Knife Review: Ambush Alpha

Ambush Alpha

The Ambush Alpha with the wooden chrysanthemum I made to demonstrate suitability for cutting curls

Introduction:

This knife review represents an exciting first for me, this is the first time a knife was sent to me for testing and review.  I only had this one for a week, so the review is based on a fairly limited time frame, but I think I did a good job of covering the basic uses that this type of knife would be put through.

The Ambush Alpha is a general field knife, often referred to as a bushcraft knife.  It's designed for all-around camping and hunting use.  It features a beefy overbuilt type of design intended for hard use.  The blade is made of 3/16 thick stock, with a full (skeletonized) tang running through the handle.  It's a solid feeling knife.

The Ambush Alpha is a new knife from a new knife company, Ambush Knives.  As the knife was being launched there was quite a kerfluffle over the similarity between the Alpha and some of the knives produced by SURVIVE! Knives.  I don't have any experience with SURVIVE! Knives, so I can't make any direct comparisons myself, and I feel like the design of the knife is similar to a lot of other knives designed for the same purposes, but the SURVIVE! GSO-5.1 does look quite similar and is made of very similar materials (functionally identical) as the tester I was given to review.  That said, considering how similar many knives designed for "bushcraft" are, I would not presume to cast stones.

For the purposes of the review, it was asked that potential reviewers have experience with heavy duty survival style knives of comparable design, so that the performance of the Ambush Alpha could be compared to the performance of other knives.  In my case the knife that I tested the Alpha against was the Spartan Harsey Difensa.  The Difensa is obviously somewhat different, but both are made of 3/16 particle steels with high flat grinds, skeletonized full tangs, and micarta handles.  For the purposes of this review I think they are plenty close enough for comparison.

Difensa and Alpha side by side.  Sorry for the poor picture quality, I was having some camera trouble that day.

Let's Start With the Specs:

Specifications (From Knives Ship Free website):

Overall Length: 10.5"

Blade Length: 5.125"

Weight: 8.8 ounces

Cutting Edge: 5"

Blade Height: 1.25"

Blade Thickness: .187"

Blade Steel: CPM 3V

Blade Finish: Satin (The Blade Finish on the tester is actually stonewashed)

Heat Treat: Differentially heat treated

Hardness: Edge: 58-60HRC; Tang: 43-45HRC

The Alpha is a fairly substantial knife, though it comes in just a little over a half pound.  With the center of gravity sitting right at the front of the handle I found the knife to feel surprisingly neutral in the hand, and lighter than I expected.

The handle of the tester was made of contoured canvas micarta (though the Alpha is available with a number of handle options including G10, antler, and various woods).  Micarta, as I have discussed in other reviews, is a handle material I fully approve of.  I find that micarta, when given a rough finish as it was on this knife, feels almost soft in the hand.  It is a stable material, strong and resilient.  I also like that it gets a little bit grippier when wet, always a plus in a knife you might be using in inclement weather.

The blade on this knife was given a stonewashed finish, which is one of my favorite finish types.  A stonewash finish is created by... tumbling the knife with pebbles.  It is what it sounds like.  In my experience stonewash finishes feel pretty low friction, and they are more resistant to corrosion than bead blasted finishes.  Additionally the stonewash hides scratches pretty well, which helps keep the blade looking nice.  The stonewash finish also keeps the blade from being too reflective if that is a concern.

The steel for this knife is CPM 3V.  CPM 3V is a particle super steel, as I have said before, these steels are made with science magic.  I'm not going to try to explain all of the specifics because I am not a metallurgist and blade steel is a surprisingly complicated topic.  There is no one perfect steel for every knife.  Each steel type has its own set of properties, and the choice of which properties are important to a knife is a key decision for knife makers.  Additionally, the properties of various steels are affected by heat treatment (the ways that the metal is heated and cooled to control hardness) and heat treatment can even affect the crystalline structure of the steel and the ways that the compounds in the steel combine.  So for the purposes of my reviews, science magic.

That said, I think it is worthwhile to discuss the characteristics of CPM 3V a little.  CPM 3V is not a stainless steel, though it does contain 7.5% chromium, which provides more stain resistance than one might expect from a carbon steel.  In terms of edge holding properties at the hardness used for this knife, CPM 3V is very comparable to CPM S35VN (which is the stainless particle steel the Difensa is made of).  The biggest difference between 3V and S35VN (besides rust resistance) is toughness.  3V is roughly 3 times as impact resistant as S35VN.  It is a very tough steel, appropriate for a knife intended for rough applications.

To sum up on the steel:  CPM 3V is very, very tough, not stainless, and holds an edge well.

A note on the sheath:  

The tester came with a Kydex sheath, which is one of the sheath options offered at no additional price.  Kydex is a thermo-plastic, and the sheaths made out of kydex are generally form-fitting.  I don't have a lot of experience with Kydex sheaths, I am personally partial to more traditional looking sheaths, but Kydex does offer some functional advantages.  Kydex sheaths hold the knife in place by being fairly rigid and formed to fit the knife.  This means that the knife can be pulled out quickly without needing to unsnap anything, but the knife is still held firmly in place.  Plastic also is resistant to water and other environmental issues (unlike leather for example).  The sheath performed fine.

Review:

Steel:

I found the performance of the CPM 3V impressive.  I was actually the third person to get to use the tester.  The first person stropped the blade to give the knife a very fine edge.  The next reviewer did not sharpen the knife after his testing, and the knife came to me still holding a hair shaving edge.  After the testing I subjected the knife to, the knife still held the fine edge.  I didn't get too abusive with the knife, but I did try to use the knife a good amount in a variety of settings to get an idea of the performance.

My impressions of CPM 3V's performance as a blade steel were unambiguously positive based on my experience with this knife.  I tend to prefer stainless steels myself (particularly living in the Pacific Northwest, and I don't know how corrosion resistant 3V is long term), but other than still having a prejudice in favor of stainless, I am sold on CPM 3V as an excellent choice for a blade steel.

Blade Finish:

As I stated earlier, stonewash is one of my favorite finishes.  In the case of this knife in particular, one of the advantages of stonewash as opposed to a blade coating was demonstrated during head to head comparison.  Stonewash has a lower friction coefficient than a ZRN coated blade, especially when wet.  I'll discuss that more later in the review, but the finish is definitely a positive.

Blade:

I was not so thrilled with the blade shape overall.  The rapidly dropping point serves to keep the blade thick pretty much the whole way through to the point.  This makes sense as the knife is designed to be a hard use bush knife, not a slicer or combat knife, but it just felt kind of...  frumpy to me.  Frumpy is the best word I can think of.  The blade didn't feel agile or graceful, it just felt like a sharp, somewhat pointy bar of metal to me.  

I don't have experience with other blades with this sort of "bushcraft" blade style, so I can't say whether or not this knife blade was somehow less exciting than other knives shaped similarly, but I suspect that a lot of what left me cold about the blade would hold true for many bushcraft blades.

The blade is not a negative, it just wasn't a positive for me either.  It was neutral.

Handle:

The handle actually surprised me.  My first impression when I opened the box was that the handle looked boring.  My next impression when I picked it up was that the handle felt square and boxy.  My third impression was that the handle did not crowd my pinky, which I figured was at least one positive.  I had low expectations for the handle at that point.

What surprised me was that when I actually used the knife it turned out to be very comfortable in actual use, especially during longer use.  The handle, which I initially found less than welcoming, turned out to be very hotspot free.  The only problems I had with the handle were actually more about the blade, the blade lacks a finger choil and jimping, which I felt limited the grips that were available to me.  As long as I stuck to the handle I was fine, but for some of the whittling, trying to choke up on the blade was awkward.

So the handle was definitely a positive.  The handle didn't wow me out of the box, but in use it became one of my favorite things about the knife.

Fit and Finish:

Pretty good.  No real complaints.  At risk of sounding repetitive, the fit and finish was not as flawless as the Fantoni, but nothing has wowed me quite like that knife.  For the price range (mid-$200's USD), the fit and finish seemed perfectly adequate.  If all of Ambush's knives come out that nicely finished, they will be doing well.

Use Review:

Kitchen:

Food prep is, in my opinion, one of the most important jobs of a general purpose camp knife.  The ease with which one is able to handle all of the various jobs of making food in the bush is going to have a real impact on how likely I am to pack a knife out into the back country.  For example, I was shocked at how well my Kershaw Cryo G10 handled kitchen tasks, which made it a pretty indispensable knife for me.  Sadly, thus far my experiences with heavy duty knives has convinced me that I really am not crazy about them for cooking.

Unfortunately, my food prep pictures didn't turn out very well, so there isn't a lot to show.  But when I was cooking with the Alpha, I made sure to do the exact same work with Difensa.  Through all of the vegetables both knives performed roughly equally.  The shape of the Difensa seemed a ever so slightly more kitchen friendly, but the smaller guard on the Alpha more than made up for any blade shape deficiencies.  Both knives made cutting carrots an annoyance.

However, when I moved on to meat the Alpha really got a chance to shine.  As I said earlier, the stonewashed blade has lower friction than the ZRN coated Difensa.  For most vegetables this didn't make much of a difference, but in meat the relative ease with which the Alpha sliced was very apparent.  Additionally, the blade shape that I called frumpy, is excellent for dealing with things like bony joints.  The shape of the blade is great for jointing.

The kitchen testing portion convinced me that the Alpha might not be the best kitchen knife, but I think it would make an excellent hunting knife.  I was not able to do extensive animal testing, but cutting up meat at home convinced me that the Alpha would be an excellent choice for skinning, cleaning, and jointing a carcass.

So for food prep, both the Alpha and the Difensa were less than stellar for vegetables, but the Alpha really performed well with the meat.

Chopping:

For chopping the Alpha was fine for a five inch hunting knife, but nothing special.  This was one point of comparison where the Difensa really was clearly better.  Honestly, comparing the two on this point seemed unfair to the Alpha.  The Difensa has turned out to be a pretty remarkably capable chopper for a six inch bladed knife.  I could go on, but this review is not about the Difensa.  

I think a big part of the subjective difference in chopping boils down to underlying differences in design.  The Difensa is essentially a fighting knife that can do other things, whereas the Alpha is designed for more general tasks.  The Difensa puts the center of gravity just a little lower in the handle, right in the middle of where the index finger sits, this makes the blade feel very lively in the hand, and the handle geometry really facilitates a powerful stroke (kind of like a hatchet).  In comparison the Alpha feels very neutral in the hand.

The Difensa says "Hell yeah!  Let's chop stuff!"  The Alpha says "Sure, I can do that too, if you want."

Batoning:

For the life of me I do not understand the fascination with batoning.  But reading reviews of bushcrafting knives, and just reading about knives in general lately makes it very clear that batoning is totally in.  If I am going to do a review of a bushcrafting knife, I'm going to have to baton with the knife.  And if I am going to compare knives, that means I will also have to beat on my knife.

For those of you who may not know, batoning is using a knife to split wood by beating on the spine of the knife with another stick.  As you might guess it takes a sturdy knife to stand up to this type of abuse.  The Alpha is actually designed to handle batoning, so for the Alpha it is a standard use.

The Alpha batoning through a piece of ash.  It performs like it was designed to baton, which it was.

The Alpha capably made little pieces of kindling out of the ash.

The Difensa made kindling just as well.

Both of these knives handled batoning very well.  They are made from metal of the same thickness, and both have high flat grinds, and both are sharp pieces of metal that can be beaten through a firelog.

Alternatively, one could take the approach I prefer and just use a hatchet to make kindling.  But if you could only carry one edged metal tool, both knives would handle batoning just fine.  

And I have to admit, it's kind of fun to baton, even if I think it's silly.

Curls:

The other thing that one must do and take pictures of while reviewing a bushcrafting knife is make wood curls.  This is actually totally legit in my opinion.  Making wood shavings for starting a fire is very important if one is to engage in primitive fire starting.  Being able to make well controlled small cuts is also important for whittling.

This is also an area where the Alpha does very well for a full size knife.

I made some quick curls in a piece of ash, but I wanted to have a little more fun with this.

So when I got home I picked up a piece of applewood

I trimmed off the bark and made a wooden Chrysanthemum for my mum, for mother's day

Then I decided to see how the Alpha handled push cutting though wood

Quite well actually

Just a fun bit of silliness

But the convexed terminal bevel really makes it not that hard to push-cut right through a branch.

My cat wanted to know what a wooden flower smelled like

One of the neat things about the Alpha is that the flat grind gives way to a convex terminal bevel.  This really helps minimize shouldering, which is pretty neat considering how wide the blade stock is.  This makes cutting across the grain of a piece of hardwood much easier than one might expect.  This is also probably a big part of why the knife handles meat so well.  It's a neat design touch that I approve of.

Summary:

The Ambush Alpha is a solidly constructed, well made knife.  Where the Alpha really shone most for me was in dealing with meat, even more than the wood working aspects of this knife, my experiences with the knife made me think that it would be an excellent option if one is hunting larger game like elk or moose (though I have to reiterate that I didn't have the opportunity to actually field dress any animals with the knife).  The outstanding strength and super solid point of the knife, combined with ample belly and a good length of straight edge feel like a knife that could be used to skin and clean a large animal, and also could be used to get in an pry apart areas of connective tissue.  The excellent edge holding could really come in handy on some of the more edge wearing aspects of hunting.

I feel like for most specific tasks there are other knives and knife designs that would handle specific jobs better, but I appreciated just how much the knife seemed to be up for anything I threw at it, which I think is the essence of a good bushcraft knife.  And that is what this knife is meant to be, a knife that you can take out into the woods and have it do everything you need it to.  You need to cook dinner, it can do that.  You need to chop off some small branches, it can do that.  You need to make curls and shred for a fire, it can do that.  You need to pry stuff, it can do that.  You need to beat the knife through a log, it can do that.  The Alpha seemed to be up for most anything I cared to throw at it.

Extinction: Pigeons and Rhinos

The World Has No More West African Black Rhinoceroses 

Today the news of the extinction of the West African Rhino was popping up on my Facebook feed.  Sadly this news is not new, the news wasn't even new when the article I linked to above was written. The West African Black Rhino was declared officially extinct in 2011, ten years after the last confirmed sightings by researchers.  In 2001 there were 10 known living West African Black Rhinos.  The last ones were probably poached by 2003.  There are no West African Black Rhinos in captivity.

The West African Black Rhino

Every last one is gone.  They are all dead.  They were hunted to extinction by poachers.  There are still other rhino species around, and even other Black Rhino subspecies, but if you ever wanted to see a West African Black Rhino in the flesh, you are too late.

The glass-half-full perspective is that we don't need to worry about how to save the West African Black Rhino anymore...

But all kidding aside, I find it very sad that without cloning, I will never be able to see one of those amazing mammals.  It got me thinking about another species that I wish I could have seen, the Passenger Pigeon.

The Passenger Pigeon

The World Has Not Had Passenger Pigeons For 101 Years

The passenger pigeon 150 years ago was one of the most abundant land vertebrates in Earth's history.  There were more passenger pigeons than there were human beings at the time.  There were around 5 billion passenger pigeons that lived in the Eastern United States.  They migrated in truly massive flocks that would darken the sky and fill the air with the thunderous sound of their passage.  The flocks were so huge that they could bring their own weather.  Unbroken flocks of passenger pigeons could take 14 hours to pass. These flocks would literally rain bird poop that would cover the areas they passed like snow.  For a bird species that was a little over a foot long and less than a pound, it would have taken truly astronomical numbers to darken the sky, bring their own wind, and cover the landscape in feces.

For the people living in the US in the mid 19th century the idea that anything that humans could ever possibly do would ever be able to seriously affect the passenger pigeon population was laughable.  I would be akin to draining the sea.  Passing flocks contained more birds than there were stars visible in the night sky (literally, you can only see like 10,000 stars at night).  The passenger pigeon was seen as an inexhaustible source of free food.  And up until the Industrial Revolution caught up to the pigeons, that was pretty much true.

It's worth pointing out that until recently in historical terms, most people (at least in the monotheistic parts of the world) believed that it was literally impossible for a species to go extinct.  The impossibility of extinction was a part of the arguments against a long chronology for Earth.  Every species that god created had to still exist, as a point of faith, and as an underlying assumption about the nature of reality.  The idea of extinction was every bit as anathema to many Christians as the more familiar debates of today about evolution, or whether the world is billions of years old or 6,000 years, or whether or not humans are even capable of causing global climate change.

When you think about how efforts to save the passenger pigeon in the later decades of the 19th century were totally disregarded, it is worth remembering that not only was the idea that humans even could wipe out a species like the passenger pigeon seen as laughable, for many people it was at least impossible by their understanding of reality if not blatantly heretical.  For many people in the US today the same is still true regarding topics like evolution and climate change.

Industrial Hunting and Industrial Poaching

With the coming of the railroads and instantaneous communications (telegraph), along with the loss of habitat due to the deforestation of eastern North America, industrial style hunting was able to rapidly transport pigeon meat to new distant markets even as the species found itself losing the habitat it had evolved for.  To give you an idea of the scale of passenger pigeon hunting, at a nesting site in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed each day for nearly five months.  That was just one location, similar things were going on all over the country.  But the proximity of passenger pigeons Great Lakes region nesting grounds to the emerging meat distribution industry hub that developed in the Midwest meant that the heaviest hunting was conducted where it was most devastating.

From a population of billions in the 1850's the last wild passenger pigeon was shot by a boy with a BB gun in 1900.  In 1914 the last captive passenger pigeon, Martha, died.  A powerful proof of the ability for industrialized humanity to alter the planet.

Of course nothing was learned from this.

Buffalo, who once numbered in the millions, were hunted to the brink of extinction by industrial hunting.  Joy killing of musk ox herds from planes in the mid 20th century led to the extirpation of Alaskan musk ox.  The musk ox had to be reintroduced from Canada after US populations were wiped out.  And that is just in the US.

In China, in the Mid 20th century, Mao promoted traditional Chinese Medicine.  This helped lead to an industrial level demand for Rhino horns, among other animal body parts like bear's gall bladders.  Today three of the extant species of Rhino (Black Rhino, Javan Rhino, and Sumatran Rhino) are critically endangered.  The West African Black Rhino was one of four subspecies of the critically endangered black rhino, there are now three populations left, and all are in extreme danger.  The other two species of rhino, White Rhino and Indian Rhino, are near threatened (White Rhino), and vulnerable to extinction (Indian Rhino).

Today in Europe, the "hunting" of migratory songbirds is driving a plurality of species into danger.  Shooting songbirds off of power-lines is a popular pastime in parts of Eastern Europe.  In central and Western Europe similar practices are common.

Commercial over-fishing continues to endanger a number of economically important species.  Some tuna species are threatened.  The list of threatened fish stocks is too vast to begin to touch on here.

Out of the five extant rhino species, the White Rhino is doing the best with a population of over 17,000.  The white rhino is split into two subspecies, the Northern and Southern,  There are 5 Northern White Rhinos in the world.  All the rest of the white rhinos are the Southern White Rhinos.

What is to be done?

So why has the Southern White Rhino done so well despite heavy poaching?  The answer might surprise you, the reason that the Southern White Rhino is doing so well is actually due (in large part) to regulated sport hunting.

A century ago there were 50 Southern White Rhinos.  Today there are an estimated 17,460.  A big part of what helped the white rhino recover was regulated big game hunting.  In 2007 foreign big game hunters spent an average of more than $10,000 per hunter on their hunts, and that number does not include travel and accommodations.  More than $200 MILLION was pumped into the African economy for the opportunity to kill African Big Game.  And that is why sport hunting actually helps preserve species.

(I've actually written another blog post on this topic, you can find it here)

People being willing to spend huge sums of money to kill exotic animals creates an economic incentive to protect populations.  If you live where there are dangerous megafauna, say man-eating lions, you are not likely to be inclined to protect them if all they do is kill your family, compete with/kill your livestock, and in general make your life harder.  But if rich foreigners are willing to spend lots of money to kill those same animals, then there is a reason to not allow them all to die.

Eco-tourists are not likely to pay $10,000 dollars for the chance to take a picture of a rhino, on top of travel and accommodations, but hunters will pay $10,000 for the chance to shoot at one.  In a mind boggling (to me at least) twist of irony, the most effective defense against poachers has been people who want to live out their African Killing Safari Dreams.  Indiscriminate hunting wiped out one of the most numerous vertebrate species in Earth's history, and drove numerous other species to the brink or fully into extinction, and now sport hunting is helping to reverse the trends in some cases.

The value of a rhino horn on the black market is up over $60,000 today.  The price has skyrocketed over the past decade as populations around the world have collapsed.  It takes a pretty hefty price tag to offer an economically valid alternative to poaching when that is the case.  The healthy populations of African megafauna also attract more eco-tourists, but most people need something more concrete than the trickle-down economics of tourist money spent on hotels and trinkets to convince them not to make a quick years salary by going on an illegal hunting trip.

Hunting:  Not just good for Africa

The phenomenon of hunters preserving species is not limited to Africa.  Here in the US, hunters have been hugely important to the preservation of wildlife.  To spare myself some labor, I'll just go ahead and quote myself:

"let's take a look closer to home.  If you enjoy seeing wildlife, and you live in the lower 48, you should thank a hunter.  There were 12.5 million hunters in the US in 2006.  That was a drop of 1.6 million over the preceding period of 15 years.  That means that less than five percent of the population was hunting.  But that five percent accounted for 75% of the funding for state wildlife agencies.  And that does not factor in Federal Duck Stamps which can be thanked for 5.2 million preserved acres (National Geographic, November 2007).  The Fish and Wildlife Service has a little blurb about this.
In the US we have lots of numbers being tracked.  One number that the US Fish and Wildlife Service tracks is how many people are "wildlife watching participants."  Wildlife watching participants are the people who are out enjoying the wildlife and taking pictures.  Those people number 71 million, and comprise 30% of the population.  Six times as many people are engaging in non-hunting wilderness activities, but they provide only a fraction of the revenue from their actions.  It is nice to imagine that hiking and bird-watching do more to protect species than the slaughter of innocent animals, but it is a pretty lie."

Five percent of the population in the US pays for 75% of state wildlife agencies.  Hunters, an extreme minority in the US, provide three times as much money for wildlife management as the other 95% of the population.  It's pretty staggering, and that only counts the governmental funding side of wildlife management.

Additionally non-governmental groups like Ducks Unlimited have had a huge impact on the preservation of migratory waterfowl.  Those types of hunting focused organizations have conserved millions of acres of habitat, and have often found innovative ways to do so.  Things like buying small areas of land that contain key habitats like ponds, or working with developers to find ways to mitigate the impact of development.

This is not to say that non-hunting conservancy organizations do not also have a profound impact.  I'm having trouble finding the numbers, but I do believe that the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy have both managed to preserve more total acreage than Ducks Unlimited.  Plus environmental groups are also active in wildlife preservation lobbying, but the out-sized contribution of pro-hunting conservation groups in relation to the population of hunters is pretty staggering.

You don't need to hunt to help preserve species, and god knows that history shows the dangers of unregulated hunting, but if we want to have animals like bears, lions, elephants, and rhinos in this world, along with species like swans, cranes, moose, and musk ox, hunters are an important part of the solution.  But it is not enough to simply say "hunting good."  Indiscriminate, unregulated, and industrial hunting (and fishing) continues to drive species to extinction.  Careful governmental regulation and societal stewardship is vital.  This is not a case where an unregulated free market is a good idea.  Hunters are a key piece of conservation efforts, and can be instrumental on a global scale, but that can only be true with responsible regulation.

Just some things to bear in mind if you like animals.

In Defense of Kendall Jones

My Facebook wall has recently been fairly covered with images and rants (for and against) Kendall Jones.  If you are fortunate enough not to know who Kendall Jones is, she is a Texas Tech cheerleader who hunts big game.  She has generated a lot of controversy by posting pictures of her with her kills, and taking a combative position on her hunting.  There is a Change.org petition to bar her from traveling to Africa (that's a US petition to bar a US citizen from legally travelling to engage in legal activities on a different continent), and there are people literally calling for her to be killed.  Much of the outrage seems to stem from the mistaken belief that non-lethal eco-tourism is a better and more effective way to promote and effect conservation.  Many people who oppose hunting honestly believe that photographing wildlife does more to preserve species than killing them does.  It makes sense, it's logical, it's false.

According to National Geographic the 18,500 hunters that annually travel to Africa to hunt big game animals bring in 200 million dollars a year.  That averages out to US$ 10,810 per hunter.  That is just what they are paying to hunt.  That is not the cost of flights and accommodations.  How many eco-tourists could or would pay ten thousand dollars for a photo tour?

But let's take a look closer to home.  If you enjoy seeing wildlife, and you live in the lower 48, you should thank a hunter.  There were 12.5 million hunters in the US in 2006.  That was a drop of 1.6 million over the preceding period of 15 years.  That means that less than five percent of the population was hunting.  But that five percent accounted for 75% of the funding for state wildlife agencies.  And that does not factor in Federal Duck Stamps which can be thanked for 5.2 million preserved acres (National Geographic, November 2007).  The Fish and Wildlife Service has a little blurb about this.

In the US we have lots of numbers being tracked.  One number that the US Fish and Wildlife Service tracks is how many people are "wildlife watching participants."  Wildlife watching participants are the people who are out enjoying the wildlife and taking pictures.  Those people number 71 million, and comprise 30% of the population.  Six times as many people are engaging in non-hunting wilderness activities, but they provide only a fraction of the revenue from their actions.  It is nice to imagine that hiking and bird-watching do more to protect species than the slaughter of innocent animals, but it is a pretty lie.

On a personal level, I do not understand the desire to hunt predators.  I have not been an active hunter in recent years, though I hope to change that in the relatively near future.  I have killed a number of animals, but for food or to put them out of their misery.  I do not like killing animals.  Every time I have to kill something it is a psychic pain, and for me that pain is managed by knowing that the animal will be used respectfully, or will no longer be suffering.  When I do hunt I am happy to let someone else do the shooting and I'll do the skinning and cleaning.  For me the killing of animals is not fun, and that is true for many people.  That is not true for many hunters, and obviously not for Kendall Jones.

On a deep level I find safari style big game hunts unseemly.

While I do not understand the desire to hunt predators, I am glad that there are people who do along with laws to control their behaviors.  I understand that most people from the Lower 48 have grown up in a setting where the wilderness is contained and their ancestors wiped out most of the animals that would kill them and eat them.  When apex predators are not a part of your life it can be hard to remember that they are in fact dangerous.  It is seductive to believe that nature is naturally balanced and without human interference life simply moves along with all animals at stable levels.  The science does not support this however, animal populations fluctuate. During times of plentiful food prey animal populations rise.  This is followed by predator population rises.  Predators hunt the prey until populations drop to a point where the predators start to stave and die off.

For an example of the effect of predators on prey populations we can look at Yellowstone.  In 1995 the elk population had risen to over 19,000.  That year wolves were reintroduced.  In 2012 there were 4,174.  In 2013 there were 3,915.  If we want to keep a healthy elk population and wolf population we are going to need to control the wolf population.

But back to Kendall and her African safaris.  Is there a measurable benefit to allowing hunters to kill endangered animals?  According to National Geographic there is.  In the same article I linked to earlier National Geographic claims that regulated hunts can be thanked for bringing the white rhino population from 50 to over 11,000 because the hunts gave ranch owners an incentive to repopulate their properties.  This is where we get to the meat of what hunting does for species.

When people just want to take pictures of majestic animals they are not likely to be willing to pay thousands of dollars to take one picture.  Africa is not a continent sized game preserve.  It is a continent with dozens of countries and more than 1.03 billion people on it.  Those are 1.03 billion people who need to eat and don't want to be killed by animals.  If there is no economic incentive to keeping dangerous animals around, how are they going to be protected.  The animals that we like so much (lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, hippos, elephants, etc) are threats to people who live with them.  A lion might be majestic, but the majesty of the lion might be tarnished in your eyes if it ate your children and livestock.  Why would you protect an animal that will only harm you?  If you could make a living off of the management of lions you would have an incentive to protect them.  Maybe you could then afford better housing and protection for your livestock.

Legal big game hunts are vital to the survival of endangered animals.  Maybe someday humanity will be evolved enough that we need no motivation beyond love of wilderness to create adequate protections for animals, but someday is not today.  Right now we still need incentives to live with violent and dangerous animals.

Still, I don't think that the vitriol aimed at Kendall Jones is based on rational thought about the welfare of species.  Kendall occupies a bizarre intersection of feminism and misogyny.  She is a stereotypically attractive young woman.  She has orange skin, lots of makeup, and she is thin; the American ideal.  She also has a bright smile that she flashes in her photos with dead animals.  You can find plenty of article claiming a feminist perspective that characterize her hunting as catering to misogynistic hunter goddess stereotypes.  You can also find plenty of articles that imply that her taking pleasure in the hunt is unwomanly and unseemly.

She also courts controversy.  She posts inflammatory statements.  She makes her hunts a political statement.  It should not be surprising that she has run afoul of a lot of feminists when she has positioned herself in opposition to many progressive values.  But I think it is a bit of hypocrisy to promote female equality and then excoriate a young woman for hunting.  But that is just my perspective.  I consider myself a feminist, but for me the goal of feminism is to make a world where my daughter can choose to live how she wants to live.  I do not want my daughter to feel forced to conform to a feminist ideal of how she should live her life any more than I want her forced to wear a burqua.  That said, I would be much more understanding if she wanted to be a vegetarian lesbian investment banker than if she wanted to wear a burqua...  But I like to think that I would try to give her space to make her choices (please Abby, no burquas).

Kendall Jones seems like a bit of a jerk to me.  I'm fine with her hunting, and helping conservation with her activities.  I'm fine with her pursuing atypical interests.  I'm even fine with her cynical courting of controversy.  But I do not like the conflation of fame and infamy.  But it is not Kendall's fault that being a jerk is just as good as having talent to achieve notoriety in our country.  She is not committing crimes, she is just riling people up.  And in our country riling people up is an effective way to get attention and support.  If you want Kendall Jones to go away, just shut up about her.