JANE FLANAGAN - The Times UK
The trophy hunter who shot a sleeping lion in a video clip that caused outrage has been identified as a churchgoer from Illinois who is a longtime shooting enthusiast.
Guy Gorney, who hails from a small town southwest of Chicago, could be seen in the video taking aim with a rifle mounted on a tripod at a lion sleeping on bare earth at the edge of some scrubland.
At the first shot, the lion arches its back, legs in the air, and tries to roll to its feet. After two more shots it stops moving and a guide says: “Okay, okay, don’t do anymore.”
The guide, who has a southern African accent, then shakes his hand. “That, Mr Gorney, is a very nice lion,” he says. “Well done.”
The clip’s precise location and vintage remained unclear but it stirred outrage after it was shared on the social media account of a UK-based animal rights advocate.
Mr Gorney, 64, has hunted in Africa and in the mountains of northwest Canada and regards such trips as adventures taken in the spirit of President Theodore Roosevelt. Calls to Mr Gorney’s home phone were unanswered today.
In 2015 he told an Illinois television station that he had been to Africa nine times and had shot 70 animals, including the “big five” — elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo.
“I like pitting myself against these animals. And what greater trophy than an elephant?” he told WBBM. “I really like hunting elephants. They’re difficult to track down. They’re incredibly dangerous. The first elephant I got, I walked over 120 miles tracking elephants before I actually caught up to him and found him.”
He also recalled shooting a buffalo that had injured someone. “When I killed that buffalo that had hurt somebody, the people that had benefited from the death of that animal cheered. Clapped,” he said. “The ‘why’ is just the – I call it the adventure of it. Same reason Teddy Roosevelt did it.”
Like many shooting enthusiasts, who often argue that trophy hunts help to fund measures to protect species, he also believes that hunting can aid conservation efforts.
“You can say, why’d you shoot a lion? I love zebra, so shooting a lion probably saves 70 zebra a year, give or take,” he said. “There’s all these kinds of balances in nature.”
A photo of himself straddling two lions he killed in Zimbabwe, that he posted on his Facebook page, had made him a target in the past for an animal rights advocate, he said.
“If you have a picture of somebody with a deer, nobody seems to care. But if it’s an elephant, it’s a big problem. If it’s a lion – especially now – it’s a huge problem,” he said. “But to me, either way, I’ve stopped a beating heart.”
He said he follows the law when he hunts. “I don’t see the logic of making a physical threat against somebody who’s proficient with firearms and wouldn’t hesitate to defend himself or his family,” he says. “It’s like, are you insane?”
Attending an open mic night at a café in the city of Joliet last year, he recalled a hunting trip in Africa in which he had volunteered to shoot a lion that was killing local livestock.
Footage of his turn was posted by someone who identified Mr Gorney as a member of a local church.
“Occasionally when they get like this, they are not killing to feed, they are just killing,” he said.
Volunteering, “you are putting yourself in harms way,” he said. He and another man made a hide in a tree, he said, and sat there for six hours. “The moon hadn’t come out yet, so it’s pitch dark.”
He was thinking of all the ways a lion might attack, when “behind me I heard steps, and then crunching. And my back is exposed.”
There were gasps in the audience. Mr Gorney said he started to formulate a plan. Then he turned. “It’s a porcupine, its sitting there chewing on the apple core my partner had dropped,” he said, to laughter.
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WE NEED TO STOP THE TROPHY’S EARNED FROM HUNTING, BEING EXPORTED FROM CORRUPT AFRICAN COUNTRIES, ENTERING THE USA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD.
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