Save the endangered Black Rhino... by shooting one...

This might be the worst idea since this guy tried this:

At first look, hubris run amuck. But there is a valid point hidden somewhere in there. The auction will establish a monetary value for the beast far more effectively than those WWF adopt-an-animal programs.

In the final analysis, what difference does it make whether the species survive for the sake of managed hunting or because people just think extinction sucks. Either way, the rhino survive.

I toured a wildlife ranch here in Oklahoma a couple years back, the owner was trying out a new method of pay for play hunting. Yes, he'd let you shoot a water buffalo for the right price, but for less you could shoot it with a tranquilizer dart, go have your trophy pic taken with it, and the animal got to live. It was a goldmine for him because he got to "kill" the same animal over and over,

The monetary value already exists, namely in what poachers get paid to hunt the rhinos. I don't know what the going rate for rhino horn is, but in Vietnam, someone who kills a tiger can make over 33 times the average annual income in that country. That's a huge incentive to poach an animal.

That's an interesting idea. However I do think the majority of those guys that want to kill one of everything want more than a picture next to a tranq'd animal. They want a skin or a head to mount on the wall, or in this case probably the horn.

Hunting for the sake of food is a good thing, not to the point of extinction of course; but there are many animals that are plentiful. Hunting a rare animal just for the sake of killing it from a long distance with a gun is retarded.

It makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint but do enough Black Rhino's still exist to make this a viable, large scale strategy?

And woodchucks. Fuck woodchucks.

Entrey level water buffalo positions can be pretty rough, but getting shot over and over does give them a strong incentive to move up the corporate ladder.

I never got the trophy hunting thing. A deer is a deer, a moose is a moose. Who eats antlers anyway? And why would anyone want to kill a rare animal when you can hunt overpopulated animals that need thinning?

When I was growing up back in the 70s, White tail deer were rare enough in Arkansas that the only deer season lasted only a week and was such an event that we got out for school on the first day.

Now of course there are more deer than you can shake a stick at and are in fact becoming a major nuisance animal nationwide.

How about an auction for the chance to shoot a Chinese folk medicine practitioner? Afterwards other Chinese folk medicine practitioners can try their folk medicine out on him. Or just put Dayton's fat ass in a rhino suit.

The neat thing about tigers, tho, is that they hunt you right back.

Not well enough to keep them from becoming endangered.

Hopefully someone very wealthy but with a concious buys it, and then rips up the permit.

I might not be a full died in the wool liberal, but having spent time on safari in Africa i can safely say that anyone who takes pleasure in shooting these or any of the other majestic big African animals, need their heads re-wired!

Shoot the animals with your camera!

Though I'm not a huge fan of sport-only hunting, this actually seems like a decent strategy. Hunters are some of the most committed conservationists around, and establishing a species as part of that structure is a way to get more people rallied around its preservation. Plus apparently it has some pretty good fundraising power.

If I'm going to hunt, there has to be something for me to hunt. Aside from pest animals, I have a pretty strong policy of eating everything I kill. Does anyone know what Black Rhino tastes like? I'd imagine, prepared right, Tiger would probably taste like Mongolian "Beef."

I wonder what my .50 Beowulf would do to one

That works so long as the individual believes they are making a difference. The tragedy of the commons however means that when people see something as outside their control they will figure "well someone is going to hunt them to extinction, so why not me". See the decimation of fish stocks as a practical example.

I think schemes like these can work, while also judging the person who buys the permit. If you want to kill a rhino purely for the fun of killing a rhino you're an awful person at best. There's a great Theroux documentary that involves looking at African schemes that charge hunters to take out animals and use the money to pay for breeding programs. The standout for me was an old guy who owned one of the farms who used to hunt himself but doesn't anymore. He still runs his program because its his business and helps breed endangered animals, but he clearly doesn't like his customers.

It does provide cash but it also shows animals are worth more to these countries as rare and used for hunting than as protected and plentiful.

I've never understood the mentality of people that enjoy going through life a giant weepy vagina.

Meh. Some rich dude wants to pony up 6 figures to go on a safari and satiate a primal hunting yearning; it's no skin off my nose.

Yes, it's just that simple Dan. Animals hang around out in the open all day and you can walk right up and kill them at will. There's no challenge to it, no strategy, no stealth. The woods here in Georgia are actually one big petting zoo.

I think theres a bit of a difference between hunting a plentiful supply of deer and other mammals found in North America, than there is going out into the African plains and hunting a huge hulking Rhino which is on the verge of extinction.


You want to feel rewarded for your strategy and stealth, go hunt that big assed rhino with a spear rather than a high powered hunting rifle. Be sure to let me how that works out for you.


And while I completely get Frontline and a few others talking about hunting in North America for food, this isn’t even remotely in the same ball park. If you want to throw out feelings of ‘strategy and stealth’ as the reasons for hunting Rhino’s and other big game, then you are going to get the same strategy and stealth from getting that ‘killer’ photograph.


Forgetting that argument, the real issue here is the belief in China and the far east that the horns have cancer healing properties. We have all had someone touched by cancer, and we all know we would do what we could if there was some magic cure out there, including paying top dollar to get it. As long as there is a market for the horns, the Rhino’s will get hunted.


I actually saw a programme on Discovery last week where one of the African countries had brought in team of US special forces to clamp down on the poachers. Everything helps. I went to Kenya a few years back and they had taken the step of moving almost their entire Rhino population to one national park so they could better protect them. Big bastards are massive, not scared of vehicle that’s for sure.

I took Dan's comment to be against all hunters:

Pretty sure that's where oldfellas comment came from.

People who don't hunt don't get the concept, no big deal. BTW I hunt only with an old-school longbow so there's no "BANG" only a slight "zzzzzzip" sound - then it's all hell breaking loose.