As we all know from the Cecil the lion debacle from last year, big game hunting is big business in Africa and nowhere more than South Africa is this true. Unfortunately, the depths that people go to in order to make a profit is even lower than you might think.

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This is a story all about the phenomenon of the canned hunt over in South Africa. This involves lions that are bred in captivity for the sole reason of being hunted. They are then released into the wild in a drugged up state and hunted down by anyone who can afford to pay for the privilege.

As the lion has spent its whole life in captivity and is drugged, it’s incredibly confused in this state and so makes for an easy target. Despite this, the hunters still shoot it from a safe distance in a vehicle – which is also illegal in South Africa.

There are at least 60 of these canned hunt farms operating in South Africa, and so far all efforts to shut them down have been met with resistance. Cameraman Derek Roberts was hired to edit out the parts of the hunt that looked like it was on a vehicle so it looked way more badass to everyone watching, but couldn’t really deal with it on his conscience so decided to tell everyone what was really going on in the below interview:

Wow. Fair play to Roberts for coming out and saying all this stuff, as I’m sure it’s going to ruffle a few feathers. But I had absolutely no idea that stuff like that went on so it’s definitely served its purpose and hopefully by posting this, the awareness that this awful practice is occurring on a daily basis down in South Africa will increase again.

Something really should be done about this because it’s really not cool to raise lions just to hunt them down and kill them, not even really giving them a chance to survive. It would be way better if lions were raised like these ones, who are so nice they just love cuddling this guy. More of those please.