CANNED HUNTS
Read about the conviction of those involved in canned hunts in the US.
The closing decades of the twentieth century saw the rise of a new kind of "sport" in North America: the "canned hunt." Although canned hunts advertise under a variety of names -- most frequently "hunting preserves," "game ranches," or "shooting preserves" -- they can be identified by the two traits they all have in common: they charge their clients a fee to kill an animal; and they violate the generally accepted standards of the hunting community, which are based on the concept of "fair chase."
In some cases animals may be shot in cages or within fenced enclosures; in others they may be shot over feeding stations; some of the animals are tame and have little fear of humans, while others may be tied to a stake or drugged before they are shot. But whatever method is used, the defining characteristic of a canned hunt is that the odds have been artificially manipulated against the animal so heavily that the notion of fair chase is subverted. Canned hunts are commercial hunts that take place on private land under circumstances that virtually assure the hunter of success.
As the establishment of canned hunts increases, they are attracting more public concern about their ethical, ecological, and biological implications. The Fund for Animals has launched a national campaign to end this cruel, unsporting, and egregious type of hunting. Please visit the links below for more information.
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Part 2 |
This clip below is from the HSUS Animal Channel HERE.
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Summary of Status of Canned Hunts for Mammals in Each State A chart of states with complete and partial bans on hunting mammals at canned hunts. |
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Pitiless Pataki--We'd Recall Him If We Could The New York State Senate and Assembly passed legislation in 2003 banning the inhumane and unsporting trophy shooting of captive, non-native mammals, such as zebras, blackbuck antelope, and Corsican rams. Governor George Pataki, bowing to the small but vocal canned hunting and game farming industries, shockingly vetoed this bipartisan and popular legislation—which passed by two-to-one majorities in both chambers of the legislature. |
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Number of Canned Hunts by State List of known canned hunts in each state, from The Fund for Animals' canned hunt database. |
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Canned Hunts: In Their Own Words A collection of quotes advertising canned hunt opportunities in Texas. |
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Support Federal Legislation to Ban the Interstate Transport of Animals for "Canned Hunts" Canned hunting, in which tame, captive animals are shot within enclosed areas, represents a particularly cruel and unsporting form of trophy hunting. While several states prohibit canned hunts, states that allow canned hunts can purchase exotic animals from any other state. Federal legislation is needed to ban the interstate transport of animals to supply canned hunts. |
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The Fund for Animals Announces the Top Ten States with the Cruelest Canned Hunts The Fund for Animals has released a list of ten states that contain the cruelest canned hunting facilities in the U.S. -- operations at which wealthy trophy hunters can pay a fee for a guaranteed kill of a tame, captive animal. |
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Sample Letter to the Editor Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper educating readers about cruel and unsporting canned hunts. |
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What You Can Do Important information on federal and state legislation regarding canned hunts. |
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Fund for Animals Urges Illinois Legislators to Ban Trophy Shooting of Captive Animals at "Canned Hunts" The Fund for Animals is urging Illinois state legislators to support Senate Bill 1739, a bill sponsored by State Senator John Cullerton to ban the cruel and unsporting practice of shooting tame, captive animals for trophies within fenced enclosures. |
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Canned Hunting PSA Featuring Jerry Orbach of "Law & Order." Running time: 30 seconds. |
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Canned Hunts: Unfair at Any Price A new in-depth report by The Fund for Animals, exploring the ethical, biological, and legal issues pertaining to the "canned hunts" of captive animals on fenced shooting preserves. |
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Canned Hunts A fact sheet from The Humane Society of the United States. |
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How Hunters Make My Job Easy Speech by Heidi Prescott at the Fourth Annual Governor's Symposium on North America's Hunting Heritage. |
Canned Hunts = Certain Death! Together We Can Take Action.
Did you know there are over 500 ranches in Texas alone that allow exotic animals like our friends here at Big Cat Rescue to be hunted down in a fenced or small enclosed area to be shot for a fee? It happens much like ordering off of a menu - maybe a wolf for $250, a bear for $375 and a tiger for $2000. You see there are many animals that have been auctioned off and sold to "big game" ranches because they were bred for it or abandoned by owners who didn't understand the responsibilities of caring for an exotic animal. Many come to their certain demise on these ranches.
The worse part is in some cases, they are so used to human contact, that they do not even know to run or be afraid. Not only is this cruel, but it also violates any hunters code of ethics, being the animals are enclosed. There is a bill that has been proposed that would end this, but has stalled for lack of action. Please join us in writing our congress people. Simply cut and paste the following letter to your own word processor. Modify it to add your own personal thoughts. Then locate your congressmen here and mail a copy to them. These animals are counting on you to speak for them!
I actually receive an amazing amount of hate mail from people who insist that there are no canned hunts and that even if they do exist, that exotic and endangered cats are not used in them. While I suspect most of these are people who don't want to be held accountable for who they sell their cats to, I would like to believe that some are just uninformed. There are several video tapes of these heinous acts against tigers, lions, leopards and others. As we locate these tapes, we will post them here so that you can see for yourselves. A black leopard being let out of a trap to be chased by dogs and men with guns who ultimately kill the cat on video can be seen at Fund For Animals. Two rednecks shooting a tiger to death, in the back of a horse trailer, on video is available from The Humane Society of the United States.
According to the Animal Broadcast Network, just a quick search online revealed these canned hunting operations in the state of Florida:
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Suwannee River
Ranch
Bienville Plantation
Carter's Pasture
T & T Ranch (no web site)
Dixie Sportsman's
Hunting Lodge
Cracker Swamp Hunting Preserve
Double H Exotics (no web site)
Ross Hammock Ranch
Brahma
Island
Elk Hammock
Ranch
Outwest Farms
Brady Ranch
J & R Outfitters
Tigers Caught By Their
Tails In Illegal Animal Trade
Undercover Agents Probe Black Market
By Sharon Cohen
The Associated Press
ALSIP, Ill. The trailer loaded with nine tiers and two lions rolled past
the wire-fenced gates under the cover of night so no outsiders were around
to see what was about to happen.
Heavy double doors lifted and the zebra-striped truck
that had hauled the trailer from Wisconsin entered the brightly lit warehouse.
Two men waited inside with handguns.
The driver got out, carrying a stick. He poked it through the slats of the
trailer to prod the trapped animals into position to make it easier for the
shooters taking aim. The gunmen opened fire, killing eight of the tigers.
Their work had just begun.
All three men dragged the bloody carcasses out to the trailer and onto the
concrete floor. The shooters began skinning the tigers, then loaded them up for
their final destination: an exotic butcher shop in another suburb of
Chicago.
There, according to one of the gunmen, the skinning was completed and the
carcasses hung on hooks, weighed and sold by the pound. But tiger meat,
authorities say, was labeled as lion - which is legal to sell.
Two days later, the driver of the truck was frustrated. He still had a
tiger and two lions in that load that had been rejected because they were too
small. Now, he wanted to get rid of them.
"I'm gonna shoot 'em," he warned, "and
throw 'em in a hole!"
Big Business
The secret slaughter in March 1998, described in court
records by two of those involved, was part of a black market ring that authorities
say bought, killed and sold endangered species - tigers and leopards - for
tens of thousand of dollars.
"There's an old saying that if you can make a dollar off it, there will be
someone trying to kill it and sell it," says Tim Santel, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service agent who led a 4 ½ year investigation that resulted in charges
against 16 people.
The illegal trade in exotic and endangered species,
from big cats to tiny beetles and butterflies, is a multibillion-dollar business.
Some are smugglers who cross international borders
with fragile and sometimes dangerous animals - Komodo dragons in suitcases,
or pythons around their waists.
Others work inside the United States, trading in rare
animals from roadside zoos and mom and pop game parks, specialty magazines
and Internet sites.
The investigation led by Santel underscored a cruel reality: There
may be more tigers in private hands in the United States than in the wild -
and, chopped up for their meat and hides, they can be worth more dead than
alive.
"You still have these black holes of horror and butchery going on," says
Jim Mason, an animal activist in Missouri. "It's like the drug trade. We know
it's bad…but we don't have the means or the will to put an end to it."
Santel and other wildlife agents documented the killing of 17 tigers, one
leopard and one barasingha, an Asian swamp deer - all endangered - along with
numerous African lions, cougars, and ligers (a tiger-lion hybrid), which are
not. The cats were shot at close range while confined to cages or trailers.
Where it happens
Agents
tracked a ring that spanned eight states - Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Florida,
Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Kansas and Missouri - and involved animal park owners,
taxidermists and "trophy hunters," whose only safari was
into an underground that thrives on the slaughter of captive animals.
The ring shed light on a world where wildlife agents
are spread thin, where tigers can be cheap - a litter might go for as little
as $750.00 - and where the laws are filled with loopholes that are readily
exploited.
Even where traffickers are caught, critics complain,
the punishment isn't all that severe.
"For the most part… it's really just a slap on the wrist, " Says Alan
Green, author of "Animal Underworld," an exposé of the trafficking
of exotic and endangered species.
Judges and prosecutors aren't necessarily to blame;
federal guidelines limit the length of sentences.
Fourteen of the 16 people charged in this case have pleaded guilty; two
await court dates. The charges included violating the Endangered Species
Act, which addresses the killing, and the Lacey Act, which covers the sale
and transport of these protected animals.
Of 10 people sentenced so far, Stoney Elam, former operator of an Okalahoma
exotic animal farm, received the stiffest punishment: one year, half in home
confinement. He also was ordered to pay a $5,000.00 fine to the Fish
and Wildlife Foundation's Save The Tiger Fund.
Elam sold two tigers and three leopards to an undercover
agent for $4,800.00 then falsified the paperwork to make it look like it was
a lawful donation.
It is a federal violation to sell endangered animals
across state lines, but donations are permitted.
Todd Lantz, the driver who delivered the cats to the warehouse and brokered
another deal involving four tigers that were later killed, was sentenced to five
months in prison and fined $5,000.00. His wife, Vicki, who pleaded guilt
to aiding in the sale of tigers, received six months' home detention.
Hunting In A Cage
Tim Santel got the call in 1997. An exotic animal
dealer in southern Illinois said she had heard that people in the Chicago area
wanted to buy big cats to shoot them for their skins.
Santel frequently gets tips, but as one of only
about 240 wildlife agents spreads across the nation, his resources are limited.
But Sherry Roche's tip - with its suggestion
of cruelty and commercialization - turned out to be worth pursuing.
To infiltrate the ring, wildlife agents posed
as big game hunters, a hired hand, an interior decorator and animal dealers.
Working with informants, the agents gained the confidence
of the traffickers, transporting animals, making deals and witnessing the falsifying
of records.
Money was the motive for most of those involved.
But some were collectors - including Robert Martinez,
a family practitioner who lives in Palos Heights, Ill.
He is a hunter, but in this case, his "hunting" amounted to killing four
caged cats; he pleaded guilty to shooting the endangered one, a black leopard.
In his plea, Martinez said he paid $6,000.00 to buy the four animals, and also
admitted killing a tiger in a trailer.
He sometimes posed with his kill: According
to an affidavit, how showed the undercover agents a photo of himself with the
dead tiger and pictures with bears he claimed he had illegally bagged in Russia
and Canada.
Experts say there may be as many as 10,000 captive-bred
tigers in private hands in the Untied States - compared with up to 7,500 in
the wild.
A tiger can be bought for $1,000.00 or even less. Its
parts can generate a lot more.
A full tiger skeleton can be worth more than $61,000.00, accorded to an
estimate in the World Wildlife Fund report in 2000. end
Note from Carole: The underlying problem that fuels this sort of abuse was
barely alluded to in this article by stating that so many exotics are in private
hands. Very few exotic cats are actually bred for these illegal markets, but
hundreds find their way into these situations, because there are few laws to
protect them and because there is a huge surplus of big cats that did not work
out as pets, that failed to perform, that can't be taken out to schools for
"education" any more and that were replaced by the newer cuter cubs in zoos. We
have to turn away 75-80 such cats every year because we don't have the funds to
care for them and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more
people out there who will sell to the brokers (who always say they are selling
the cats to a big zoo) rather than attempt to donate the cats to a sanctuary,
so we never even hear about them.
The problem is that people don't know, and don't want to know, how their
desire to have their picture with a cub or see a rare colour mutation causes
such misery and abuse. The problem is in the hearts and perceptions of
people and this is why you are so important in helping these animals to be
heard.
Read Big Cat Rescue's Daily Updates on Wildcats in the Wild at Field Projects