex predator, although he likes to pretend he is one, he is really a parasite on the wild, something harmful that stands outside the wild. Mankind was not even an apex predator when he was a subsistence hunter. Hunters are not conservationists nor are most state wildlife agencies, in that they destroy natural ecology and in effect game farm. Wildlife agencies like to manage through hunting, but it is neither management or conservation. Hunting, trophy hunting, trapping are primitive and barbaric, parasitic human recreational and profiteering of wildlife.
It is the apathy and/or silence of the general majority who have enabled this killing frenzy. Until the public cares enough to organize politically to reform state agency funding, replacing killing license funding with general public funding ( and wildlife watchers already bring 10-40 times the revenue of the minority hunters to state tax coffers ), we will continue to deal with the symptoms of having state agencies as killing manufacturing centers, destroying top predators for trophy ( for less competition for deer and other ungulates ), and trapping out mid-range predators ( to produce more ground-nesting bird eggs for duck and geese and waterfowl “hunters” ) and collapsing ecosystems as beavers ( who create habitat for half of the rare and endangered life on earth ) destroyed for trappers and trout catch and release…it is a disaster which is quickly leading to our own extinction. We cannot treat life on earth this way. 10,000 years ago as man emerged to start proliferation, wildlife was 99% zoomass of the planet. Now it is 2% wildlife and 98% man and farm animals for slaughter. We are at tipping points all over the place. Any civilized country would end hunting, trapping and hounding immediately.
I hope what happened to Cecil has a terrible effect on trophy hunting and all hunting. This has been a long time in coming. I think opinions may be changing because of the information sent out for years now by the big organizations like PETA and the HSUS. People have become more aware of animal abuse and are changing their attitudes in general. The Internet has certainly helped by reaching millions of people and presenting pictures and videos such as the ones from Mercy for Animals revealing farmed animal abuse, which most media would not show because they are too graphic, would upset people, and infuriate corporate sponsors.
Over 30 years ago CBS featured a show on hunting called the Guns of Autumn. There is still information on the Internet about that show. It caused enormous criticism from hunters and gun groups and thoroughly embarrassed the hunting community and called them to account. It almost did not make it on the air, and I give credit to the network for not backing down. There are still excuses on the Internet about how the hunters in the show were bad, irresponsible, etc., etc. Same stuff we’re hearing now about the “good” hunters versus the “slob” hunters. But the current pictures and comments, particularly from the wolf hunters, makes the old boys from the 1970s look pretty true to life.
It isn’t a “sport.” It’s cold-blooded pre-meditated killing that has no place on our biotically depleted and depauperate planet. Wild animals don’t exist to satisfy the perverse lusts of humans. Leave them alone if you can’t appreciate animals alive.
Yes, and I think we should not use the word “sport” hunting ourselves–now that the world knows about “trophy” hunting, we need to use it instead, because that is what it is. Most hunting is trophy hunting, not those “poor ol’ hunters out there killing animals for meat, to feed their starving families.” Let’s bust these myths and lies.
I could not find “depauperate” in Webster’s. Sounds like it might mean impoverished. Work at the roots – the funding. As long as state agencies that deal with land and wildlife are funded by killing licenses, the focus is on expanding killing opportunities and species killed, weapons used, and “seasons” lengthened. We can talk about it all day long. Go to your legislators and work for a democratization of funding and fair majority representation on deciding committees and boards.
As I noted in a different article, I believe hunting is just a legal way to channel rage and sadism, and killing toward animals in the wilderness, maybe hoping to make society safer. Whatever the source, it is ugly beyond words, and says something not only about the hunters themselves but about the societies that promote and tolerate it.
I agree with you. Hunting is definitely a way of satisfying an urge to kill without having to worry about the consequences. In fact, the behavior hunters demonstrate is exactly that of a serial killer. In interview after interview they confessed that they like the thrill of stalking and bringing down their victim and the trophy is a memento to remember the experience.
I think the government promotes hunting because it desensitizes people and provides a steady stream of killers to fight our endless wars.
Killing wildlife for ego is handed down in families, often father to son. Now the focus is on women and children. It is insidious because they know if they ego-identify and reward a child for killing, that they get that child invested for life. They catch kids before the age of moral understanding. We need volunteers and political pressure that every person who attends a hunting education class must spend an equal amount of time helping a wildlife rehabber. We need humane education in the schools. Hunters and trappers have moved into middle schools, and trade schools and universities with their “sustainable hunting” classes. We need an alternative and a humane education platform. That means volunteers. Hunters are very willing to give their time and money to enrollment and indoctrination.
It does not make any society safer. It is making us much less safe as ecosystems collapse. “You are never so safe as in the woods with a black bear,” said Lynn Rogers who has studied black bears longer than anyone on earth – over 50 years. Richard Thiel, DNR biologist, who worked with wolves in Wisconsin for 30 years before the killers wiped them out in the past three years – said on Public Radio, ” I have worked with wolves 30 years. I have pushed them off of deer carcasses and had them walk right up to me. I never felt the need to carry a firearm and I never did.” The safety issue is a ruse put forth by trophy killers to try to enhance their own pathetic “manhood”.