By Fredy Riehl
Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- So, AmmoLand Shooting Sports news gets a lot of news and PR teases from a variety of main stream media hoping for us to promote their forays into serious gun sports.
But inevitably they all have some kind of underlying or blatant anti-hunting or anti-gun hook, not what our readers want to see or the positive pro gun news we want to promote,,, seems the “authorized journalists” just can’t help themselves.
So this random email arrives from a bland New York Press Agency about a GQ Magazine article on Hunting Elephants, at first glance it had all the signals of being another for trash bin.
Turns out this one is different.
From the email :
GQ’s Wells Tower joins an exclusive hunting party to find out what kind of person pays $60,000 to kill the world’s largest land mammal. Tower follows a family to Africa and attempts to make sense of their pay-to-slay adventure as he reports on one of the last elephant hunts in Botswana. Excerpts below:
In the last six months AmmoLand has had a lot of coverage of stories related to the positive side of big game hunting and the boost for conservation that goes with it, (see Rhino Auction, Hunt Praised By Boone And Crockett Club). We have also covered a lot of the efforts by the leather wearing, steak eating, anti hunting hypocrites , (see Obama Administration efforts to ban Ivory Sales in the US) .
So this after a quick look at the GQ article it was interesting to see that this one fell somewhere in the middle. Not anti hunting, even though the author admits that he has those feelings, and not positively pro hunting. Just an honest report on the hunt, the facts and the feelings.
Another plus is GQ’s way of laying out the article, with big image slide shows and sound, be sure and click the play buttons.
Over all GQ GETS AN INSIDE LOOK AT ELEPHANT HUNTING IN AFRICA is surprising article from an unexpected source and a fair look at Big Game Hunting in Africa.
For the full story, check out gq.com: https://www.gq.com/long-form/who-wants-to-shoot-an-elephant
More Quotes from the email / article:
“In addition to airfare, ammo, and equipment costs (the antique double-barreled Holland & Holland rifle Robyn bought for the trip typically sells for about $80,000), the Waldrips are paying Jeff Rann $60,000 for the privilege of shooting the animal, at least $10,000 of which goes to the Botswana government. In September 2013, a ban on elephant hunting goes into effect in Botswana, making the Waldrips’ hunt one of the last legal kills. It is a precious, expensive experience, and Robyn wants to take her time to find big ivory, not to simply blast away at the first elephant that wanders past her sights.”
“It’s worth noting that I couldn’t find anyone on the anti-hunting side who could convincingly answer this question: If hunting is so disastrous for the long-term survival of the species, why do the countries where it’s legal to hunt elephants have so many more of them than those where the practice is banned?”
“Two more strides and the elephant could reach out and touch someone with its trunk. The elephant looks to be about twelve feet tall. The trunk weighs hundreds of pounds and is easily capable of breaking a human spine. Apologies if that sounds like sensationalistic inanities you’ve heard intoned sotto voce by Discovery Channel narrators trying to ramp up the drama of snorkeling with porpoises and such. But the elephant is about fifteen feet away, and I will now confess to being scared just about shitless. The elephant snorts and brandishes its vast head. Lunch goes to lava in my bowels. If not for my present state of sphincter-cinching terror, I would well be in the market for an adult diaper. This is an amazingly pure kind of fear. My arteries are suddenly capable of tasting my blood, which right now has the flavor of a nine-volt battery.”
“Robyn raises her rifle. For the past few months, she’s been rehearsing this moment in her bedroom closet in Texas, aiming, reloading, aiming again. She shoots. The rifle’s thunder is somehow insignificant. The shot catches the elephant in the appropriate place, at the bridge of its trunk. But an elephant brain is a big piece of equipment—it can weigh as much as twelve pounds. Robyn’s bullet did not apparently sever enough vital neurons to kill the animal in a single shot. He shakes his head, as if to wag away the pain of a wasp’s sting. There is a second shot that strikes him in the neck. He turns to flee, but his right foreleg has buckled. He strives to stand. The effect is of a cripple trying to pitch a broken circus tent. In the franticness of his movements, one can sense the elephant’s surprise that his body, a machine that has served him well for over fifty years, has suddenly stopped accepting his commands. To see so large and powerful an animal vised in an even larger and more powerful inevitability is, for lack of a better word, intense.”
For the full story, check out gq.com: https://www.gq.com/long-form/who-wants-to-shoot-an-elephant