eBay Shoots Down Canned Hunts

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Online auction site eBay announced that it will remove listings for canned hunts that offer customers a guaranteed kill.

After consulting with The Humane Society of the United States, the eBay policy staff determined that these hunts amount to the sale of live animals, a violation of eBay policy. eBay has also agreed to work with The HSUS to identify listings for canned hunts that guarantee a kill so they can be promptly removed.

To date, approximately 100 canned hunt listings have been removed from eBay, crimping business for these cruel operations.

Canned hunts, which go by names like "game ranches" and "shooting preserves," are commercial operations where customers pay large sums—often several thousand dollars per animal—to stalk and kill animals inside a fenced enclosure. The victims, ranging from wild boar and white-tailed deer to zebras and Himalayan mountain sheep, are bred on the ranch or bought from dealers. Either way, they are typically semi-tame, hand-reared animals who have lost most of their fear of humans. They look like wild animals, but they are no longer wild enough to know that humans are a threat.

Inside The Fence

Many canned hunts set up feeding stations so that the animals become accustomed to going to the same place at the same time to eat. Then one day there is a hunter hiding in a blind or tree stand nearby and when the unsuspecting animal comes to eat, he is blown away at near point-blank range.

Guides know where the animals are at all times, so they can lead the customer straight to the target. And they know all of the animals' hiding places. There is no sanctuary on a canned hunt.

And surrounding everything, there is always the fence—usually an eight or twelve foot barrier that makes escape impossible. On a canned hunt, you can't run and you can't hide. You can only huddle against the fence and die.

Big game hunting in the wild is a chancy, time-consuming proposition. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state wildlife agencies, in 2001 ten million deer hunters killed six million deer, meaning that nearly half of all deer hunters go the entire season without killing an animal. But at a canned hunt, there is little or no risk of coming away empty-handed. So confident are canned hunt operators that their animals cannot evade the customers that many advertise "No kill, no pay!"

HSUS Hunting Campaign Director Andrew Page congratulated eBay for "taking a stand against an egregious form of animal cruelty. This is a significant victory for the animals who are gunned down every day in these shooting galleries with living targets." 

See the Video

Canned Hunts

Related Links

Stop Canned Hunts

Facts about Canned Hunts

Special Report: Canned Hunts—Unfair at Any Price