wpegg: don't care, I'd already decided not to touch then when I found out their owner enjoys slaughtering elephants. He made me agree with PETA! This is akin to the Bullseye quote of "He made me miss!"
Hunting those animals is kind of a weird situation. They are a serious nuisance (especially lions) at best in their countries and would need to be controlled anyway. Allowing wealthy people to hunt them brings in big fat checks to the local economies (the national government shares a massive portion of the fee with the locals). Tanzanian lion hunts bring in a massive portion of the actual money these people see every year.
I know it's hard to explain to people what a nuisance some animals can be. I mean, we endlessly slaughtered sage rats and rock chucks growing up, because they're vermin and not only destroy stuff but pose a large risk to cows and horses.
I suspect elephants are nearly as dangerous to people as lions, though I'd have to check the stats.
So yeah, killing these animals for sport is questionable (I've always consumed any big game I've hunted) but sometimes there's a need to control animal populations and it's a much harder problem to solve than you'd think. Solving it by bringing outside money into your local system (instead of squandering your own) is a big win for poor countries.
