The Trophy Hunter's Prize
Lora has been a featured writer in poetry publications. She is currently working on a collection of poems that inspire a love of wildlife.
Poem About the Cruelty of Trophy Hunting
THE TROPHY HUNTER'S PRIZE
As the lion succumbed
under the hunter’s steady gaze,
slowly stumbling to the ground,
the hunter stood still...
unmoved was he
by the last broken breath
of this lion’s agonizing death.
His chest drenched with blood
from the sharp arrows
of the hunter’s
unremitting device of death...
whose only aim is to kill.
As the hunter looked down
at this lion’s broken body,
lying so lifeless...
his expressionless face
now erupted in a self-absorbed smile...
thinking about how he could brag about his kill-
and tell everyone what
a challenge it was,
even a thrill...
to kill such an animal.
What a trophy it would make
with such a size!
Surely, he had won
the ultimate prize.
This lion, a king of all beasts,
would look great mounted on his wall.
What a triumph, what a feat...
in his mind, the undisputed victor,
over this glorious beast-
whom he had brought to such defeat.
The lion’s pride waited anxiously
for their leader to return-
their eyes and ears alert for
any signs of him...
as the long day slowly
vanished into the night...
but their beloved leader
remained out of sight.
His cubs now knew fear.
Their father and protector...
did not appear
and the smell of death drew near.
A once strong and proud lion was he...
father and protector of his pride,
a leader of all-
now becoming only...
a trophy hunter’s prize
with his head mounted on a wall.
-Lora Hollings
We Need Another and Wiser Concept of Animals
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston
Dying to Be Free - Song to Save Lions and Wildlife against Trophy Hunting!
How You Can Help End Trophy Hunting
Sign the petition calling for countries to end trophy hunting and to stop the import of trophies from threatened or CITES-listed species.
https://www.bornfree.org.uk/trophy-hunting
