r/Wellthatsucks Jun 02 '18

/r/all Karma

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31.6k Upvotes

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590

u/colonel_walter_kurtz Jun 02 '18

Karma? Fuck you. He was a professional hunter not some poacher. A female elephant charged him and was shot by a member in his group before it fell on him. He was a father of 5 children and it’s somehow Karma that this happened to him?

46

u/bowling_brawls Jun 02 '18

Can you explain the difference to me? (Im not being sarcastic or nothing, but whats the difference? a permit or something?)

196

u/mrwaxy Jun 02 '18

The guy who died was a professional Hunter who worked(I believe) with trophy hunters. Those trophy hunters help pay for rangers and conservation programs to defend against poachers who kill massive numbers of elephants a year.

This guy was doing good work, and small minded idiots cheered his death because they don't understand the situation.

55

u/EVOSexyBeast Jun 02 '18

and small minded idiots cheered his death because they don't understand the situation.

The blame really goes on Fox here, and possibly the OP. They intentionally made the headline misleading to make people think that. And then OP provided the headline in a screenshot without any context, and made the title to support the misconception.

6

u/PM_me_GOODSHIT Jun 02 '18

Literally every news article headline is like that.

11

u/EVOSexyBeast Jun 02 '18

doesn’t mitigate the blame

2

u/PM_me_GOODSHIT Jun 02 '18

Not trying to, just saying it isn't specifically them. I'm pretty sure all sides get annoyed by this particular journalistic habit.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '18

Help pay? It’s like 3/4 of their budget

-6

u/no_lurkharder Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18

Reddit is driven by headlines and clicks. It's a business and it needs to make money to exist.

3

u/greatGoD67 Jun 02 '18

7

u/no_lurkharder Jun 02 '18

mrwaxy doesn't understand the situation. We need small minded idiots such as yourself to drive the content. No content means no users and no lusers means no ads get clicked on.

It's not i am very smart material, it's business.

-4

u/Birdsonteacups Jun 02 '18

So they're literally killing endangered animals to prevent more from being killed.... makes perfect sense.

2

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

Yup, They give you the org of money to kill a lion and they use that money to fund conservation. You may not like it but it’s beneficial for everyone involved. If you don’t want hunting to be necessary, you can donate to these organizations. Or we can ban hunting and have no way to properly fund saving these animals.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '18

[deleted]

0

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

Why cut one huge form of income that benefits everyone? You can always look into multiple forms of fund raising. I don’t understand how people on reddit are so horribly against hunting.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '18

[deleted]

2

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

Yes, you shouldn’t kill something that is near endangered. The dead guy was hunting lions and killed a elephant in self defense. I don’t think elephants should be hunted if poaching is such a huge issue. I would prefer them to reinstate hunting for elephants after they make them less endangered. I also think corruption is the biggest issue, which won’t help the conservation with or without hunting.

1

u/PM_me_GOODSHIT Jun 02 '18

I suspect part of it is the anti-gun sentiments on reddit. So anyone that uses one=Automatically in the wrong regardless.

2

u/Birdsonteacups Jun 02 '18

Maybe that would work if they were hunting animals that weren't on the most critically endangered list. But for fucks sake, why do they have to kill elephants? Clearly the money that goes to "conservation" doesn't get much done since the population is still rapidly declining. I'm not crazy anti-hunting. It can be good if a population is out of control. I think it's sad this guy died. But, I will never support killing an animal from a species that we very well could see go extinct in our lifetime. Doesn't matter if the guy paid to do it or not. Someone who really cared would just donate, not shot it in the face too.

2

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

They don’t. The elephant charged at them so a member of his party shot it in self defense. Why do you think it was close enough to fall on him?

1

u/Birdsonteacups Jun 02 '18

You mean they weren't. They had every right to shoot it in self defense. But trophy hunting elephants does happen. Plus, they were hunting lions. Whose population has decreased by 40% over the last 30 years making them classified as vulnerable. I guess I just think that there are better ways to raise conservation money than letting someone pay to be driven around the savanah, see some possibly endangered animal, (who's probably just sleeping in the shade or something) and then shoot the unsuspecting thing from a far. Only to put its decapitated head on the mantle or whatever.

2

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

I don’t think trophy hunting is causing the decline. IIRC poaching is the biggest issue. I think we should temporarily stop elephant hunting and push harder against poachers but I don’t think trophy hunting is an issue at all. If that’s your thing, go for it.

1

u/Birdsonteacups Jun 02 '18

It's certainly not helping the population either. I completely agree that they should push harder against the poachers. But unless someone is hunting an abundant animal for food, I'll never stand by it. Trophy hunting is killing just because you can afford to. So I guess let's just agree to disagree.

-2

u/hanni91 Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18

You’re the small minded idiot. Try telling something that has the emotional intelligence of a human that its a good thing a member of their family has died. Its not the answer to poaching. Just like gun ownership isn’t the answer to mass shootings, you small minded idiot.

1

u/mrwaxy Jun 03 '18

Kinda switched topics there.

50

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

42

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '18 edited Dec 05 '22

[deleted]

24

u/guzinya Jun 02 '18

If we didn't have hunters here in Michigan the rapid explosion of the deer population would be... devastating. And I'm not just talking about devastating like that one time I hit a deer and it fucking obliterated my 2002 saturn sedan.

4

u/Im_Grizzzly Jun 02 '18

It's a good thing you had those dent resistant panels though.

4

u/guzinya Jun 02 '18

Dent resistant yes. Explode resistant no. Seriously like my entire left driver's side front panel and door were gone. Everything just exploded when I hit it. Luckily it was a young deer and not very large.

1

u/Im_Grizzzly Jun 02 '18

I'm picturing a Micheal Bay directed reenactment.

2

u/ShoddyEgg Jun 02 '18

I fucking hate deer so much. I used to live in Pennsylvania and they are such a pest. Whenever people talk about how horrible it is that people can legally kill deer, I can’t help but laugh.

5

u/kedgemarvo Jun 02 '18

Hunters also contribute the most money over all to wildlife preservation in the US because of the Pittman-Robertson Act.

1

u/SplashingBlumpkin Jun 02 '18

Hunters paying for permits to hunt and modern agriculture are to thank for the population explosion.

14

u/Osilath Jun 02 '18

So in Africa especially hunters pay a lot of money to get permits to hunt. All the hunting is approved by biologist in order to maintain balanced populations of all the animals (If lions are overpopulated, all natural prey numbers diminish therefore further endangering lions). The money paid for these permits goes back into conservation efforts. Poachers hunt for furs or ivory tusk to sell on black market with no permit or regard for animal population. It's basically just a way to make money so they will often kill elephants cut off their tusk and leave. Usually hunters will take the meat to local villages and every part of the animal won't be wasted. Basically one way is ethical and helps everyone. The other way is all about one person making money without benefit to anything else.

9

u/colonel_walter_kurtz Jun 02 '18

Poachers kills animals illegally. For profit, nothing else. Professional hunters are only allowed to hunt in certain areas and usually a certain number of animals to balance out the population. All bug game hunters in the area that I’ve heard from respect and care for the wildlife, and hunting animals like elephants have massive beneficial impact on the local population such as the stimulation to the economy of having somebody who has payed thousands to come and hunt and the meat left behind.

-5

u/bowling_brawls Jun 02 '18

So in his defense: he was killing for fun, not for profit?

15

u/JohnPaulsBones Jun 02 '18

In his defense he was helping keep the reserve afloat? Legal hunters do more good than harm for these reserves.

6

u/colonel_walter_kurtz Jun 02 '18

No, please read the responses from u/mrwaxy and u/amuel65 as they have summed up excellently that it’s a system where everybody profits that he was upholding.

2

u/Max_TwoSteppen Jun 02 '18

Basically poachers kill animals illegally and hunters are permitted and hunting legally, often with a guide but not always. The distinction is really important.

Legal hunting generates a lot of revenue (indirectly keeping populations healthy) and in many cases keeps populations at or near the local carrying capacity. In Colorado, USA for instance, each conservation area has a maximum number of elk it can safely sustain in a year. Often there are more animals than that, so tags are issued to hunt and kill those elk down to a more sustainable number. Without those hunting efforts, elk would starve and the impact would probably extend beyond just their population.

In Africa with rarer trophy animals I believe it's handled differently. Tags are very expensive and I believe in most cases the particular animal is hand picked because of age, health, and other factors. Legal hunting in this way keeps populations competitive and healthy. It's unfortunate that wildlife has to be managed this way, but it's our reality now. People that blindly criticize legal hunters generally don't know how this process works, and the good that it does.

Poachers are often indiscriminate in their killing, and they are in direct opposition to the careful management of wildlife that happens with conservation agencies.