What Happens to an Elephant After It’s Killed by a Hunter

Chaos ensues when an elephant is being butchered.

When an elephant is killed by a hunter, NOTHING is wasted! Many anti-hunters claim that elephants are only harvested for their ivory. These time-lapse images prove otherwise.

Hunting of elephants by tourists is cost effective, profitable and easily monitored.

The foreign hunter pays for all participation in the hunt, including government fees, and for taking the natural resource. A government representative is usually present. Animals are taken under a quota. The stakeholders in such an arrangement include the hunter, the professional hunter (guide), the regulatory agency (National Parks or Wildlife) and the people who live with the elephants (the community). Source: http://www.iwmc.org

Watch this time lapse that shows the entire process of breaking down an elephant for its meat.

As you can see, an elephant killed by a hunter is utilized to the fullest to feed an entire village of local people. Aside from the fact that protein is rare and VERY valued in rural Africa, the money spent on the hunt is a huge benefit to elephant conservation, as well as the locals living in the area.

Laws against transporting ivory into the U.S. have made it difficult for hunters seeking an elephant in recent years, but there are still areas where these massive animals can be taken legally and transported home.

What Happens to an Elephant After It’s Killed by a Hunter

The anti-hunting community would like you to believe the elephant is endangered and on the verge of extinction. Facts however paint a very different picture.

There are in excess of 70,000 elephants in Zimbabwe today – nearly double the amount of elephants that the environment has the capacity to support due to human encroachment on suitable habitat. If we want elephants to be around for future generations, elephant hunting is an important conservation tool that must be considered.

  • It IS legal to hunt elephants in many African countries.
  • The meat is given to local people, it’s never wasted.
  • The money from hunting the elephant goes towards elephant conservation. The trophy fee on a elephant is quite expensive, more than any of the locals will make in a lifetime, so this system works out well for all involved.
  • Once an elephant is shot, the villagers just start to appear. Word gets out fast. It is like a celebration when an elephant is killed, the entire village will join in.
  • No protein ever goes to waste in Africa.
  • Several of the ivory hunters who wrote books commented on how quickly the meat was used, and on how villagers would scavenge and boil the green meat from carrion days old if they found it. The natives cut all of the meat off the bone and take it to their village to eat. They don’t let anything go to waste. Africa is amazing.

The myth of the “elephant graveyard” began because nobody ever saw any dead ones lying about. Within hours, or at most a couple of days, a dead elephant will be completely gone.

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