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It is correct that there is a problem here. It is an issue in popular media but it is also an issue in scientific literature and surveys that trophy hunting seems to be ill-defined or not defined at all. 1/ https://twitter.com/Rhiannon_Kirton/status/1358291512296153088
Scientific literature about trophy hunting often doesn't define TH but relies on the common and stereotypical layperson interpretation of it, which is westerners going on guided hunts for charismatic megafauna in Africa. If a definition is written it is also often like this. 2/
Popular media (which often has an antihunting agenda) often mistakenly identifies any kind of hunting that sounds really unethical as trophy hunting, so in some laypeople's understanding, TH just means unethical hunting. People know very little about the actual trophy aspect. 3/
An example of this is that canned lion trophies generally can't be imported to the US since 2015, but some Americans still go to SA and shoot a lion just to shoot a lion and then leave the whole animal behind. This is still commonly called TH, although no trophy is involved. 4/
On the other side of the spectrum we have domestic deer hunting in the US and Europe which we generally call either meat hunting or sport hunting. Keeping the antlers as a trophy is perfectly standard for deer hunters, yet we don't call it TH. 5/
So the question is, how do we define TH if it is unrelated to the taking of a trophy? The alternative is that we try to guess at motivations, which seems to be the common way to define TH. We simply assume that hunting tourists going to Africa are motivated by the trophy. 6/
And we assume that domestic big game hunters are motivated by the meat and the hunting experience. But these assumptions are problematic. Trophies are a huge motivating factor for many domestic hunters and an unimportant factor for some who hunt in Africa. 7/
Trophy poaching, according to some US wildlife managers is a big and increasing problem in the US, and the same seems to be the case in Europe, and if you look at the most prestigious trophies in the record books, these are not the African ones. 8/
If I were to guess at some of the most prestigious hunting trophies, I would say the highest scoring Typical Whitetail in Boone & Crockett, a CIC Gold Medal Red Deer and perhaps the Giant Markhor. Maybe the NA Grand Slam of sheep too. 9/
But EU and NA domestic deer hunting is for species that we recognize as food. And we know that they are eaten, so it falls outside of the common TH stereotype. On the other hand, part of the problem with TH in Africa is that some may assume that the meat isn't important. 10/
This is not true of course. Predators are often not eaten and elephants/bushpigs are sometimes not eaten for cultural/religious reasons, but other than that, the meat is often extremely important for local communities, so how do we disqualify this as meat hunting? 11/
Some really good research by Kellert et al. and Decker et al. about hunting motivations was published like 30 years ago and Responsive Management are doing important research today, but we are still mostly forced to guess what motivates hunters based on the hunt. 12/
That makes defining trophy hunting based on what we think motivates hunters problematic. Yet defining all hunting that involves a trophy as TH will include hunting that most do not consider trophy hunting because it doesn't fit the "great white hunter in Africa" stereotype. /13
The term "Sport Hunting" has similar problems btw. It is not used often by hunters today because the general public interprets it as "hunting for sport," as in competition and like tennis or something because antihunters have been succesful in fostering this interpretation. 14/
But the original meaning (early 1900s, B&C, Roosevelt, Grinnel, etc.) was not "hunting for sport" but "hunting in a sporting way" and meant to separate the fair chase- and ethical hunter from the market hunters who would kill in excess for financial gain. 15/
So, yeah. In conclusion, you are right that TH is poorly defined. There is not a really good definition of it that does not have problems either methodologically (guessing at motivations) or because it becomes way too broad (including what we think of as meat hunting). 15/15
