By: Ted Nugent
Katherine Chappell, 29, was attacked, bitten, mauled and killed by a 9-year-old African lioness this past Monday, June 1. She wasn’t on a real safari, but rather driving through South Africa’s Lion Park to photograph and see wild lions up close and personal at this popular tourist attraction.
Like all caring people, the Nugent family offers our condolences and prayers to her family and loved ones at this difficult time, but we also pray to God just as hard that someone, somewhere, is paying attention this time and learns the glaringly obvious lesson that could spare such unnecessary tragic heartbreak and loss.
Pet chimps eating people’s faces off, stingrays stabbing people in the heart, pet deer goring their owners, golfers attacked by alligators, insane, irresponsible tourists being gored and flung by bull bison in Yellowstone, neighbor’s dogs attacking, mauling and killing kids at play, elk and deer goring people in the suburbs, bears eating campers, wolves chasing kids home from the bus stop, coyotes snatching infants from porches, mountain lions killing cyclists, and the bizarre list of dangerous wildlife encounters goes on and on and on.
It doesn’t have to be.
I had an African lion cross my path in the Sudan back in 1978. He didn’t attack me because I killed him.
A grizzly bear came very close to me once with no problem at all, because I killed it.
An enraged wild boar charged me in the forest, so I shot it with my bow and arrow, killed it and ate it.
One time in Alaska a very large black bear stood on its hind legs only 10 feet away, so I killed him with my .44 magnum, ate the meat and made a beautiful rug.
A shark circled my in the Keys one time, so I put an arrow through its heart, ate it and had it mounted.
In my 66 years as a natural hunter, I’ve had too many encounters with large, wild animals to count, but never had a problem with any of them. My encounters were natural, real-world encounters as predator and prey, hunter and hunted, the way God intended it.
Chimps and lions, cheetahs and cougars, deer and other wild animals are not pets. If you disrespect wildlife enough to reduce them to pets, you are asking for trouble.
And if you drive through a wild animal park with your windows rolled down in defiance of ubiquitous, common-sense rules and regulations, you have a very good chance of being attacked and dying.
The dumbing down of mankind is painfully complete when vicious, dangerous animals can ever be thought of as innocent, cute creatures, ready to pose for family photo albums.
Just this week a vicious and very dangerous black bear was shot to death in someone’s backyard outside Toronto, Ontario, and instead of thanking the brave cops who killed it, the ignorant freaks have succeeded in getting the cops suspended for saving their feeble lives.
It doesn’t get any crazier than that.
The very people who protest the necessary killing of a marauding black bear are the same goons who squawked their ignorance loud enough to have the Ontario spring bear hunt banned. The inescapable result of this insanity is too many bears for the nearby wilderness habitat to support, thereby luring them into suburbs. Failing to harvest the annual surplus of older, mature boars that hunters would have taken, the subordinate sows and cubs leave the prime habitat and move into secondary habitat, which happens to be jam packed with city folk who dare refer to magnificent wild animals as “BooBoo” and “Bambi.”
Shame on them. Shame on them all.
There is a good reason the Lion Park in Johannesburg and various zoos and circuses are so popular; wild animals are fascinating creatures that have intrigued mankind forever. Since many people are unable to interact properly with wildlife in natural, wild places, these rigged tourist attractions have their place and provide a certain sense on connection, albeit less than real.
The real tragedy is how so many modern-day dumbed down, disconnected people fail to respect these creatures for the wild, dangerous beasts that they are, and such disrespectful, foolish people will keep getting themselves killed in the process.
If anyone is truly honest about loving and respecting wildlife, buy yourself a hunting license and show nature the respect she deserves by participating properly.