W
hen Sportsmen’s Alliance President and CEO Nick Pinizzotto appeared on CNN last
summer to defend hunting and hunters in the wake of the killing of “Cecil” the lion,
anchor Brooke Baldwin broached the topic of trophy hunting.
Unfortunately, like many of the stories we need to relate to the non-hunting public, such as the role
hunters play in conservation and in the habitat-prey-predator balance of an ecosystem, the topic of trophy
hunting can’t be summed up in a sound bite. Part of that is because of false connotations associated with
the phrase – something the animal-rights crowd has worked hard to indoctrinate within the public (and
which they’ve been very successful doing) – and part of the reason is that as a group, hunters often find it
hard to explain the term, ultimately fighting the battle on the wrong field.
Here’s a start to reframing the trophy-hunting
discussion with non-hunters.
De f ining a T r op h y
w h at i t ’s no t
When news anchors and the general public
throw the term ‘trophy hunting’ around, they’re
usually speaking in a very broad sense that
assaults their emotions and is an affront to almost
everything that modern, regulated hunters and
hunting represents. The term is a misnomer, but
they don’t even realize ]