This is why we can't have nice things

Imagine with me- it's day seven of your ten day tour in the middle of the South African bush, and the sun is beating down on you like a motherfucker.  And it's pretty exhausting to say the least. Youre fatigued but still focused.  Sitting there in the Land Rover, staring out into the distance with your Kowa Genesis XD binoculars, you see what you've been waiting for, and it is magnificent.  A beautiful, majestic full-grown giraffe running, out in the distance, about 500 meters away. You watch God's happy little creature for a while, you observe it eating leaves off the high branches, you look at it's long legs the way it runs with backwards knees and you think to yourself 'that's kinda interesting'.  Then, you pull out your Remmington 700 and shoot the fucker through the scope.  BAM!! One shot straight through the sarcophagus and it goes down.  You're guide and driver, Baruti, drives you to the warm carcass before the hyenas can get to it.  This is the moment you paid for, the one you've been waiting for.  You hop out the truck, hand your Canon 5D Mark II to Baruti, and stand next to your kill.  With a big grin painted across your face, you shout "This is gonna be one hell of a picture!"

Photographer David Chancellor took a series of photos titled Hunters, idk the technical terms of description, but its basically about different families that go to Africa for vacation with the intention of killing some big animal, and the photos are of after the hunt, and its shocking to see some of these people holding in their hands a dead animal.  He talks about the controversial activity here in this WIRED article. 

According to the article: big-game hunting in South Africa alone, "brings in about 157 million USD a year".   But in Kenya, where this killing big animals for sport is banned,  "the safari industry rakes in about 800 million USD a year".  So I did some math and it looks like keeping your animals alive and protecting the environment in which they inhabit is pretty economical.  And more commercial.  A lot of profit could be made.  People like seeing wild animals, especially when these wild animals are alive, and if they live for a while, then more people can potentially see them and go home with a good experience, then they tell their friends, their friends go visit the country to see the wild animals, you know living.  This brings more tourism dollars to the country, gives the country incentive to protect the wildlife, the circle of life continues for another day in Africa.

Ive been to Africa and seen the animals, the giraffe, the zebra, the buffalo, the hippo, the lion, the cheetah, and the elephant, and its all a very humbling and wonderful experience. I think big-game hunting is insanely messed up, and really unfair to the animals.  I mean what is the killing for really? It's not for food, it's purely so one person can feel big on the inside and have a photo to show at the dinner party which is probably chowing down on either hot dogs or something crazy exotic like sea turtle stew. And I guess even whole families are doing it now,  like some sort of sophisticated-redneck family event.  Like Disneyland isn't exciting enough anymore, the kids have to go kill lions. I think a rule of fairness should be put into play when it comes to hunting for fun: you are only allowed to use weapon ideas from before 500 a.d. this includes knives, spears, sticks, but nothing nearly sophisticated like guns.  I would say the crossbow is just out of allowable weapons.   "Man with spear" fights rhino- I think that would be a fair animal-to-animal match.