Item of the Week: Big Game Hunter Meets His Doom
Texas tycoon and trophy hunter Asher Watkins was stalking prey in South Africa this week when the prey turned the tables on him. In what Coenraad Vermaak Safaris describes as “a sudden and unprovoked attack by an unwounded buffalo he was tracking,” Watkins was killed.
CV Safaris said in a statement it would not share further details of the event “out of respect for the family’s privacy,” but we can imagine how the encounter played out. The company’s website describes the Cape buffalo as crafty, belligerent, and the most dangerous animal to pursue in Africa. “Buffalo are known to charge unprovoked but when they are wounded it is advisable to be prepared for the worst.”
The 52-year-old millionaire was not prepared for the worst. Watkins’s ex-wife announced his death on Facebook with an emotional tribute, but the comments that followed it reflect the popular sentiment that one less trophy hunter in the world isn’t such a bad thing. The Facebook account has since been shut down.
There’s plenty of pro-Cape buffalo sentiment found elsewhere on social media. On X you can find comments like “Karma has been served,” “Well deserved end of life experience for another despicable trophy ‘hunter,’”or, as one Spanish-speaking wag put it, “Me fascinan los finales felices” (I love happy endings). More than one account deployed AI to depict Watkins’s head mounted on the buffalo’s wall.
The hunted are also fighting back in France this week, although the fight is posthumous and in court. André Rives, an 81-year-old hunter, is on trial after shooting and killing a brown bear protecting her cubs in 2021. The 300-pound she-bear, known to locals in the Pyrenees as “Caramelles,” got her licks in, fracturing both of Rives’s legs before he shot her.
Not quite a happy ending, but that might come yet: Rives is on trial now, charged with destroying a protected animal. Fifteen other hunters in his group face lesser charges, including hunting in a restricted area.
Photo credit: Francesco Ungaro / Pexels
