The Bloody Business of the Trophy Hunters

September 11th, 2007 by Chris

The following article can be found http://independant.co.uk

By David Randall and Jonathan Owen

Published: 09 September 2007

Rich “sportsmen” are paying up to $35,000 per trip to hunt down and kill polar bears, which are then stuffed and mounted for display.

An IoS investigation has identified 10 companies offering polar bear hunting trips. On many of their websites are images of bloody bear carcasses, besides which a grinning hunter poses with gun or crossbow.

Some animals appear to have several wounds, indicating that their deaths were less the climax to a sport and more a slow execution on ice. Experts estimate that around 1,000 of the world’s 22,000-25,000 remaining polar bears are killed each year.

About 150 of these are shot by hunters in Canada, 200 by poachers in Russia, and the remainder by native peoples in Canada, the US and Greenland.

And the number of officially sanctioned kills is increasing. Two years ago, Canada upped its quota for hunting by 28 per cent to 518, Greenland (in an attempt to stem the 250 or so unofficial kills) laid down an annual quota, and Russia, where poaching is a major problem, is about to lift its ban on hunting for the first time in 50 years.

In Canada, each Inuit community decides how many polar bear “tags” it will retain, and how many it will sell to trophy hunters. Hunting trip firms then sell these “tags”, plus travel and accommodation, as part of a package deal. Alaska Hunting Safaris, for example, invites hunters to “Join us on the adventure of a lifetime for the thrill of chasing the Arctic’s greatest trophy animal, the polar bear!”

Demand is strong. Alaska-based Adventures in the Wild has already sold out its polar bear hunting trips for next year and reports that polar bear tags are selling out within days of becoming available.

Once in the Arctic, the clients travel by dog sled accompanied by local guides. On sighting a bear, the dogs chase down the bears until, exhausted and trapped, they can be shot at by the tourists.

Companies assure clients that local back-up is on hand to help “finish the job”. In a Safari Club International newsletter, one hunter, who went with Pokiak Guiding and Outfitting in Canada, describes the killing of a 10ft bear: “I squeezed off my .416 [gun]. I heard the immediate WHACK – but he didn’t go down! The bear lunged toward the open water… I continued to shoot, and I could hear the rounds hitting, but this grand old bear would not go quietly.

“All of a sudden, he crashed through the ice and finally succumbed in a pond-sized area of slushy ice water… I watched from the hard ice as James and Jacob went to work to recover my prized trophy… An exhilarating moment!”

Polar bear trophies are also in demand from collectors. Rugs can sell for $10,000 apiece, with illegal kills in Russia believed to be the main source. But skins are available in Canada, too.

An IoS reporter was offered one by www.Bear-SkinWorld.com. “We have one polar bear rug which has just been completed from our production line. We have not yet posted this polar bear on our web site. He measures 7ft 6ins from nose to tail. Price is $12,000, plus shipping.”

Canadians say polar bear hunting is properly managed to ensure the viability of bear populations, and Inuit representatives say that the income from sports hunting is vital for the survival of their communities.

———I’d love to hear you opinions. Feel free to comment. Trophy hunting is a brutal waste of life as far as Mr. SoVeg is concerned.

I recently moved, and decided to get digital cable at the new place. I neeeeed my National Geographic and Animal Planet. For the first few months we get all of the channels that are available. I noticed on the guide a channel called Wild TV. It sounded like another fun nature channel to me…

Turns out Wild TV is a hunting and fishing channel. I found out quite quickly as they were just shooting a walrus as I flicked to it. I find it hard to believe that people find killing innocent wildlife entertaining. Not only to participate in, but to watch on TV with a bowl of popcorn in their stupid lap.

Tags: 8 Comments

8 responses so far ↓

1 lynx Sep 26, 2007 at 3:14 am

it is cruel and disgusting, it also seems to me very human…. the thrill of hunting and killing something that could kill you. which, i suppose, is why hunting is so popular. our ancestors were hunter/gatherers, and that meant people who were good at hunting lived longer and had bigger families. the crunch is that as sophisticated and modern as we think we’ve become as a species, the animal hasn’t really changed all that much in the last 10,000 years or so. in evolutionary terms that’s just the blink of an eye, after all. lurking somewhere in our dna are our cave-dwelling ancestors who get an incredible adrenalin rush out of the act of killing. it’s ugly but i think it explains a lot about humans.

unfortunately, as the melting ice caps force increasing numbers of them south we can expect to see more and more of them getting killed as the poachers and hunters find them easier to get too. If polar bear populations were stable and their habitat wasn’t being irrevocably destroyed by global climate change the occasional killing of a few bears wouldn’t make that much difference for the species as a whole, the problem is that they’re well on their way to extinction already and letting rich people go neanderthal on them doesn’t help anything.

so yeah, hunting polar bears is stupid and unnecessary and cruel. It’s also quintessentially human. And in 50 years we’ll have destroyed so much of their habitat that they’ll all be extinct. And, unless we get very lucky, we’ll follow them down that path soon after.

sorry to be all pessimistic, this kind of thing always puts me in a foul mood.
2 Veganmama Oct 18, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Need the hunting industry for their livelihoods, right, so let’s all back off for the minority people…who didn’t need a “livelihood” before Europeans came around and introduced the almighty dollar to them.

There are plenty of other livelihoods we could so generously provide for them in our superior beneficence…like photographic safaris, led by the same folks who know how to track the polar bears…so they can be captured for all time in gorgeous pictures.

Or just nature touring to see all KINDS of the mystic bounty of the north.

Oh, and it’s overwhelmingly ridiculous that the Canadian government claims to take such great pains (hah - can you see them poring over maps and data spanning the years, how many polar bears spotted this year, this decade, compared with last year, last decade?) to ensure that polar bear hunting doesn’t threaten the species with immediate extinction. We all know that the melting of arctic ice is already threatening their extinction, and hunting them for thrills only hastens their obliteration from existence - forever.

While we’re at it, why is the species all that matters? Let’s not let the worst of killers - insipid ones - be the ones to frame the argument - leaving important details conveniently outside of the discussion. If one animal doesn’t matter, why should a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 matter? For our sake of asthetics, is my guess. Nice to know they’re around, right? So we can go out and shoot them, if we’re rich enough to buy a couple of slaps on the back from colleagues or fellow country club members back home.

Me, I care about the individual bears, themselves, being chased down and murdered by a bunch of cowards who want to go around playing at pretend hunting, with all of the work done for them except for pulling the trigger. Oooh. Girls, let’s all clamor to have sex with THAT pasty loser….

I would like to believe that people could think of more imaginative and - why not - wondrous things to do with their time on this earth, and as much money as these pathetic lost souls who feel so empty and void of anything interesting in their lives that the only “logical” escape from it is by causing tremendous pain in the murder of innocent animals and the slow, starving deaths of their young.
3 SoVeg Oct 19, 2007 at 5:16 am

Pasty losers! Good one Opal!

Has anyone seen Wild TV? I’m going to have to write a post about it. On the commercial for the channel you see them hunting every animal in the book. Even the commercials while watching the channel are full of death… they are all for bullets and weapons. I can’t believe people watch that sickness. Murder is not entertainment.
4 jacob pokiak Nov 24, 2007 at 8:51 pm

yeah i remember that hunt like it was yesterday. you think killing polar bears is cruel, how about those bears in 30degree weather for their whole lives.its like being in hospital for the rest of their lives. sure must suck. this animal is made to perfection for 40, 60 or 70 below zero. that is the way nature works. only the strong survive and the weak die! anyway , when you do get veggies up north they are in pretty bad shape. the reason we the inuit were able to survive without vegtables is by eating whale and seal blubber that give you more vitamins and nutriants than any veggie can give you. so december 1st is coming pretty quik, which is opening day for the polar bear hunt. better get ready i guess.
who do you people think you are trying to take away my berh right to hunt and pass along the tradition to my children. you people suck!
5 SoVeg Nov 28, 2007 at 8:23 am

It’s not about your people’s right to hunt. It is about your people selling their right to hunt, to rich white hunters who kill for sport, not survival.
6 Enfotainer Aug 7, 2008 at 3:03 am

Is this blog dead? So you’ve been employed SoVeg?
7 Hillary Martin Oct 20, 2008 at 1:15 am

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8 Eugene Oct 21, 2008 at 11:26 pm

Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene

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