One of Britain’s top trophy hunters has boasted how his bloodthirsty hobby is like “mainlining on heroin”.
Paul Roberts features on a list of more than 500 of the world's most notorious hunters – seven of them British – released tomorrow in connection with a new book on the fifth anniversary of the killing of Cecil the lion by American dentist Walter Palmer.
In a video for gun fanatics Roberts told fellow hunter Diggory Hadoke that killing animals like is being “hooked” on a drug.
“You don’t come off it very easily,” brags Roberts, 78, who owns J Roberts and Sons Gunmakers in West Sussex.
He gives details of his 33 African hunting trips, including one when he repeatedly shot a leopard: “It took two loads of buckshot, 3-inch magnum buckshot, a slug from a 12 bore and two .470s to stop it!”
He also told how he hunted a female elephant classed as a “problem” by villagers – but had “no idea” if he killed the right one.
He said: “Our guide said we just look for an elephant who fits the description because the people will be content if something is being done.”
Roberts has hunted since the 60s and his vile trophies include a lion rug, antelope horns, elephant tusks and buffaloes.
The new book Killing Game: The Extinction Industry, says 6,000 lions have been killed by hunters since Cecil in 2015.
There are estimated to just be 20,000 left and US government officials believe they could be extinct in the wild by 2050.
Eduardo Goncalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting and the book’s author, called Roberts “a walking advert for why trophy hunting must be banned”, adding: “When is Boris Johnson going to act?”
The Mirror is campaigning to stop the importation of animal parts and trophies into the UK.
Mr Hadoke replied to an email sent to Roberts, asking for comment. He said: “Hunting dangerous animals is an excit-ing, honourable sport with long traditions, traceable throughout every human civilisation.”
