He shouldn't have been lion around!

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He shouldn't have been lion around!

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You ain't kittin'!

Probably the mane reason he got shot in the first place.

He was waiting on the purrfect shot

You know the haters will say he shot a lion without pride.

There sure is a lot of uproar

Not too much the past couple of hours, especially none from Yelnick.

I reckon the cat's got his tongue.

"The culture of dove hunting"? Do you mean drinking beer in a wife beater whilst shooting a bird that's about as plain and common as the day is long? That culture?

Sky Rats are barely even meat! Hell, you gotta wrap bacon and hot peppers around the damn things for Pete's sake, and sometimes stuff them with cream cheese... and wash them down with more beer!

I haven't read the whole thread yet so maybe I'm being trolled. Sure feels like it.

The Culture of Dove Hunting! It sounds more ridiculous when I say it out loud!

So, I have seen the video clip and read through 3 pages of posts on an issue with no definitive right answer. I don't mind giving my 2 cents because I have been there (eight safaris in three different countries) and had a very similar experience. To begin with there is the legality issue which should be black and white and applied equally across all hunters regardless of why they are hunting. I will make an educated guess that no laws were broken as to the method of the hunt. The gray area is the ethical side of the question and I feel all hunters should have an opinion as a personal guiding light that is thier's to follow...but not to impose their ethical bias on someone else. It's a personal thing. Now to my experience. Yes I have shot a lion before, but it was at the request of the RSA land owner where land owners own the animals on their property, hence the high fence industry. That lion was considered by the land owner to be a danger to his photo safaris clients.

I did stalk a monster kudu that was asleep under a big shade tree once. It was a 59 3/4 inch giant as it turned out and no, I did not shoot it laying down...awake or asleep. When an animal is laying down it's organs tend to be displaced and the shot you take might not be the one you wanted. This was too big of a kudu bull to take a chance on wounding it and then having a long stalk on an animal suffering due to hunter negligence. Likewise and even more importantly, a dangerous animal should not be shot laying down for fear of wounding an animal that can kill someone. This is the ethics I hold to but would not impose on someone else.

Old Town Ag said:

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The only truly ethical way to kill a lion is to first get its attention and once it charges within 25 ft. or less unload!

Link: This is the way you do it!

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WOW. Now THAT is a BOLD way to hunt.

Ethically you could make a pretty strong argument that killing a sleeping animal is by far the most ethical way to do it

Sporting? Unless you're putting yourself in a 50/50 position where it could be you or the Lion, it's pretty ridiculous to Grandstand about what constitutes sporting.

The argument for right or wrong begins and ends at the trigger pull. Period. There are zero problems with this kill

How do they know the lion was asleep? Perhaps it was just cat-napping?

Get Off My Lawn said:

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Legal? Yes.
Ethical? Yes.
Effective? You bet.
Sporting? Not in a traditional sense.
Beneficial? Mixed bag. Locally beneficial, globally slightly negative (one more anecdote against a trophy hunter).
Detrimental? Not to the population or the ecosystem.

I see this as a question of overlaying your own personal hunting ethics on another hunter in a different situation. I wouldn't be too proud of killing a lion in it's sleep, but don't significantly begrudge this man for doing so. Heck - I'd probably shoot a mountain lion if I walked into that proximity to it - sleeping or otherwise.

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The question of sporting/ethics is a complex one, IMO, and has been touched on already, but this is TexAgs, and I want to give my opinion as well!

To me sporting has to do with what makes hunting a particular species challenging. With doves, it's hitting a flying bird. You use a shotgun, set up over a water or food source, and hit them as they fly over. There's much less challenge hitting one that's landed, as the OP has already stated, with a 3 foot spread of lead pellets. So, we frown upon doing it.

For large game, the challenge shouldn't be actually hitting the animal. To me, if you're taking a shot where humanely killing the animal is in doubt, then you are taking an unethical shot. With big game, the challenge is finding and getting close to enough to the animal to take the shot. I've never hunted lions, so I have to assume that finding them is somewhat challenging, but I'm fairly certain that stalking that close to one is both a challenge and dangerous (and I would argue that personal danger from the hunted animal increases the 'sportiness' of hunting it). Getting close enough to to a wild animal that is bedded requires much more skill than teh act of shooting it, so I'm going to guage this as an ethical shot. Being that lions are alpha predators, I'll confess that it's possible that they are deep sleepers, not evolved to worry about being snuck up on, and sneaking up to a sleeping lion might not really be that challenging. If I were given that information, I could see myself changing my opinion, but, until then, I'll go with what I've seen in every other wild animal I've encountered, and assume that it's not easy to do.

Now, I don't honestly feel that hunting deer over a feeder is very sporting. I do it, and justify it to myself that the challenge in that case is the management aspect of selective harvest.

Perhaps a better question would be, why do we feel it's ok to take passing shots on flying birds, which have a much higher rate of wounding and painful death, when we don't accept that with large game? Why do we not care as much about how birds die? And fish... the MeatEater podcast recently discussed how most of us don't mind letting a fish flop around in the boat or on the bank rather than quickly dispatching it.

Ha. Wrong. You seem to be against most everything.

Is there anything that you are FOR?

How about antelope hunting? Imma apply for a tag for the remote opportunity to sit in a pop up blind in the desert in August.

FU Shaynew!

It was a canned African hunt. I'm surprised no one has brought up the fact that the guides find and drug most of the lions that are killed on these hunts - the bigger deal is that he most likely shot a drugged lion.

What makes you say this?

From the little I know about African lion hunts, the ones that still have a heavy mane at maturity, are very likely pen/farm raised. This guy has a small mane but I don't know how mature he was.

I am genuinely curious if you're just spewing conjecture or if you have some information about THIS hunt that no one else does?

Yelnick McWawa said:

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LOL. Oh please. Care to expound oh mighty sage?

I'm not trying to stir up anything. This is a discussion...

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I don't know if you're supposed to wake up a lion before you shoot it or not, but I do know that this is what "stirring things up" looks like.

Only real way to kill a sleeping lion is with a knife! No more than 8 inch blade.