Hunting guide says buying animals is 'huge business' and an industry 'better than the stock market'

A hunting guide has explained the huge amounts of money in buying and selling animals.

Christophe Maes, a former accountant, left his world behind to become a hunting guide in South Africa.

And soon learned that the 'astronomical' prices of buying and selling animals is down to 'supply and demand'.

Touring a warehouse where 300 animals are being held for sale, Maes tells Endevr that the 'stud' animals are sold, in the hopes of making the 'maximum' number of 'trophy quality' babies.

Yep, trophy as in, people will breed the 'best looking' animals to hunt their babies, as Maes explains: "We will go off hunting the offspring of these animals."

But Maes, speaking in Paying to Kill: The Macabre Safari Hunting Industry sees the buying, selling, and hunting as a purely transactional business.

"Here, it's more a case of the hunting business than the passion," with investors interrogating the animals to ensure they're getting a good deal.

Endevr

"It should have a healthy body, free of parasites," Maes notes.

So, why exactly are people breeding and hunting baby animals?

"It provides a living for a huge number of people. It's a huge business," Maes told Endevr.

With the guide going on to explain that 'a lot of farmers are leaving cattle-breeding to start breeding game because its a buoyant market. It's better than the stock market'.

We'd say there's less blood in the stock market, but have you seen America Psycho?

Still, when you hear that more than 10,000 farmers breed animals for hunting in South Africa alone, the whole thing feels incredibly barbaric.

And this is something that campaign groups like Born Free are trying to stop, saying that the business of trophy hunting needs to be shut down.

Endevr

"Trophy hunting is big business. Every year, many thousands of wild animals, often from threatened species, are killed with rifles, bows and other weapons by hunters who pay large amounts of money for the privilege. The rarer and more impressive the animal, the more they are prepared to pay," the campaign group explained.

But, it doesn't stop there.

"To maximise their profits, hunting operations manage wildlife to make more trophy animals available, to the detriment of the wider environment, and many thousands of lions and other animals are intensively bred in order to provide trophy hunters with their prize."

And it's something that the group are desperately trying to stop: "Trophy hunting is a cruel throwback to a colonial past, and the targeting of particular animals (usually those with the most impressive traits such as the biggest tusks or the darkest manes) disrupts animal societies and has knock-on effects for populations and ecosystems that we are only just beginning to understand."

Watch the full documentary from Endevr here.

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