Belize Govt Shuts Down "cattle" Hunt

[Jason Essary]

Wait....Im out of popcorn...

[Fly_Guy]

shoot em and eat em - they are so delicious and need to die somehow, why not get some enjoyment out of it!

SK

I wouldn't shoot that thing in emjay's picture with anything less than a rpg - it looks tooouuugh!

[Outside Bend]

Well for one, I do have a hard time drawing a comparison between a 10 inch trout and a water buffalo.

Both trout and water buffalo are domesticated.

Both trout and water buffalo are raised in captivity.

Both trout and water buffalo are then released, so that paying customers may kill and take pictures with them.

It really isn't a hard comparison to draw. I just found it odd that folks (not necessarily you, OTF), are so aghast at someone paying to hunt and kill a domesticated animal in an artificial setting, but don't bat an eye when they go down to Montauk, Meramec, Bennett, Roaring River or Taneycomo and do they exact same thing. Just something to think about.

1. Water buffalo are yet another exotic in North America. Do we really need another problem from a feral domestic animal?

No. But the nice thing about a thousand-pound water buffalo is that it weighs a thousand pounds. It's not like didymo, or zebra mussels, or spiny waterfleas, or other hard-to-detect, hard to eradicate organism. If you have a water buffalo tromping around in your back 40, you're gonna know. And it's going to be fairly easy to find where they hide.

I'm no fan of canned game hunts- like most of the folks on here I think it's pretty immoral to take an animal where the odds are stacked so far in the hunter's favor. But from a purely conservation standpoint, I do think they play a role. If trout parks in Missouri concentrate anglers and keep the few wild trout streams from being overfished, I think they're playing some valuable role in the larger conservation picture. If some tycoon shooting an antelope in south Texas reduces hunting pressure on native antelope in Kenya or South Africa, I think that's a benefit. If someone chasing water buffalo in Belize takes the pressure off vulnerable native species in that country, I think there's some merit to that. It brings tourist dollars to economically depressed areas, and in many instances most of the meat is donated back to locals. I know I sound like the guy trying to pitch a casino to the Baptist church, but I do think that folks need to look at these sort of issues from several different angles before the teeth-gnashing begins.

2. Stocked trout come from wild stock and their domestication is limited to increase their survival in the field. Water buffalo were never a wild animal. They're COWs designed to provide agricultural services. People MILK them, pull carts with them, plow fields with them and make them into steaks. There's no difference between shooting one and shooting a Herford.

That's my point, Tim- shooting a water buffalo is exactly like shooting a Hereford. People shoot Herefords all the time. People shoot Herefords for burgers. People shoot Herefords for steaks. There's nothing (in my mind), morally ambiguous about shooting a Hereford. It's food. The same is true with water buffalo. We agree that, to us, shooting a cow is different than shooting a wild deer or turkey or anything else, but that's just a matter of perception, and it's hard to legislate taste. If I was a farmer, and someone offered me 5K to shoot a cow...I'd be hard-pressed to say no. You can call that Hereford (or water buffalo) "food," or you can call it "game," the end result is the same. I guess to me, it's just semantics.

3. Trout won't wander off, become feral then try to gore random people.

...only because no one has walked away from a trout-goring and lived to tell the tail....

[Tim Smith]

No. But the nice thing about a thousand-pound water buffalo is that it weighs a thousand pounds. It's not like didymo, or zebra mussels, or spiny waterfleas, or other hard-to-detect, hard to eradicate organism. If you have a water buffalo tromping around in your back 40, you're gonna know. And it's going to be fairly easy to find where they hide.

Right. So why not cut to the chase and erradicate them now. There's no guarantee these animals will be easy to erradicate. Australia is full of wild bulls. I've spent considerable time in the Texas Hill Country and I've stumbled onto large exotics. Several species have established populations there and there's no sign that they're about to go away. In Missouri, where the "back 40" really is 40 acres, it might be a fairly simple thing to track down a big exotic like this (although the abundance of 400 pound hogs makes even that an open question). In Texas and Belize we are talking about hundreds of square miles of bush/jungle/scrub. They can estabilish, proliferate and become a much bigger problem than they are.

I'm no fan of canned game hunts- like most of the folks on here I think it's pretty immoral to take an animal where the odds are stacked so far in the hunter's favor. But from a purely conservation standpoint, I do think they play a role. If trout parks in Missouri concentrate anglers and keep the few wild trout streams from being overfished, I think they're playing some valuable role in the larger conservation picture. If some tycoon shooting an antelope in south Texas reduces hunting pressure on native antelope in Kenya or South Africa, I think that's a benefit. If someone chasing water buffalo in Belize takes the pressure off vulnerable native species in that country, I think there's some merit to that. It brings tourist dollars to economically depressed areas, and in many instances most of the meat is donated back to locals. I know I sound like the guy trying to pitch a casino to the Baptist church, but I do think that folks need to look at these sort of issues from several different angles before the teeth-gnashing begins.

Yeah. I've thought about the "play-pen" effect. There might be a good argument for a mass-outlet where pressure can be herded away from the truly valuable resources. I was grateful in Illinois that only a handful of farmers along the smallmouth streams I fished understood what they were missing when they packed up the bassboat and headed off to the reservoir. In short order there would have been no smallmouth at all if they had "got it" and fished out of their backyards. But there have to be limits for that kind of thing.

This water buffalo hunt falls pretty solidly outside those limits. The lodge where this is occurring also sponsors native game hunts and while they purport to have a "conservation ethic" (HA!!) the net effect is more hunting for a dangeorus, introduced exotic on top more hunting for an already stressed resource. Belizeans have always hunted for food. In the past there were so few of them that it hardly mattered, but land is being cleared for agriculture, there are bands of illegals taking game from across the border in Guatemala, and the population has increased by 33% over the last 25 years. Common game numbers are down and in the short term that won't get batter as the basic principles of conservation are not widely accepted. This place wasn't reducing the stress on anything. They're in a pristine and sensitive environment, adding an exotic species into the environment and attracting the bottom of the barrel of the hunting community, people who are willing to shoot anything. For instance, their website is now advertising hunts for vulnerable, threatened and near threatened species as listed by the IUCN.

At the end of the day, Belizeans are going to destroy this business. Their only hope really is to bribe a few corrupt officials and go back into operation on the low down. But the image of westerners coming to Belize to shoot their animals and introduce dangerous exotics into their forests has pretty much doomed this group. The people shutting them down won a ton of good press and political capital. No one in Belize outside a handful of employees is sad to see them go.

Be careful they don't suck you down the sewer with them. Legitimizing this form of hunting blurs the lines between something that can only be attractive to people who kill for the sake of killing and the actual sportsmen who care about the environment that provides their game, who value fair chase, and who genuinely want to see what's honorable in hunting passed on in a sustainable way. Ultimately, that is the reason I think there are real limits on the "play-pen" style of wildlife management. The extreme forms of canned hunting are completely out of step with cultural norms. If hunting and fishing try to survive under that under that model, they will gradually be legislated out of existence. Few will be sad to see them go and there are plenty who would be glad to lump all hunting into this category and pitch it all out the door.

That's my point, Tim- shooting a water buffalo is exactly like shooting a Hereford. People shoot Herefords all the time. People shoot Herefords for burgers. People shoot Herefords for steaks. There's nothing (in my mind), morally ambiguous about shooting a Hereford. It's food. The same is true with water buffalo. We agree that, to us, shooting a cow is different than shooting a wild deer or turkey or anything else, but that's just a matter of perception, and it's hard to legislate taste. If I was a farmer, and someone offered me 5K to shoot a cow...I'd be hard-pressed to say no. You can call that Hereford (or water buffalo) "food," or you can call it "game," the end result is the same. I guess to me, it's just semantics.

Fine. Just shoot it in the corral, don't let it out into a sensitive environment, and don't call it hunting.

...only because no one has walked away from a trout-goring and lived to tell the tail....

Ok, that's pretty funny but it concedes the point.

[stlfisher]

If killing or exploiting domesticated animals is unethical, how is it you guys keep going to the trout parks?

Because I don't shoot the trout in the rearing pools. Well not since the incident. j/k.

[drew03cmc]

Shooting feral pigs? That's God's work. Killing a destructive exotic that's out of control and good to eat and an exciting hunt makes all the sense in the world. Non-stop all day long, just go for it. Godspeed.

Shooting a domestic cow that someone stuck out in a field for you to kill? How do you pay for that? How do you brag about something like that? What piece of a person is missing that keeps them from seeing how degrading that is?

...so degrading the Government of Belize shut it down.

Only if you believe that there is one. I don't and as such, believe that if we want them gone, man has to do something about it.

Post of the year.

Nope, just someone else claiming there is an infallible almighty being where there is no proof of it. These creatures evolve in a certain place on the planet and man, or nature forces them to adapt to a new area.

If killing or exploiting domesticated animals is unethical, how is it you guys keep going to the trout parks?

OB, we don't normally agree on much, but you hit the nail on the head here.

The question isn't about exploiting domesticated animals. The purpose of domesticating an animal is to exploit it.

The problem is with releasing a(nother) domesticated animal as an exotic into the wild and creating an industry to hunt it.

The trout parks are no great prize either, but they're not nearly as bad as establishing a new industry hunting for cows. For instance:

1. Water buffalo are yet another exotic in North America. Do we really need another problem from a feral domestic animal?

2. Stocked trout come from wild stock and their domestication is limited to increase their survival in the field. Water buffalo were never a wild animal. They're COWs designed to provide agricultural services. People MILK them, pull carts with them, plow fields with them and make them into steaks. There's no difference between shooting one and shooting a Herford.

3. Trout won't wander off, become feral then try to gore random people.

Wrong. Stocked trout come from other stocked trout in most hatcheries. Prove to me that Missouri's stocker trout come from wild fish. You can't. At one point in time, the brood fish were actually taken from a stream where they were native, crossbred with another species and then put into the Missouri fish system. There is nothing remotely wild about trout in Missouri with the exception of the streams where the fish sustain themselves.

Water buffalo were and are a wild animal. Do your research before making such claims. There are Asiatic Buffalo or Wild Water Buffalo, which are wild and native to southeast Asia, and only about 3400 animals exist. Now, at some point in time, some of the wild buffalo were domesticated for livestock use, but some were able to stay wild.

Stocked trout DO wander off and become feral. We don't call them feral, we call them holdover fish.

[Fly_Guy]

Closing in on the red X of destiny

[Outside Bend]

Be careful they don't suck you down the sewer with them. Legitimizing this form of hunting blurs the lines between something that can only be attractive to people who kill for the sake of killing and the actual sportsmen who care about the environment that provides their game, who value fair chase, and who genuinely want to see what's honorable in hunting passed on in a sustainable way. Ultimately, that is the reason I think there are real limits on the "play-pen" style of wildlife management. The extreme forms of canned hunting are completely out of step with cultural norms. If hunting and fishing try to survive under that under that model, they will gradually be legislated out of existence. Few will be sad to see them go and there are plenty who would be glad to lump all hunting into this category and pitch it all out the door.

Fine. Just shoot it in the corral, don't let it out into a sensitive environment, and don't call it hunting.

I'm not saying it's legit, Tim- or even ethical. I'm saying you'll be about as effective persuading a guy who wants to shoot a water buffalo that it isn't "hunting," as you'll be persuading Pam Anderson that shooting a wild deer in Missouri isn't "murder." It's a matter of perspective, personal values, and culture. There are cultural precedents for it- cattle have been domesticated and bred for sport, chickens have been domesticated and bred for sport, and many animals (pheasants, chukar, quail, pigeons, etc), are raised in captivity and released for sport. Some of those things I feel are unethical, some are ambiguous, but I can't go around legislating what is and isn't hunting just based on my own opinion- things rapidly break down.

Here's an example- I have no problem with dove hunting, and shooting 8 or 12 or whatever the limit for mourning doves in Missouri is seems pretty reasonable to me. But going to Argentina and shooting 300 doves a day, to me, constitutes "slaughter"- even though you're not breaking any laws, and both fall under the fair chase principles which I personally use to define "hunting." But I wouldn't consider killing 300 snow geese slaughter, because it's ecologically justified. It's a complex definition, and is often defined more by the individual than by the culture as a whole. It'd be awfully difficult, if not impossible, to create some metric by which everyone agrees on the definition of what is and isn't what we call "hunting."

[ozark trout fisher]

I think the idea of comparing put and take fishing and high fence hunting is really interesting, and it's hard to objectively argue that it's not a good comparison...I just personally cannot equate the two things.

It's not that I like put and take trout management. I think that it degrades the sport of trout fishing considerably, the whole artificial nature of it, not to mention the damage it has done to many native fisheries across the country. But when you are talking about a 10" fish, the guilt factor of me taking it in unnatural circumstances is not anything like it would be for a large animal. Sounds simple-minded doesn't it? I guess maybe it is, but I I can't shake that feeling...

I will admit, I am not making my argument based on science. It's just that I would feel really guilty, really feel like I did something wrong if I killed a big game animal in a high fence enclosure just for the pure thrill of killing an animal. High fence hunting is all about killing all about the act of taking another animals life that is far more aware, has far more mental capacity than a 10" fish. I couldn't do that and look myself in the mirror in the morning. For me real hunting is all about food, and using the same general process that human beings have been using to obtain food since we first came into existence-a completely different thing the high fence culture in my mind.

I believe that this debate is all about opinion, what hunting and fishing means to to different people. While I firmly believe that high-fence hunting is wrong, in the end this argument is all based on emotion, on beliefs, not on provable facts. Is a 10" trout equal in your mind to a water buffalo? Is it any different to kill a domesticated animal purely for food than to kill it and call it "game"? What do you consider to be a successful hunt? Does it have to end with an animal on the ground? I don't think it will surprise anyone on here that I have very strong feelings about all of the above things, but there is no point in me going into it any further. It's all too subjective.

[Fishinokie1]

This site is nuts - http://www.texashuntlodge.com/zebra_hunt_package.asp I think it's a good topic to bring up - One could have a lively debate comparing and contrasting hunting for a water buffalo/zebra/Nilgai in a pen and fishing in a put-and-take stream. I like the site's line "there are no seasonal restrictions on hunting zebra in Texas". Really - ya think? Just as long as the pen that they keep them in is narrow so the hunter gets a side shot without having to do to much maneuvering.

Haha - under the Hunting packages section, between Fallow Deer and Red Stag Hunts is "Father-Son hunts". Is that legal, and who is hunting whom?

This guy just retired from the IRA and fancied a sika deer hunt w/ an assault rifle. Only in Texas... http://www.texashuntlodge.com/sika_deer_hunt_package.asp

What's next? Guided hunts at the DFW zoo? They did mention in that link their lodge has a fully stocked bar. Now the pieces are starting to come together. I think Tom Arnold will be hosting their new show.