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While big game hunting for food is an ancient practice, it’s more recently turned into a sport.
It’s a contentious topic, with some arguing that big game hunting is key to ongoing conservation efforts, while others say it poses a critical threat to biodiversity, forcing certain species to extinction.
It can also be extremely dangerous. Take Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old millionaire who owned a California vineyard and who along with his guide was trampled to death by a group of five elephants while hunting antelope in Gabon, Africa.
The schadenfreude on social media is hard to miss.
“Oh dear, how sad,” wrote one user. “Hope the elephants didn’t hurt their feet.”
But while it may sound like Dosio had it coming, a retired game hunter in Cape Town who said he knew him told the Daily Mail that he was a “very well-known and popular hunter in the US and in Africa and a very keen conservationist and he did a hell of a lot of charity work and was a really good guy.”
“Although many disagree with big-game hunting, all Ernie’s hunts were strictly licensed and above board and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers,” a separate, unnamed game hunter added.
Dosio was looking to shoot yellow-backed duiker, a forest-dwelling antelope that’s labeled as “near threatened,” but not officially endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
On April 17, the hunter and his guide stumbled upon and startled five female elephants with a calf, sending them charging.
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