Louis Leakey Quotes

A man who risks his life in shooting big game in order to secure good specimens for natural history collections, or to rid a district of a man-eater or other dangerous neighbor, is a sportsman in the true sense.

Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: 'Kill a cat and save a bird?'

I am used to wrangling crocodiles.

I was learning to track rhinoceroses in Africa and tracked right up on an animal that really I thought was going to kill me.

The Mexican gray wolves are actually responsible for the spark of legendary environmentalists Aldo Leopold and Ernest Seton. In both cases, the men found their lives and souls forever changed after they killed Mexican gray wolves.

Predators make it much more difficult to find consensus. It's a lot easier to agree about birds and plants than about animals that endanger people and livestock.

Wolfhounds helped kill off the wolves in Ireland.

I shot my first lion at the age of 14 when a pride threatened my father's livestock while he was away on holiday.

Go to where the ducks are. Forget the duck calls. If you go where the ducks are coming, you're going to shoot more ducks.

A duck tastes the same whether they're shot sitting or flying.

A clear cold morning with high wind: we caught in a trap a large gray wolf, and last night obtained in the same way a fox who had for some time infested the neighbourhood of the fort.

We only call at ducks when their rear ends are towards us. If I'm looking at you and you call my name, then I know where the sound came from. But if you had your back to me and I holler and you turn around, you would assume somebody hollered. You want your decoys to represent the sound that you're making.

Hippos kill more people in Africa annually than any other wild animal.

You don't go hunting for a deer and shoot 50 rounds.

Game-keepers on grouse moors control common predators such as foxes and crows and this gives wading birds a much greater chance of breeding successfully.

It pays to be in the best shape possible when you're wrangling the largest reptiles on Earth!

This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing

I grew up around hunters. I love guns, bows, arrows, compasses and binoculars. I don't do any of that stuff, I just like the stuff. I shot one animal, in my life, and I didn't like it. If I had to skin an animal to eat it, I'd probably eat vegetables.

But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe.

When the snakes out in that field begin to realize that if one of their members get out of line, it's going to be detrimental to all of them, they'll keep that, perhaps they'll then take the necessary steps to keep their fellow snakes away from my chickens or away from my children if the responsibility is placed upon them.

Three million alligators were killed in Florida between 1880 and 1900. Goody!

We use our tax dollars to pay some bureaucrat to kill a mountain lion, dig a hole and bury this precious beast. No one gets to eat it, nobody gets to buy licenses, fees and taxes themselves. And that's only after a mountain lion has killed somebody! Oh my God! And the Osbournes are still No. 1!

If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

Statistically there's only one crocodile-related human fatality per year in the whole of Australia.