Killing fields

The killing fields

Musings
Sonia Kelly

ON WATCHING a documentary recently about big-game hunting in Africa, the idea struck me that, as an enterprise for Ireland, it would have a twofold advantage.
It is an extremely lucrative business in Africa, former cattle ranchers having diverted to breeding animals that have become increasingly rare in their natural habitats for the purpose of being hunted by tourists - mainly from America. And apparently there are a great many people who have this (extraordinary) passionate yearning to deliver the coup de grace to a beautiful wild creature.
So a big game park here would be a sure-fire success. Several thousand acres would be necessary, but plenty of the current bogs will soon be available for suitable planting when global warming dries them up. Then scientists versed in DNA can get ready to stock it. I’m sure they will be able to recreate the giant Irish elk, for example, and probably lots of other so-desirable trophies (which is how they are regarded). Mammoths, wolves and bears – maybe even some dinosaurs. The hunters seem prepared to pay thousands of dollars, depending on the desirability and rarity of the target, so you can imagine the profits that are involved.
The second bonus that such an enterprise would bestow would be the employment opportunities for sex-offenders. This column has previously suggested that punishments for such crimes should be working on stud farms. Big-game stud farms would be the perfect solution.
It would also be very suitable for stalkers, whose expertise could be used to track animals that have been wounded, but not killed – although such mishaps are uncommon, owing to the more or less fail-safe methods set up for the hunters in hides and trucks. While tracking could be dangerous, replacements would be ready to hand.
The (white) farmers who run these operations justify the whole concept by saying that the animals would simply be extinct if they weren’t breeding them. They point out that in the jungle, the animals would meet with savage deaths in any case, and that at the hands of the hunters death is (usually) swift and painless.
In the documentary, one of the hunters’ wives (who had never accompanied her husband before and had never imagined killing anything) found herself caught up in the blood lust and ended by killing an impala. This gave her a frisson of excitement, so that she would not rule out doing it again. She thought it was OK because the meat was distributed round to the natives.
However, I don’t think she would have liked participating in, or even seeing, the captive lions being fed their meat – unborn calves! The circumstances of their procuring was mercifully not revealed, but the whole process was, none the less, disgustingly gory.
Nor was that aspect likely to feature in the photos of the trophy hunters, who made a great show of posing with their slaughtered beasts. One of them was a truck driver, the other a re-cycler of books. Both were from America. If they could have afforded it, they would have gone for elephants, but such aspirations were only for millionaires.
I’m sure Irish elks and mammoths would come into the same category and create fortunes for some entrepreneurs at home – or perhaps some State body…even the Prison Service could look into it. From what we hear about the cost of keeping one prisoner in gaol for a year, the potential savings should go a long way towards the initial cost of establishing such a hunter’s paradise.
I think it’s an idea that Biffo from Offo should seriously consider.