Restaurant Critic Shoots Baboon, Imagines it's a Person

"I shot a baboon in Africa," acclaimed restaurant critic AA Gill wrote in his Sunday column, "last Wednesday, just after lunch." Taken by the moment, the camaraderie of companion hunters, by the African countryside, by his very outfit, Gill decided it was time to "do baboon."

"I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this," he explained, acknowledging that baboon is not good to eat and that culling measures are but a feeble pretense for killing. The eventual justification Gill offers—a desire, motivated by romantic television violence, to discover what it's like to kill another human, or at least another primate—is tacked to the end of his story like an afterthought

Upon inspecting the dead baboon, Gill finds it's much like a human but is, ultimately, a wild animal. He asserts:

Now he's dead, I'm posthumously anthropomorphizing him, and that was one of the reasons I killed. I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger.

But this seems hollow. Instead, Gill's story gives the impression of a man who, foolishly empowered by his "Robert Redford Out of Africa hat," pulls the trigger in a moment of machismo. Steve Taylor of the League Against Cruel Sports commented that if Gill "wants to know what it's like to shoot a human, he should take aim at his own leg."

Taylor wasn't the only animal rights activist to express outrage. Claire Bass, of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said that "it's hard to say what's sadder—the unnecessary death of a healthy baboon or that [Gill] has so little regard for the life of another creature." Guy Norton, a baboon researcher, said he could "understand it if there was a purpose, but what Gill is talking about is not responsible hunting."

What is Responsible Hunting?

Hunting is a very controversial topic among environmentalists. Most hunters favor conservation, habitat protection, and responsible management of wild species. Hunting animals locally for food is commonly identified as an eco-friendly way to acquire meat.

Though many animal rights advocates find hunting morally reprehensible most see some distinction between killing for sport and for food. The Humane Society argues that there is "cruelty inherent in sport hunting."

But what about hunting for a meal? Michael Pollan, another writer who documented his experience hunting, explained that he headed into the forest to shoot a wild pig because he wanted "for once in [his] life, to pay the full karmic price of a meal." When his guide told him that "some local people say it's ill luck to kill a baboon," Gill could only respond by writing: "Yeah, right. And which one of us looks like he’s having a bad hair day?"

Recreational hunting will, inevitably, continue on the grasslands of Tanzania. What must end is the disrespect—for animals, for the environment, and for ourselves—that this event sadly represents.

Read more about animals:
5 Eco Friendly Hunting Tips
Fish and Hunt Locally
What's the Treehugger View of Hunting?

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