Local safari hunter Georges D'Aoust defends his sport, blasts dentist who killed Cecil
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Ron Corbett, Ottawa Sun First posted: Friday, August 14, 2015 06:48 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, August 15, 2015 12:06 AM EDT
Georges D’Aoust takes offence when I ask him the question, even though he knew it was coming, even though he has been asked the same question hundreds of time before, and so has had some practice.
“I do not hunt for a trophy,” he says. “That would be wrong, that would be stupid, if that was all it was. Why do I hunt? It is the chase. It is being outdoors. It is many things.”
He pauses for a minute, then adds: “And do not insult me by saying that dentist was a trophy hunter. He was not. My club (Safari Club International) kicked him out, the day after we learned the story.”
D’Aoust, as you have likely guessed, is a hunter. At the best of times, hunters can be given a rough ride in a modern society that not only fails to comprehend the activity most days, but is also appalled by it on any day.
Now try being a big-game hunter. Which D’Aoust has proudly been for more than 50 years. You can perhaps understand his defensiveness.
D’Aoust has more than 300 stuffed and mounted animals in the living room of his home, just outside Manotick.
Yes, the living room. A 5,000-square-foot living room, mind you, but still the living room, the room you walk into as soon as you enter his home.
A stuffed giraffe is the first thing you see. After that elephants, all sorts of pigs, a bear, and yes, there are some lions.
I have contacted D’Aoust because of a lion hunt in Zimbabwe that has turned a Minnesota dentist into one of the most reviled men in America this summer.
The dentist goes by the innocuous name Walter Palmer and it is important to remember he is not a terrorist, not a pedophile, not a ponzi-scheme defrauder.
He is a hunter.
According to D’Aoust not a very good one, but still, his crime was killing a lion on a safari hunt in Zimbabwe.
A much beloved lion, as it turned out, one that went by the name of Cecil, lived in a protected national wildlife park, and was even part of a scientific study.
Having just come back from the United States I can tell you that Palmer is in hiding right now. His Florida home has been vandalized. Many are calling for his arrest. Many others are demanding he receive the same fate as Cecil.
And while I was watching all this (the Minnesota dentist and Donald Trump seem to be the only news in the U.S. right now), I thought of George D’Aoust. Wondered what he might think of the story.
I first met D’Aoust a few years back, and when I walked into his living room I had trouble believing there could be such a place in Ottawa.
The next thing I had trouble believing was that the guy who owned this 5,000-square-foot “trophy room” was an easy man to like.
I found D’Aoust to be articulate and humourous — and his life story was something to admire. He started out as a general contractor in Ottawa, and when his business went south he went North.
D’Aoust made a fortune in Nunavut, building some of the first government buildings and apartments in the territory. He is a self-made man, with not an ounce of pretense or smarm.
He also has an obvious love of the outdoors. He loves fishing as well as hunting, had stories to tell about Algonquin Park that had me in stitches, other stories about hiking for days, with little to sustain him but water and whatever he could forage.
So I contacted him when I came home from the States to ask what he thought of the Minnesota dentist.
“Well, he is not a hunter,” D’Aoust said with disdain. “Using bait, it’s like hunting within a fence. You should be ashamed. And I know that the bait was put too close to the Park. He can deny it all he wants, but I have hunted there myself. I would know what was happening. He would know.”
D’Aoust thinks everything that is happening to Palmer is likely deserved. He also thinks it is a shame it has happened again. Someone disgracing the sport of hunting.
“The people opposed to hunting are having a field day,” he says. “The proper message never gets out. The Safari Club has done more to re-introduce animals around the world, is more of a conservation club, than most of your environmental groups.”
Safari man Georges D'Aoust shown at his home which is full of trophies after his more than 40 years of safari hunting. Ottawa Sun file photo
Local safari hunter Georges D'Aoust defends his sport, blasts dentist who killed
