Bob CollinsEven by the standards of lion-killing dentists, the actions in Namibia of an Idaho Fish and Game official seem despicable.
“First day she wanted to watch me, and ‘get a feel’ of Africa,” commissioner Blake Fischer said of his wife in an email to 125 friends, at least one of whom was repulsed enough to help it make it was to the local media. “So I shot a whole family of baboons.”
He did. He included the pictures to prove it. Also a picture of the giraffe he killed. And a leopard. And a waterbuck. And an antelope.
Former fish and game commissioners are calling for Fischer’s resignation.
“I’m sure what you did was legal, however, legal does not make it right,” Fred Trevey, a former commissioner, wrote to Fischer, according to the Idaho Statesman. “… Sportsmanlike behavior is the center pin to maintaining hunting as a socially acceptable activity.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal. I didn’t do anything unethical. I didn’t do anything immoral,” Fischer said. “… I look at the way Idaho’s Fish and Game statute says we’re supposed to manage all animals for Idaho, and any surplus of animals we have we manage through hunting, fishing and trapping. Africa does the same thing.”
“The biggest thing is the baboon thing. I was really troubled,” the head of a pro-hunting group told the Statesman. “That’s my biggest issue. He killed the whole baboon family and you’ve got little junior laying there in mom’s lap. You just don’t do that. I hate wolves as much as anyone, but I’m not going to take a wolf family and put it on display and show the baby wolf.”
“I was raised in a very ethical hunting family,” Fischer said. “In every picture, we try to pose the animals in a natural position, wipe the blood off the mouth, place the rifle or bow over the bullet hole. … These are normal hunting photos. You shoot an animal, you take a picture of it.”
(h/t: Paul Tosto)
