Hotseat: Doug Stromberg

Last month, a Minnesota dentist named Walter Palmer became infamous for killing a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe.

The king of the jungle often winds up in the cross hairs of high-paying hunters. In the past five years, according to federal records, Americans brought home more than 200 dead lions.

Doug Stromberg, 67, one of the most prolific big-game hunters in the Northwest, is among the few Oregonians who knows what it feels like to shoot a lion. Stromberg says he's shot 300 species of animals. Among his most notable kills: hippos, leopards—and two lions, the last in 2007.

Stromberg is no defender of Palmer, but he says critics fail to understand that the dollars Western hunters bring to impoverished countries provide a vital alternative to native poaching.

"Without hunting, animals wouldn't exist," Stromberg says.

Stromberg, who owns a warehouse supply company in Donald, Ore., says he's a conservationist, and he touts hunting's life-affirming qualities. He once sponsored a 7-year-old leukemia patient who wished to kill a sheep.

Stromberg says he follows strict guidelines: He avoids shooting female animals, and he would never shoot a giraffe or gorilla ("even if it were legal"). He focuses on the biggest, oldest males, a practice called
trophy hunting.

WW talked with Stromberg in a conference room at his offices, where elk, buffalo and African longhorn heads are mounted on the walls.

WW: Could you tell us about the last lion you killed?

Doug Stromberg: We had looked for this particular lion for seven or eight days. We finally got a call saying, "We've seen lion tracks, and we think it's him." So we got there and the tracker was sitting there pointing. This thing was close, in a full, crouched attack position at 22 yards in the grass.

What were you thinking before pulling the trigger?

What I do generally: Once I spot the animal and I know that it's one I'm going to take, I look away for a split second and I just go, "It's show time. Don't mess it up." It isn't like, "Oh, this is what I dreamed of," and I get all nervous. There's no time to be excited. When I hunt dangerous game, I slow down as far as I possibly can. The first shot was a killing shot. Then he whirled around and started to run. I hit him right in the back of the head. Boom—it was over.

What did you feel when you saw him drop?

You feel relief that you did what you should do, and elation that you got a fine trophy. It's kind of like hitting one out of the park, or winning the Super Bowl.

You were with a professional hunter and a team of trackers. Did that lion have a fair chance?

Of course it did. It took me seven or eight days to find him. A person who does their homework and works hard at something, usually it looks easy to the outside world. I do my homework.

What's the closest you've come to an animal killing you?

Probably a Zambezi river crocodile, about 12 feet long. When I shot him, I didn't know I hadn't hit him perfectly. I had to go bring him to the truck with some trackers. So I tied a rope around him, and I started walking upriver with him. The oxygen started going into him, and he came back alive. He whipped his tail and almost got me in the back of the leg. And then he pulled around with his mouth, and all the trackers left because they thought this was really a bad deal. So I was sitting there roped to this croc, and the hunting guide finally gave me a pistol. I got him, so he was finished.

Why do you hunt?

I hunt because it's in my DNA. I trophy hunt because I want to pit my wits against
the animal on his terms, in his territory. I get a calming effect from hunting. I think it's part of the cycle of life—or it used to be. Dinner used to start with a straight shot, not going to get a Big Mac.

Why do you think people criticize sport hunting?

Hunting has almost been bred out of most Americans. The kids are not taught. Most of the colleges have liberal professors, not that that's bad or good. But they've never hunted before. They don't really understand the logic of it.

If you give something value, you have a shot at saving it, if you can get the indigenous people to go along with it. It costs a certain amount to hunt animals, and usually a decent camp will have 40 or 50 native employees.

What do you think of the dentist who killed Cecil?

If I saw a lion like that, I'd have to question the situation. First off, he was 13. Lions don't last that long in the wild. They do if they're in a park, like he was. If they baited him out of the park, throw the book at them.

If you could go back to Africa and shoot another lion, would you?

Probably not. I've already shot two, and that's enough. Same thing with elephants. I told myself I'd shoot an elephant, a bull elephant, once, and I did. Would I go kill lion after lion after lion because I get a big charge out of it? No, that's the furthest thing from what I do. 

WWeek 2015