Weatherby’s new rifle for women is accurate, elegant, and fun to shoot.

It’s not surprising to me that many of the women I know shoot Weatherby rifles. Their excellent quality and accuracy aside, Weatherby rifles are often built with Monte-Carlo-style stocks, which tend to fit women better than the more traditional straight stocks on many American rifles. Because women tend to have proportionally longer necks than men, female shooters tend to prefer a higher comb, especially on scoped rifles, since it allows for faster target acquisition.

Perhaps it was only natural, then, that Weatherby would decide to take the next step and build a rifle specifically to serve the rapidly increasing numbers of female hunters and shooters in the field today. The new Vanguard Camilla Rifle—“designed by women, built by Weatherby”—incorporates a high comb, along with a number of other features that make this rifle amazingly comfortable to shoot. The buttstock is angled away from the body, which is a better fit for the female anatomy and nestles easily into the shoulder. The slim pistol grip has a shorter grip-to-trigger reach, ideal for slightly smaller hands, and the 13-inch length of pull (LOP) and slender fore-end reduce overall weight and length without compromising feel and balance. I found that the combination makes this a super-fast-handling rifle that is also easy to carry.

Weatherby’s new Vanguard Camilla rifle.

At 5’7”, I can easily handle a rifle with a standard LOP, so the Camilla feels slightly on the short side for me. However, it came quickly and easily to my cheek and I had no trouble mounting and shooting it accurately from standing, kneeling, and sitting positions. That’s partly because the high comb and reverse-angled buttstock fit my anatomy so well. I asked a more petite friend to shoot the rifle, and she also commented favorably on the fit, so it seems Weatherby has hit a sweet spot with the stock design that will work for a wide range of body types.

With its 20-inch barrel, the Camilla weighs 6.25 pounds without scope. Like other rifles in Weatherby’s Vanguard line, it has a match-quality, two-stage trigger, a three-position safety, hinged floor plate, and comes with a sub-MOA accuracy guarantee when premium ammo is used. Available calibers include .223 Remington, .243 Winchester, 7mm-08 Winchester, and .308 Winchester. MSRP is listed at $849.

Practicalities aside, this is a lovely rifle. The satin-finish Turkish A-grade walnut with fleur-de-lis checkering and rosewood fore-end and grip caps is simply elegant. The barrel and action have a matte, bead-blasted, blued finish. I mounted a Burris Veracity 2-10×42 scope on my test model, a .308. I sighted in the rifle with Winchester 150-grain Power Point loads and shot consistent 1-inch groups at 100 yards; the groups shrank to just under an inch when I switched to Hornady’s 150-grain BTSP.

Camilla, in case you’re wondering, was company founder Roy Weatherby’s wife, and the new rifle’s name is an appropriate nod to the origins of the company, which is still family-owned and run. Along with the rifle, Weatherby has launched an initiative called Women of Weatherby, which provides web-based resources and a community platform for female hunters to gather and share their experiences.

Kudos to Weatherby for recognizing and filling a crucial niche in the fast-growing world of women hunters with a thoughtfully designed rifle that is accurate, elegant, and fun to shoot.

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The elephants of the Selous need help, and hunting is critical to their survival.

When Benson Kibonde left his position as chief warden of the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania in 2008 he thought the days of rampant ivory poaching in Tanzania were long past.

A 1976 survey showed that there were 110,000 elephants in the Selous, but by the mid-1980s that number had been cut in half, and if poaching continued at that rate elephants likely would be completely wiped out in the reserve by the early 1990s. But in 1987, the Frankfurt Zoological Society stepped in and provided the funding necessary to wage a full-on war on the gangs of poachers operating in the Selous. The condition of that funding, though, was that a retention program be put in place so that half of the funds generated by the reserve (85 percent of which came from hunting) would be returned to the park to aid in anti-poaching efforts through the purchase of new equipment and by providing salaries for rangers. This agreement became Tanzania’s first community-based conservation program, and it turned the tide on poaching. The 1989 survey showed that there were approximately 30,000 elephants in the reserve. By 2006 that number had more than doubled to 70,000.

Kibonde was integral in these restoration efforts, and by the time he retired as chief warden in 2008 after having served in that position since 1994, he felt certain that the future of elephants in the Selous was vouchsafed. He transferred to a training facility in northern Tanzania where he instructed young game scouts, but in 2012 he was called back to the Selous by the Tanzanian government. What he found was appalling.

Infrastructure in the reserve had almost completely collapsed during his four-year absence and the scout vehicles, many of which were aged when Kibonde left the park, were in a state of disrepair. The 250 scouts who were asked to cover 21,000 acres of land hadn’t been paid in months (the funds generated by the retention fund, as established in 1987, had been put on hold). Each scout was working just ten days a month, so the doors of the Selous lay wide open to poachers.

Kibonde was shocked. Morale was low, local poachers were bragging about their exploits and getting rich, and the Selous elephant population was once again being depleted. Kibonde knew he had to act quickly.
“After assessing the situation, I raised an alarm with the conservation partners, particularly the hunting companies,” Kibonde said in an article in Hunter’s Path in 2015. “I requested them to come to our assistance by waging an all-out war against poaching.”

With the help of hunting companies operating in the reserve, Kibonde almost single-handedly began righting the ship in the Selous. He recruited scouts from the Pasanisi Training College and, through donations and government assistance, ensured that they were getting paid. His teams began by refurbishing the out-of-commission vehicles and started opening roads back into the reserve that would allow scouts to engage poachers. The number of scouts climbed from 250 to 680, and they began working twenty days a month instead of ten, which meant that the number of patrol days in the park rose from 30,000 in 2008 to more than 163,000 in 2014. The patrol units are now based in permanent camps in the reserve, and in areas where there are large numbers of elephants the camps are positioned at close intervals that allow anti-poaching teams to respond quickly to any illegal hunting in the park. The number of vehicles was raised from twenty to forty, and by the end of 2016 Kibonde hopes that he will have sixty vehicles in place. Since his return, he and his team have refurbished six road graders and nine heavy trucks to ease scout movement in the park.

The German Development Bank is scheduled to provide additional funding, and until it does the Selous Elephant Emergency Project (SEEP) has been established as a stopgap to help contain poaching until funding resumes. The advances Kibonde has made are not welcomed by everyone, particularly the poachers, who just a short time ago had free range in many parts of the reserve. There have been confrontations over the last several years, and some of Kibonde’s scouts have been injured, but he says the message to the poachers is clear and pointed.

“We taught the poachers a lesson that we would no longer tolerate their self-imposed immunity to the conservation laws,” says Kibonde.

Based on the late 2014 census of elephants in the park, Kibonde’s work has helped elephant populations rebound. That’s thanks in large part to the hunting community, which helped support Kibonde’s efforts on the ground in the reserve.

“The hunting companies have contributed to our efforts against poaching and are still contributing a lot,” Kibonde says. “Some have provided vehicles, others funds for paying monthly allowances for 100 volunteers, while some have supported us by making their vehicles available for transporting scouts to patrol areas. I thank all those who have participated in this painstaking struggle.”

Kibonde is a major proponent of sport hunting for elephants and says that hunting and the funds it generates are critical to the survival of the elephants of the Selous.

“It is imperative that tourist hunting continues in the Selous for two main reasons. The first reason is that hunting companies and hunters have helped to control the poaching situation in the reserve through direct involvement. Secondly, 85 percent of the Selous retention scheme funds come from hunting. If any amount of the hunting revenue is compromised, the registered success in anti-poaching efforts could be seriously jeopardized.”

In 2014 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service banned importation of sport-hunted ivory from Tanzania, a ban that, Kibonde says, is a major blow to elephant conservation in the reserve.
“This move is a disaster for the Selous, as most of its income is directly or indirectly dependent on elephant hunting,” says Kibonde. “If our remaining 15,000 elephants are wiped out in the very near future, this ban would be a major reason.”

The future of elephants in the Selous and across Tanzania depends upon how closely international governments heed Kibonde’s words. To stem the tide of poaching, he says, he needs hunting and the funds it generates. In 2013, Kibonde officially retired, but he has remained in the Selous working to ensure that the borders of the park are safeguarded against poachers who would wipe out elephants for immediate financial gain.

To learn more about SEEP, visit cic-wildlife.org.

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Many of today’s wildlife management professionals don’t understand hunting, but efforts are underway to change that.

I remember a wildlife biology class I took in college. The class was full of people who were interested in animals, but who didn’t seem to have ever spent much time outdoors. When I showed up for a field trip to a local forest one misty day wearing camo rain gear, I attracted some strange looks from my peers. My professor, however, caught on right away, asking me if I was a hunter. When I said yes, he had me point out buck rubs and deer trails to the other students, most of whom simply stared in amazement. My professor wasn’t a hunter himself, but he recognized that my background had already given me a general understanding of some of the concepts he was trying to get across.

There was a time when most biologists, foresters, land managers, and other resource professionals came from the ranks of hunters. Many of them grew up hunting, and their experiences helped develop their interest in their chosen field. But that doesn’t happen as much any more. Many intelligent and otherwise highly qualified people who know nothing about hunting are entering these fields and getting high-level jobs at state wildlife agencies, where they make decisions about many of the issues that affect wildlife and hunting.

A 2004 survey of university wildlife departments by the Wildlife Management Institute showed that fewer than half of all students graduating with wildlife and natural resource degrees have ever hunted, and most don’t even know a hunter or understand why people hunt. Of equal concern, many of the instructors in high-level natural resource programs at universities appear to have little or no knowledge of, or interest in, hunting. This translates into a large number of current and future leaders and decision-makers of state and federal agencies who don’t understand how hunting and conservation are intertwined.

Ten years ago, a group of resource professionals realized the problems this might cause in the future. The Wildlife Management Institute, with the support of the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation, started holding a series of workshops for students in wildlife management programs who had no exposure to hunting. The effort grew into Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (CLfT), a professional development program designed for both students and professionals who are already working in the wildlife management field.

To date, CLfT has conducted eighty-two workshops, providing crucial conservation education to more than 1,200 participants. The four-day workshops that CLfT provides are free, requiring only a few days of the student’s or professional’s time, but they are having a dramatic impact. They don’t aim to turn a nonhunter into a hunter–the goal is simply to provide the participants with insights as to why hunting is important from a biological, social, cultural, economic, and recreational standpoint, and how it relates to conservation. The classes include both classroom and field time, and students get some exposure to safe firearms handling, shooting, and hunting techniques.

Exit surveys from the program show that 95 percent of CLfT participants now “get” why hunting is so important to conservation, and understand its cultural and economic roles in society as well. A few of them have even become hunters themselves.

This is one of those efforts that, while it reaches a relatively small number of people, stands to make a disproportionate difference to the future of hunting in America. To learn more, visit www.clft.org.

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Is “trophy” now a lethal adjective for hunting?

I have always believed in the power of words. They have the capacity to inspire us, to lead us to powerful achievements and to great sacrifice. They can carry us to war or encourage us to peace. Weightless and without physical dimension, words remain agile weapons in our search for good and evil, and for truth. Words carry our thoughts. They transport our ideas. They give color, tone, and emphasis to our impressions. We should be careful when we use them and thoughtful when we hear them. We should remember that Adolph Hitler visited untold misery on the world through his rhetorical power. Nelson Mandela did the opposite: His rhetoric dispatched frontiers of gratuitous violence to the cradles of justice and reconciliation. So words really do matter.

None of us who care about hunting and the conservation of wildlife can any longer ignore the influence the word trophy now exerts on public attitudes and activism against hunting. The evidence is everywhere, from public opinion surveys to newspaper and television exposes, to the cackling of social media and the slightly more refined discussions in our halls of political power. Indeed, while many of us have tried to explain how the word is misinterpreted and how, in a real sense, we are all trophy hunters, seeking to acquire mementos or remembrances of our hunting experiences—whether photos, horns, antlers, or capes—it just doesn’t seem to matter. Nor does it seem to matter that many of the world’s most respected conservation organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature support legal, sustainable hunting in many parts of the world because they see the proof of its value in conserving wildlife and supporting human livelihoods.

Sadly, no matter how we try to argue the case, the public worldwide has taken a clear and likely unchangeable position that is negative to trophy hunting. Furthermore, this has now largely become a values-based debate, not a scientific one. No matter how much hunters wish that animal conservation could be the basis of the discussion, it is the behavior of the human beings involved and the very nature of the activity that are under scrutiny. This is the negative power of the word trophy. It has driven people to oppose a significant conservation mechanism.

Since the term “trophy hunting” is so universally misunderstood and disliked by the general public, Mahoney suggests hunters simply stop using it.

Lost to the public’s understanding is the idea that classic trophy hunters pursue only mature animals that have already contributed to the genetic pool of the species, animals that are of an age where death is a pressing reality and likelihood, and animals that because of their physical size and attributes will uniquely attract international hunters and thus provide badly needed income to support local human communities and wider conservation campaigns. Rather, the broad public impression of the trophy hunter is of a wealthy, white male who seeks thrills and self-aggrandizement through the wilful killing of magnificent animals and who cares nothing for wild animals, except that they exist for him to shoot. From this perspective, any benefit to conservation or humanity that may derive from trophy hunting is accidental and not an acceptable reason or rationale.

But the situation is complicated. Meat hunting, for example, is widely supported. Thus a motivational line is drawn between the word meat and the word trophy, even though the vast bulk of all meat from all hunted animals is utilized, including that from most animals harvested by so-called trophy hunters. Frustrating, isn’t it? From this vantage point we begin to see the convoluted world of words in which hunting is now immersed, and we can forecast how difficult it will be to disentangle it. It is now undeniable that communications on hunting will enter a maze of misinterpretation, confusion, and sometimes deliberate distortion that can squander much of our time, money and talent if we are not cautious in how we approach it. Many great intentions have been lost in swamps of exactly this kind. That’s why the hunting community now, more than ever, needs to choose its words carefully.

We desperately need to communicate hunting’s importance. Eliminate trophy hunting from areas such as parts of Africa, and wildlife will suffer and suffer greatly, especially the big, dangerous, and destructive species, the very ones that often plague local communities but that are the darlings of the western conservation conscience. Funny, isn’t it, that people in high-rise condominiums in Brussels or New York want lions and elephants everywhere in Africa but cannot stand so much as a mosquito, cockroach, or mouse in their own domiciles! It is marvelous what wealth and distance can afford. But people who live with wildlife will not accept human fatalities and crop destruction. In the absence of incentives, such as income from guiding hunters and the wild meat provided to them as a result, local people will kill the wildlife around them using whatever means they can.

Regardless of these facts, trophy hunting is unpalatable to a broad section of the modern public in much of Europe and North America. That is the reality we face and must address. In this context, the word modern is also relevant and problematic. Many hunters seem to think the world is the same one we grew up in or believe it can somehow be transformed back to that time, a time when our classic arguments favouring trophy hunting would be an easy sell to the public. Thus we promote the word “trophy” and believe that more statistics and better information will be our silver bullet. Once we present the public with our evidence, we assume people will see the light of day and accept trophy hunting as a reputable undertaking of benefit to both wildlife and people. Unfortunately, that assumption is not necessarily correct.

First, the world really has changed, and second, for as long as we have been conducting public attitude surveys in the North America—forty years or so—a significant majority of the public has perceived trophy hunting as unacceptable. Thus, presenting our arguments on trophy hunting’s benefits to conservation has obviously had little impact for a long time, probably because the public reaction is more against trophy hunting than for wildlife. So why do we think more of the same will work now? This longstanding opposition to trophy hunting also directly challenges the beliefs of those who see Facebook or other modern electronic communication vehicles as the fundamental cause of the public’s reaction to this activity. Even before Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg was born, the American public was decidedly against trophy hunting.

Is it possible hunters were part of the problem? Could it be that our messaging, our photos, our magazines, our conventions, our websites, our advertisements, our terminology, our rhetoric, our modern heroes, have all been a significant part of the problem, major influences shaping the public aversion to trophy hunting? I am afraid that simply blaming the Internet will lead us down paths of false hope and useless effort. We can analyze the reasons to death, hold town hall meetings, focus groups, and phone surveys of public attitudes, but the angst over trophy hunting is now a virus in the public conscience, reproducing itself and presenting unlimited variants to us who wish to challenge it. Like a lot of problems in life, it would be nice if the public reaction to trophy hunting could be blamed on one single cause or instrument. Unfortunately, it cannot. The reasons are many and their collective influence is interwoven and complex.

So, is the word trophy now lethal to hunting? I suspect it is, and I believe we should deal with this reality. We should consider a guerrilla tactic for the language war we are engaged in. Let us leave the landscape of the big battle to those who oppose trophy hunting. Let us quietly retire the term trophy, burn the treasured icon they seek, and leave nothing for the marauders to take.

For many in the hunting community, surrendering the term will be difficult and a sign of capitulation. In reality, we give nothing over. We hunt for the reasons we do. No one can take this from us. What the public can take, however, is hunting itself. Let us not lead them there. I see no reason to sacrifice the cultural, economic, and conservation benefits of hunting for an adjective—for as powerful as the term trophy may be for some, it is just a word, isn’t it?

Indeed, while I think of it, why not drop all the hunting adjectives such as meat, trophy, and sport, and simply call it what it is: hunting.

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