Hey, do you really need that head on your wall?

When I was a kid, I had a game based on hunting the top predators in Africa. It resembled a small pinball machine, and the idea was to “bag” the lion, the elephant, the rhino and the other noble beasts by getting a ball to roll into the slots under their pictures.

That’s as close as I ever got to going on a safari. But I and I suspect most boys my age dreamed of one day trekking into the African bush to test our skills at taking down a lion or some other dangerous denizen of the savannah.

We weren’t just bloodthirsty kids. We had seen plenty of Tarzan movies and other flicks that glorified expeditions to the “dark continent” and the hunting of wild animals there. And a big part of the allure was the safari itself – riding on the backs of elephants, wearing pith helmets and khaki hunting jackets, sitting around a campfire at night and sleeping in tents, and, of course, toting rifles.

Grown men – or possibly overgrown boys – made the fantasy a reality, going on real safaris. And the more artful practitioners – such as Ernest Hemingway and Theodore Roosevelt – managed to invest the adventure with respectability, an air of manly conquest, painting it as a genuine test of bravery and, as Papa used to put it, “grace under pressure.”

One might argue in their defense that there were a lot more wild beasts to slaughter back then. And the big game hunters were simply following a sporting tradition that dated back centuries.

But it all seems a little naive and preposterous now, especially with the sharp decline of the populations of many traditional big game animals. Our grandchildren might never be able to see elephants, lions, rhinos or other such magnificent animals in the wild, largely because of encroachment on their habitat but also because of poaching and trophy hunting.

By now, nearly everyone is familiar with Cecil the lion, the 13-year-old lion killed by an American dentist who allegedly paid $50,000 for the privilege. Cecil, a protected lion who had been studied for years by naturalists, was lured out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park where he was shot and wounded by a crossbow. The hunting party then tracked him for 40 agonizing hours, and finished him off with a rifle.

As a result of the international outrage, the dentist has suspended his practice and gone into hiding. Zimbabwe authorities would like to see him extradited so they can prosecute him.

But it is questionable whether he actually broke the law. And it is certain that he is not the only one ponying up thousands of dollars to go on trophy hunts for Africa’s big game animals.

It’s worth noting, in fact, that the York County Museum is stuffed with taxidermically enhanced African animals bagged on safaris by the Stans family.

African animal hunts remain big business, as the hunt for Cecil indicates. But these days, hunters are in little danger of being mauled by a charging lion or gored by a rhino.

Lions and other game animals often are raised on farms expressly so they can grow up and be shot by big game “hunters.” Lions are fed regularly with dead goats and sheep by keepers. They line up for the feast like schoolchildren in a cafeteria.

I doubt that this is what Hemingway had in mind as a way to test one’s mettle in the wilds of Africa. What’s the point of shooting wild beasts if they have been domesticated like cattle? What’s the challenge of shooting a lion that might not have killed anything itself its whole life? Just so you can put its head on your wall?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-hunting. Shooting deer is fine. Shooting wild hogs that will tear up a carefully planted field in a matter of minutes is fine. Shooting just about anything you plan to eat is fine.

But if you want to shoot big game in Africa, do it with a camera.

This story was originally published August 16, 2015 at 10:23 PM with the headline "Hey, do you really need that head on your wall?."