I think it all comes down to this: > Hunting ranches have been widely credited with saving the rhinoceros from extinction in the 1960s, when there were just an

I think it all comes down to this: > Hunting ranches have been widely credited with saving the rhinoceros from extinction in the 1960s, when there were just an estimated 575,000 large wild animals in the country. Megafauna compete human beings: they eat us, or they eat our food, or they displace our food. We're really, really good at competing. Fortunately, private property rights give an incentive for people to protect & foster animals they would otherwise have an incentive to kill. No sane person would want to live within range of a lion—unless he derived some benefit from it. That's precisely what these operations do: they have every reason to preserve the species they are each interested in (yes, even the non-mutants, because they provide breeding stock). Now, I don't particularly get why anyone would want to shoot a more-or-less captive animal: for me and every other huntsman I know, the fun really is in the pursuit, in trying to match the animals' advantages with our own. I could see paying for a white tiger skin rug (it'd be pretty), but I can't imagine tromping out some ranch, riding out in a truck and shooting it myself. What'd be the point? I don't go to a cattle ranch and shoot steers; I don't go to a potato farm and pull potatoes.