If you want people to change their evil ways, the punishment has to fit the crime. You cannot give an   offender   one year probation and expect them to never kill again.  I am talking about that hunter who killed Cecil the Lion. The American Dentist Walter Palmer is still the subject of global anger but perhaps he would never have decided to hunt again if he was punished in an effective way for killing a large bear. It was an illegal kill that he did here in America. In 2006 he was hunting black bear in northern Wisconsin. He had a permit to kill bear in one county, Minding in Washburn County, shot the bear in another county 40 miles away in Phillips located in Price County where he did not have a permit to kill.

The Dentist was offering the others in the hunt $20,000 to lie about the location of where the bear was shot. John Vaudreuil the U.S. Attorney of the Western District of Wisconsin took interest in the case once he heard bribery was involved.  That was a fairly aggressive cover up. None of the other hunters took the bribe. Walter Palmer eventually plead guilty to a felony charge and paid nearly $3,000 in a fine and received one year probation. That sentence is nothing more than a slap on the hand to a rich liar who evidently can afford to pay 20 grand at a time to anyone who will be silent. The fine should have been much larger and the sentence should have included jail time then perhaps this born killer would have let the lion live.

So here we are nine years later where Palmer flew across the world eager to bag another big kill. He goes to Hwange National Park a protected area where tigers should be free to live and where there are many. It is a vast preserve about the size of Connecticut where Cecil the Lion roamed freely. Palmer allegedly paid $55,000 to bag a Lion. It was money that was supposed to cover a hunting permit, payment to the property owner and for a guide. He was never ever supposed to enter a protected wildlife preserve. Palmer dragged a dead elephant tied to the back of his truck and lured the lion out of the preserve to be killed.

It was there on a private farm where the guy who only paid a 3 grand fine and a year probation hit the lion with arrows, left him there for a slow and painful death and the next morning had him skinned with the head still attached. All this for a dramatic picture a pose. There was no hunt. No adventure and no sense of danger. Just a rich American coward fully aware of what he planned to do. Commit another crime in another land. How much punishment will he get this time? I say leave him there naked even just for one night and let’s see who is the hunter and who is the hunted. We can take pictures and examine the remains in the morning just like he did.