The Cook Report - Making a Killing/Canned Hunting Safaris S15E01 (1997) 

This Cook Report was prompted by a tape given to the programme by a leading animal charity frustrated by the inability, or unwillingness, of conservation authorities all over Africa to stop a little-known practice called ‘canned hunting’. Here, corralled in a confined area and often tranquillised, defenceless big game is shot at close range by rich foreign trophy hunters. The tape was difficult to watch. The opening shot showed a lioness standing uncertainly beside a high, wire mesh fence. On the other side of the fence three small cubs were mewling and looking longingly at her. Suddenly, the camera recoiled at the sound of heavy-calibre rifle fire close by. We saw the lioness leap at least ten feet into the air, her back arching in pain. She hit the ground in a cloud of dust, writhing and clawing at the air for fifteen agonising seconds until she was shot once again - and finally lay still. Three men strolled into frame and bent to examine their prize. One lifted her huge head and struck a macho pose. We heard them laughing and congratulating each other in German on their hunting prowess. At a range of less than twenty yards from the back of a truck, they could hardly have missed. In a TV first, the Cook Report decided highlight this appalling practice. A phoney luxury concierge company called Jackson and Co. was set up in Marbella and emails were sent out to big game hunting outfits in South Africa who might offer clients canned lions. The response was immediate. Four hunting outfits had promised Jackson & Co’s mythical clients the chance to kill a lion in any circumstances they wanted. What had distinguished the company finally chosen from the others was the discovery that many of the lions it offered were actually being stolen from the Kruger National Park - the jewel in South Africa’s conservation crown. Two of the Cook Report team flew to meet the McDonalds who were secretly filmed explaining how they acquired much of their livestock. As she took a $9,000 deposit, Tracey McDonald explained how their men dug beneath the electrified security fences that surround the Kruger National Park and lured their prey through by dragging bait under the fence to the accompaniment of loud tape recordings of lions and hyenas feeding. “Before you know it, you’ve got yourself a Kruger lion. You dart it and keep it safe until your client arrives,” Her husband Sandy eagerly added that he already had a lion in mind for the mega-wealthy Mr Rogers - aka Roger Cook. “Don’t worry, make no mistake, this is a canned lion. I’ve drugged him too, so he won’t be going anywhere. Your client can get as close as he likes. He’ll be perfectly safe.” “He won’t think he’s being conned?” “We’ll make it look good. We’ll drive him round for a bit as if we’re hunting, but we know where the lion is. Mr Rogers won’t suspect a damned thing.” When Mr Rogers arrived, together with a professional cameraman ‘making a vanity video’, the mock hunt began. Eventually the lion was ‘discovered’ comatose under a tree in the middle of the reserve. McDonald instructed Cook to shoot it under the mane as previously demonstrated, but Cook refused, confronting him with the fact that this lion was drugged and defenceless - and that what he was suggesting was immoral and illegal. McDonald registered nothing. “Just shoot it below the mane,” he repeated. Cook found this rather worrying. The huge, heavily-armed man sitting next to him in the open topped Land Cruiser was plainly not very bright. After several tense minutes as the message gradually began to sink in and McDonald began to argue. Cook should get out of the wagon and shoot the lion on foot, he said. “No, we’re not going on foot,” Cook responded. “I’m paying for this. We’re not shooting that lion. Let’s get out of here.” After that, getting out of the reserve was not easy. The Cook crew was pursued to the gates which were barricaded against them until they handed over their tapes. Fortunately, they were able to palm off McDonald’s men with misleadingly labelled blanks - and then the police arrived, called in by the programme’s local fixer who had been waiting on the other side of the gate. Eventually, the crew was freed and the senior police officer told them in no uncertain terms that these angry men were a law unto themselves and that they were “lucky not to have been the victims of an unfortunate shooting accident”. On transmission, the effect of the canned hunting programme worldwide was incredible. There was a huge outcry and Nelson Mandela declared that it was time to change wildlife laws and to enforce them properly. Ninety professional hunters had their licences suspended, including Sandy McDonald. But unfortunately, much of what the programme helped achieve was subsequently reversed. Promises made by the South African government to end canned hunting were not kept by Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, and this bloody business actually grew. McDonald Hunting regained its licence and continued to arrange for the canned shooting of more than 1,000 lions a year. Growing demand created a business opportunity for those willing to supply McDonald and others like him. Some 120 outfits were soon factory-farming more than 5,000 lions a year (as many as 8,000 by 2016) as if they were grouse - which at least you can eat - just to be shot. So, in a follow-up programme, the Cook Report returned to the killing fields. On his farm near the tiny town of at Gravelotte, in Limpopo Province, leading breeder Piet Warren was entirely unapologetic: “It’s not supposed to be a sport - it’s a multi-million-pound business. Hunters are sitting on fat wallets which they want to share with me. They don’t want to go looking for a lion; they want to shoot it easy, off the back of a wagon.” He railed against any possibility of legal controls. They were, he said, total nonsense. “It’s not the government’s lion, it’s not your lion, it’s not the women’s liberation lion; it’s my bloody lion.” And the clear implication was that he’d do what he bloody well liked with it. However, following an impromptu Cook Report challenge to South Africa’s delegate at a CITES conference in 2007, the government had second thoughts about canned hunting. It was outlawed in 2009 under rules issued by the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Then, the influential Predator Breeders Association, with their considerable income under threat, took the minister all the way to the Supreme Court - where it was ruled that as lion breeders were farmers, not conservationists, the matter was beyond the minister’s jurisdiction and that the ban was unenforceable. The lions lost on a technicality - and the breeding for shooting programme accelerated further, often assisted by unwitting European or American volunteers who had paid for the privilege of helping to raise lion clubs they’d been led to believe were to be released into the wild. This was an industry founded on falsehoods and cruelty and fuelled by money. It was certainly not a sport and it should have been banned long ago. In 2021, after ca campaign lasting nearly two decades, it finally was.

Roger Cook has a lot of courage. Total respect to him

Cook is a legend…..it’s a wonder he’s still alive!

This makes me sick more than any other of Roger Cooks videos. 🤬

He's brave confronting men with guns in the middle of nowhere in South Africa

Love you Roger c 🇬🇧💯 Stoke city

Roger you legend

Appalling Cruelty they should drug the hunters & shoot them at close range............ I watched the episode on WWF before this. Very enlightening. Welldone Roger Cook & all your Team. Some really great reporting & I would like to say how sorry I am that your work was destroyed by fire in a secure facility ?? With no sprinkler system is spurious.

And still it goes on.

I'd love to go canned hunting. I'd surprise the owner of the lion with a shot to the face! Now that is what I call a trophy!

This was Shocking 27 Years ago & It's Still Shocking Now, At Least Canned Hunting is now Banned!

Why do they want to do that … i really don’t understand…. If they want a big kill .: why don’t they go against someone or something that can fight back :.

I'm lost for words!

RC had balls of a lion 💪

Absolutely barbaric.

This is sad these people deserve no mercy like they show no mercy to these animals.

Sadly extinction will be the only saviour of these defenseless animals...

So basically they sell the animals life …

Tim Wells. Slock master

Cooks had more money on his head then just about anyone out there and he's still alive

Interesting documentary similar to Louis Theroux

He's real appalled this is going on..... but if u pay enough then no doubt u still can do it in South Africa where money talks

Humans, The most dangerous animal on Earth. Very sad.

I got a 💡 why not use a lion and cage hunt the owner's and customers of these places

White hunter Black heart