Luso-British reveals the world's biggest "trophy hunters"

George Harms is one of the very few hunters in the world to have received the Safari Club’s “World Hunting and Conservation Award”. To achieve this, over the last seven decades he had to kill at least 802 animals, a list that includes bears, deer, sheep, but also the so-called African “Big Five”: lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and buffalo. Apart from Harms, the institution’s most prestigious award has been given to only 70 other hunters. Eduardo Gonçalves researched this exclusive group of world hunters and came up with the top 25 greatest hunters. Speaking to Observador, the activist defines them as “drug addicts: once they pick something up, they can never put it down. They become completely addicted”.

“Human beings are hunters,” repeat those who enjoy the activity, making a point of mentioning that the practice is in our origins as a species. Whether out of necessity or for recreational purposes, the truth is that the activity has been declining globally, with more restrictions being imposed by local governments and fewer licenses being issued each year. Although there is no longer as much need as there was a few thousand years ago, the hunting industry has begun to stand out in high-profile cases of sport hunting, such as the death of Cecil, the famous lion killed by an American dentist in Zimbabwe in 2015 .

This very case was one of the main reasons that justified the creation of the “Ban Trophy Hunting” movement. The campaign began in the United Kingdom, three years after the Cecil episode, as a result of the initiative of a former Portuguese-British journalist and conservationist. Over the last eight years, Eduardo Gonçalves has made this his personal mission: to use his extensive network of contacts to reach members of the British Parliament, with the aim of completely banning this practice.

Over the years, he has gathered support from thousands and thousands of people, including MPs from (almost) every party represented in the British Parliament, and public figures such as Ricky Gervais, Judi Dench and Alex Ferguson. In order to gather more and more evidence to justify the advancement of a bill to end trophy hunting, Eduardo Gonçalves infiltrated the networks of Safari Club International (SCI) — the largest organization of trophy hunters in the world — to expose the industry and bring ethical issues surrounding the issue to the public debate.

Precisely on the 10th anniversary of Cecil's death, the Portuguese-British researcher launched a book in which he revealed a list of the 25 most active trophy hunters in the SCI. In the vast majority of cases, explains Eduardo Gonçalves, the tradition is family-based, starting as a child to hunt birds or “small game” and gradually evolving to other types of weapons and larger animals.

In Portugal, the species that constitute “big game” are wild boar, deer, fallow deer, mouflon and roe deer. However, it was not in these destinations that the “big” hunters built up their large collections of stuffed animals. In southern Africa, whether in Mozambique, Zimbabwe or South Africa, the list of species that can be hunted is not so restricted, and there is relative freedom over what can and cannot be hunted. In Mozambique, for example, the only prohibited hunting is rhinoceros, everything else is free of restrictions.

The aim of the Safari Club International, which has “chapters” (or representations) in several countries around the world, is to “defend, preserve and protect the rights of all hunters”. At the same time, one of the main claims of these groups of sport hunters is that their activity, despite the criticisms that are made, is fundamental for the conservation of wildlife around the world and for the financial survival of certain communities in the most remote parts of the African continent.

The institution promotes this aspect of sport hunting by awarding more than 40 prizes every year, which encourage the accumulation of trophies of different species from all corners of the world, encouraging thousands of members to go on excursions that cost thousands of euros to hunt all types of animals. For reference, a three-day visit to the interior of Portugal to hunt deer or wild boar costs around two thousand euros on the popular BookYourHunt platform. In other parts of the world, to hunt rarer or larger animals, such as an elephant or a buffalo, visits can reach hundreds of thousands.

There are essentially four categories of SCI awards: “ Continental ”, “ Inner Circle ”, “ Milestone ” and “ Cumulative ”. The first aims to encourage hunters to travel across different continents, requiring 15 African species, 12 European and North American species, eight each from Asia, South America and the South Pacific. Each of these objectives per continent constitutes a prize. In the “ Milestone ” class, the principle is the same, but the distinction is made based on the species and location, not just the continent.

To obtain the “ Inner Circle ” distinction, the criteria are broader. Always in the case of registering a specific amount of different species from a given place on the planet, this category separates hunters into five different levels, from copper (the lowest) to diamond (the most prestigious). In the cases identified by Eduardo Gonçalves in his book “ 20 ​​elephants in 75 minutes ”, hunters hold several awards in the diamond category, but also all the other awards available, including the most exclusive in the “ Cumulative ” section.

[The police are called to a house after a noise complaint. When they arrive, the officers find a wild birthday party. But the birthday boy, José Valbom, has disappeared. “O Zé faz 25” is Observador’s first fiction podcast , co-produced by Coyote Vadio and featuring the voices of Tiago Teotónio Pereira, Sara Matos, Madalena Almeida, Cristovão Campos, Vicente Wallenstein, Beatriz Godinho, José Raposo and Carla Maciel. You can listen to the 7th episode on Observador’s website , on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify and on Youtube Music . And the first episode here , the second here , the third here , the fourth here , the fifth here and the sixth here ]

Of these, which depend on the number of awards won throughout the year, the most important is the “World Conservation and Hunting Award”, which has been awarded to less than 70 hunters in the club's more than 50-year history.

By definition, this type of hunting is the hunting of wild animals for sporting purposes — not for food — where a taxidermy process is usually carried out on a part of the body of the dead species, to be displayed in a collection or in a location as a trophy. However, its practice ends up being associated with high costs, both in terms of travel, equipment, and the process of exporting the collected trophy. Thus, the practice of trophy hunting is associated with multimillionaires from the most diverse professions, including magnates and doctors.

With Eduardo Gonçalves' research, of the 17 North Americans, three Russians, two Spaniards, two Mexicans and one Canadian who make up the top 25, we get to know some of the faces that star in trophy hunting on a global scale.

George Harms began hunting at the age of eight. What began with rabbits and birds in rural New Jersey quickly proved insufficient to feed a hunger for bigger game that grew over the decades. In more than 100 trips spread across six continents, the American is now the leader of all SCI tables, the holder of multiple world records and also one of the targets of Eduardo Gonçalves' investigation.

“Harms, who now lives in the largely rural area of ​​Farmingdale [New Jersey], founded George Harms Construction in the 1960s. The company has an annual turnover of about $100 million [€84.9 million] in construction projects. He has now stepped away from the day-to-day management of the company, but remains chairman of the board,” writes the Portuguese-British researcher in his recently published book “ 20 ​​elephants in 75 minutes ”.

According to the calculations of the Portuguese-British researcher, George Harms was responsible for the death of more than 800 animals. Thus, the construction magnate is one of the members of the exclusive club of less than 70 international hunters who have received the Safari Club's “World Conservation and Hunting Award”, the institution's most prestigious award. In more than 70 years of activity in this sector, Harms has received more awards than any other hunter registered with the club.

Of the more than forty available, Eduardo Gonçalves tells Observador that the American has already won “virtually” all the awards twice — “the first time using a shotgun, and again with a bow and arrow”. To reach the diamond level of the “ Inner Circle ”, a hunter has to kill a certain number of animals, all of different species. For example, to receive the “ Hunting Achievement Award ”, George Harms had to hunt 125 different species. In this program, there are awards dedicated to each continent, requiring 80 animals for Africa, 16 in Europe, 15 in Asia, 32 in North America and 11 in South America.

All of these awards (and dozens more) have George Harms' name immortalized. In addition to having a list of awards to show the results of the hundreds of excursions he has participated in, the American has “an extraordinary number” of entries in the Safari Club International book of records. This archive exists to record the “largest animals” hunted by the institution's members, with hundreds of “official meters” spread across “almost” every country in the world — including at least eight in Portugal. Harms has 242 entries in the book, with eight records and 29 in different “top 10”.