archduke ferdinand got his just desserts....

[wesw]

I was just watching rick steve s travel show.

I saw Ferdinand s trophys and learned that he logged over 200, 000 kills.

I really can t stand trophy hunters.

let them eat lead....

hapless bastards....

(see what I did there?)

[RayThom]

Now this is a trophy...

[Big RR]

The amazing thing is that he had 200,000 "kills" in his 51 years; assuming he didn't do much hunting before 10 or 11, he had those kills in around 40 years or 5000 a year, around 15 a day or 1 for every waking hour (and he still had to take time to eat and bathe and use the bathroom ). Did the man do nothing else but hunt? Or is he counting all of his hunting party's kills as his own?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Franz Ferdinand was an avid hunter, to put it mildly. Over the course of his life, he is known to have killed 274,899 animals.

Why do we know the number so precisely? Because he wrote it all down, in his well-kept records. And also by the thousands of hunting trophies that lined the walls of his palaces and lodges; as many as 100,000 were gathered in his estate in Konopiště in the Czech Republic.

What prompted the archduke to such hunting heights? How did he even achieve such a horrid feat? His personal record was getting 2,140 kills in one day. While that sounds very morbid and physically hard to pull off, Franz Ferdinand was a good shot and had a support staff that drove the animals to him.

The large number in question consisted mostly of birds like pheasants and partridges, which would be released by the gamekeeper and others in the large posse accompanying the Austrian nobleman. While you may call what happened hunting, it was really more like clay pigeon shooting, with the servants supplying and reloading guns, as well as collecting the birds for the archduke.

He also killed other animals like deer—5,000 of them—as well as elephants, emus, kangaroos, koalas, monkeys, tigers and grizzly bears, especially during his trophy hunting World Tour of 1892-1893. He even went after porcupines and squirrels when he couldn’t attack the game that he wanted while visiting Yellowstone Park.

https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-cr ... 00-animals

[RayThom]

What a guy. It appears ol' Franz didn't die soon enough. He had an eerie resemblance to my father, the Archduke of Everyone.

"His cousin Prince Rudolf, who was the Crown Prince to the Austrian Empire committed suicide at his hunting lodge in Mayerling in 1889. This event meant that Franz’s own father, Karl Ludwig became the first in line to the throne."

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profile ... d-5532.php

And cousin Rudy died by "suicide" at the hunting lodge. How ironic.

[BoSoxGal]

Coincidentally I just watched The Illusionist last night, which includes a very fictionalized version of the Mayerling incident. But watching it I was struck by the scenes involving the trophy hall at the castle, which was recreated much as it appears here:







I can’t imagine getting off on being surrounded by so much death.

[BoSoxGal]

Let's not forget we had our own bloodthirsty leaders right here at home - Teddy Roosevelt being famous for his taking of trophy animals, especially on his 1909 African safari with his son:



I also found this excerpt about that safari, which indicates a far higher number of animals taken - perhaps by others along for the ride?

After leaving the presidency in 1909, Roosevelt cast further afield, embarking first on an epic 11-month, 2,500-mile safari through British East Africa and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and later conducting a harrowing expedition along Brazil’s uncharted River of Doubt. The African safari, commissioned as a scientific expedition by the Smithsonian Institution, involved trapping or shooting over 11,000 animals, including everything from insects to the largest of game—elephants, hippos, and white rhinos. Roosevelt and his colleagues also chronicled the wildlife and habitat of the region and collected specimens that formed the basis of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum collection. Several of these animals—displayed for many years in the Smithsonian—became widely known as iconic pieces of taxidermy.

I couldn't find any exact figures, but it's also well known that he hunted very extensively in the northeast of the US and then when he went out West. I doubt he would have taken as many animals as Franz Ferdinand, who had much more extensive resources at his disposal - but still, he was no slouch in the death department.

[ex-khobar Andy]

According to Wikipedia, which is always right, "[Buffalo Bill] Cody is purported to have killed 4,282 buffalo in eighteen months in 1867 and 1868." That is 2854 in a year. That after all was his job; and buffalo in those days roamed the plains in herds of tens of thousands. At that rate 200,000 kills (from wes's initial post) would take just over 70 years.

Political leaders and princes are prone to exaggerating their manliness. I suspect that the Archduke's kills have a more modern, and kinder, surrogate: hand size. Such is progress.

[wesw]

buffalo bill killed buffalo in order to starve the injuns to death.

I have many heroes among the pioneers, Daniel boone and others, but buffalo bill chose his path and the lord will judge him as he will judge me.

I would give my worst enemy a bite to eat if he was hungered, and hope that he would be my friend.

naïve , I know, but it is always a good day to die if you are right with the lord.

[MGMcAnick]

buffalo bill killed buffalo in order to starve the injuns to death.

That's right. The bison/buffalo was the native American's grocery store, clothing emporium, housing provider, and fuel station. (Yes, buffalo chips...)

The whole campaign was called "the indian wars" by those in the east who were in charge of running (ruining?) the rest of the country. Custer was another murderer of the natives. IMHO, his last stand was well deserved after many other stands.

I'm sure buffalo roamed right through the area of my office 100 years before it was built.

[Burning Petard]

Such amazing declarations of virtue.

1. The hunting parties of royalty and nobility took 'trophies' They also used the meat for lavish dinners at the end of the day, and much meat was given away to the local peasantry.

2. How much death is represent in the display counters and tables at the meat department of your local grocery store? Unless you are buying ersatz flesh grown in factory bio production of micro organisms and enhanced with many chemicals, you are supporting even more animal deaths than the trophy rooms of the Archduke. I guess the daily deaths paid for by Smithfield Foods (now a Chinese company) exceed Duke Ferdinand. Their plant in Tar Heel, NC kills about 32,000 pigs each day. How many chickens are killed by Tyson and Perdue here in Delmarva? As far as I know no trophies are saved, and the deaths are not memorialized in any way.

snailgate.

[wesw]

you don t need to go to Alaska or Africa to get dinner.

there were also forest bison through out much of the east, back in the day.

[BoSoxGal]

I’m no fan of factory farming snailgate, but at least those animals ARE being eaten - and usually they are used up to the least little bit, too. Sometimes the profit motive even drives factory farms to use animals that shouldn’t be used, generally in animal feed but you never know . . .

That said, when the bison were massacred they were left to rot in piles by the thousands, NOT fed to anybody - except perhaps buzzards and crows and other scavengers. The whole point of wiping them out was to starve the plains Indians and make room for livestock, and there was not yet a market for the delectable meat because most white people were too stupid to realize how delicious and healthy it was.

I know that it is common practice today for safari kills to be given to local village residents, but I don’t know if that was always common. I certainly know from following environmental news that very often edible animals are left to rot and the meat rendered unsuitable for human consumption because the animals are being poached for horns or tusks or paws and the poachers aren’t exactly keen to advertise the kills while the meat is fresh.

I’ll grant you that in the Archduke’s day most of his kills likely fed his household and/or the peasants who worked his land holdings, but it’s still a remarkable death toll for one man to claim and through the lens of any era I find it disturbing that he didn’t cultivate some gentler hobbies to fill his hours.

[RayThom]

Howgh!

[BoSoxGal]

Poachers may have mutilated animal for 'trophy hunters or...traditional medicine'

A South African wildlife reserve is offering a reward of 110,000 rand (£5,707) for information after five of its lions were killed, including one which was also badly mutilated.

Poachers broke into the Akwaaba Predator Park, in the city of Rustenburg, on Monday and poisoned the five animals, including one male lion named Mufasa.

"We think they were disturbed as they mutilated him," Bronwyn Moss, the park's manager, said.

"They must have seen the security coming, with their torches."

Security guards on duty at the park contacted the farm manager at around 12:30am on Monday and told him something was wrong with the lions.

The manager arrived to find one animal dead and cradled another in his arms as it passed away.

Poachers had also attacked Mufasa and had chopped off his face and paws.

It is unclear whether the animal was still alive when the poachers mutilated him.

"I hope, with all my heart, that he was not alive," said Ms Moss.

"There is a lot of speculation as to why someone would do this. It could be [to sell parts] to trophy hunters or it could be for traditional medicine," she added.

A bag containing four lion paws was found in an area close to the park.

Police have opened an investigation into the incident and are running DNA tests on the paws to see if they belong to Musafa or to an animal from another farm.

Staff are offering a reward to any person who can provide "information that leads to the the successful conviction of these murderers" .

"Please help us find these monsters and bring them to justice," they wrote in a statement on the organisation's Facebook page.

Ms Moss said that staff at the park were trying to raise awareness about the "incredible increase" in lion poaching in South Africa.

She added that the organisation had received support from people across the world following the incident.

"We have heard from [people in] India, we have heard from [people in] Egypt," she said.

"The world has come behind us after this."