Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday - BBC Two, Sunday
Yesterday, we saw Louis Theroux travel to the Limpopo Province in South Africa to investigate the lucrative hunting industry, which, rather than driving animals to the bring of extinction, has done the exact opposite – or so its members claim. Hunting in South Africa is big. Animals are bred solely to die on private game farms at the hands of affluent western tourists, mostly from America. The cost of a bagging a trophy kill ranges from as little as $250 for a baboon to as much as $50-100,000 for a rhino. Right at the start of the programme, we see Niki, a young girl bagging her first kill; a warthog, shot “right through the lungs” with a crossbow – they only allow bow hunting on their property, as the noise of gunfire distresses the other animals.
Louis met tourists to try to understand their thrill of the kill, joining them as they go hunting. He meets Ann-Marie from Cleveland who originally only came to accompany husband Paul, but finds herself caught up in it and eventually embarks on a hunt of her own – she tells Louis that you always remember the rush of your first kill. When it came to pulling the trigger himself, Theroux just couldn’t do it. “I am not feeling an urge to do it. I am feeling an urge not to do it,” he told a hunter.
Towards the film’s end, a lion tamer, one Piet Warren, loses his rag with Louis when probed with yet another question: “I hate f***ing elephants because they eat every good-looking tree. They don’t eat a shitty bush.” Conversely, hunting game in private reserves has seen several species of plants and animals that were approaching extinction flourish on land that was once intensively used for cattle grazing.
Whilst not as explosive as last year’s Most Hated Family in America, the documentary took an interesting look at what compels people to hunt, and the often overlooked positive side-effect of a controversial industry.
Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday was broadcast on Sunday, April 6th on BBC2, and is available for viewing on the BBC iPlayer for the next 6 days.
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on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under BBC.
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April 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I have to say, I usually agree with what Louis Theroux says, because most of the people he interviews are like Nazis, fundamentalist loon bags, bascially people with whom you cant really side with.
This time, it was more of the same, him going to another country, and basically slagging off other people’s cultures, he spins his little one sided story, generally worms his way about. I can see why that South African hunter lost his rag with him.
I’m not saying I agree with hunting, but if I was brought up in South Africa, I’d be willing to say that my views on such things are different.