Are Trophy Records Destroying Hunting As We Know It?

© By Othmar Vohringer

For years I have been saying that the “trophy” aspect of hunting perpetrated in every magazine and hunting TV show eventually will backfire on our hunting heritage. It is my contention that if trophy record books would only give credit to the animal without the name of the hunter they would go quickly out of business. The reason hunters enter trophy’s in these books is for the sole reason to see their name in print. In magazines and hunting TV shows trophy animals are used solely for the purpose to sell products and to give “testimony” that the writer or TV show presenter is an “expert”.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like to kill a trophy animal as much as the next guy but to me it is not a contest and I certainly never would enter one in a record book. I am not a trophy hunter and I am not a meat hunter either. I am just a hunter. While I fully respect that some hunters may only hunt for a trophy animal to please their own ego or their own sense of achievement it needs to be mentioned that the trophy hype does affect new and young hunters in a very negative way. How so? I lost count of how many times I heard a young or new hunter say something like; “I will not waste a bullet on a lesser animal.” Or “I want to be a trophy hunter.” These are all people that may go many years without killing a deer waiting for that big trophy buck. They do so because they want not to be ridiculed by their peers for shooting a lesser animal.