PLEASURE KILLINGS: Fancy hunting a kangaroo? Or a zebra? In Texas, you can ‘pay-to-play’
They’re pay-to-play operations for wealthy, somewhat lazy shooters who basically don’t want to get their boots scuffed by putting in the time, skill and effort that fair chase hunting requires.
ALEXANDRA VILLAREAL: We are standing on Ox Ranch, a more than 18,000-acre property in Texas crawling with exotic animals. Some are gunned down by paying guests for trophies… There are an estimated 8,000 animals on the land… Owned by tech entrepreneur Brent Oxley, the remote hunting ranch is a spectacle of contradictions, a wonder of nature that at times feels eerily unnatural. Just like in much of Texas, white-tailed and axis deer roam. But so do zebras. Kangaroos laze about, thousands of miles from Australia. And there are dozens of Eld’s deer, endangered and endemic to south-east Asia.
They’re all mostly healthy, pampered and loved – until the day someone eyes them from behind the barrel of a gun. It costs $6,500 to shoot one of Ox Ranch’s zebras, slightly more for a kangaroo. An Eld’s deer is listed for $12,000, while bongos and cape buffalo go for $40,000 and $80,000 a head. These are what critics call “canned” hunts, where animals inside enclosures are shot for meat and trophies. Even the pro-hunting Boone and Crockett Club strongly opposes them, critical of the “artificial or bogus hunting situation” that arises when a target is in captivity and can’t get away…
“These animals are literally being bred for the bullet, and then they’re stocked and shot within these fenced enclosures, where they have no chance of escape,” explains Samantha Hagio, director of wildlife protection for the Humane Society of the United States. “So these ranches bear zero resemblance to traditional hunting, and there’s just nothing ethical about shooting a captive animal.” Amid a complex tapestry of state laws around exotic animals and canned hunts, Texas sits along the more lenient end of the spectrum. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, exotic animals can be harvested “by any means or methods at any time of year”…
The Humane Society of the United States estimates that there are around 500 captive hunting operations in Texas, and more than a thousand nationwide. “Literally just Google Texas exotic hunting ranch, and you will get pages, and pages, and pages of results,” Hagio says. Exotic ranches are a universe unto themselves, self-controlled and largely self-sustaining. The industry doesn’t deplete or destroy a naturally occurring population; instead, it creates its own populations to use for breeding and gun fodder. All of Ox Ranch’s exotics, for instance, came from inside the US. Owners sell to other owners, sometimes through auctions where animals are shocked and prodded into compliance…
At Ox Ranch, about 1,500 animals were shot last year. Whether a creature lives or dies usually boils down to its economic and practical value. Generally, the kills are “excess males” who aren’t needed for breeding. Female zebras, for example, will roam unperturbed. They’ll breed over and over, and they won’t be hunted when they could just be sold instead. Males, on the other hand, are worth thousands as wall mounts, and hunting them keeps their populations low enough so they don’t slaughter one another while vying for mates…
Ox Ranch’s customers travel from across the country – other parts of Texas, the deep south and even the coasts. Many come to shoot an affordable and familiar species, like an axis deer or blackbuck. But then there’s a more niche clientele loaded with disposable income, who go to exotic hunting ranches in the US to save themselves a trip to Africa. Maybe they don’t want to reup their passport, deal with permits, or get immunized; or they already went abroad but couldn’t bag the species they wanted. So they come to Texas, where those animals are stocked and waiting. “They’re basically just pay-to-play operations, right?” Hagio says. “For wealthy, somewhat lazy shooters who basically don’t want to get their boots scuffed by putting in the time, skill and effort that fair chase hunting requires”…
Ox Ranch even hosts bachelor parties where guys can hang out in big blinds decked out with a poker table, refrigerator and satellite TV. And, if a feral pig shows up, the bachelor gets to shoot at it. But given a choice, Ox Ranch’s staff prefers hunting safari-style, where they drive jeeps along Hill country roads until they spot an animal. Molitor likens these hunts to his experiences in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana, though he believes they may be even harder. In Africa, he says, animals aren’t conditioned to distrust humans. On the ranch, he says, they know it’s time to leave when a jeep approaches. SOURCE…
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