Editor:

Major kudos to Othmar Vohringer’s  “The Outdoorsman” column these past weeks.

I also can’t believe all of the anti-hunting hype the news media have cranked out over one old lion, long past breeding age.

Some unscrupulous African guides put an unsuspecting — but well-paying — American client onto what he was paying them for, namely a lion hunt, and there ready and waiting in the wings is someone using this obviously set up scenario to scream outrage to the whole wide world against trophy hunting.

It smacks of Greenpeace’s fraudulent film footage that was designed and staged to generate outrage against the eastern seal hunt.  The media was quick to rabidly lap up that nonsense too.

Othmar is correct in saying that many so-called trophy sized animals are long past breeding age.

I personally have known of at least one old range bull here in the Nicola Valley that was big and tough enough to fight off all competitors for breeding rights but couldn’t breed at all himself.

That spells a huge economic loss to the ranch in terms of calves that will never be born thanks to that old geezer.

The same happens with grizzly bears.

One bear hunter stalking a huge trophy boar (male) grizzly crept up to this debris pile to get off his shot only to discover this debris pile was the covered remains of several dead male grizzlies. It was that huge bear’s dinner leftovers.

It seems there was an estruous sow (female) grizzly in the area and this old boy set up shop killing and eating all her suitors to the detriment of the entire bear population, because he wasn’t breeding her either.

This isn’t evolution, neither is it survival of the fittest.

It runs counter to everything productive in a weird sort of parallel to the counter-productive propaganda campaigns of the anti-everything screeching of misguided people.

Ever since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, nature itself has become an ugly thing.

In witness to this, in Romans chapter eight, the apostle Paul wrote: “Indeed the whole creation groans and travails in pain…”

If you don’t believe that’s true, then why do older tom (male) cougars kill and eat younger females they can’t breed?

And of course they’ll kill and eat younger toms that would have bred if they hadn’t been killed off.

The only thing to do in these cases is to cull these bullies from the land.

It’s called trophy hunting, and there is not one thing wrong with it, and everything right for man and beast alike.

Thanks again Othmar for telling it like it is.

Holger Goerlitz

Merritt