Ludlow game hunter Diggory Hadoke hits back after TV row with Piers Morgan

The big-game hunter from Ludlow divided opinion last week when he found himself in a ferocious argument with Piers Morgan about the sport.

"I don't think he had done his research, which is a shame," says Mr Hadoke, who deals in vintage guns.

Despite having been berated on social media – where he appears to have achieved the impossible by persuading people to side with Morgan – Mr Hadoke is unrepentant in his defence of the sport.

"Nothing that is wild in Africa ends up having a nice pleasant death in front of the television with a cup of tea," he says.

"When I was on television they showed a picture of me with an old buffalo I shot in Tanzania," he says.

"I had to get within 10 yards to shoot it, carefully locating myself downwind so it would not be able to pick up my scent.

"It wasn't in great health, it was just going to lose weight until it got eaten by a lion.

"You could argue that by hunting it, you are saving it from a very unpleasant death."

The former English teacher began hunting when he was just eight years old.

"I grew up in a part of Shropshire where you get an air rifle when you are eight, and you get a shotgun when you are 12 and you learn to use them responsibly," he says.

"My first taste of trophy hunting and African hunting was when I was asked to go along to Botswana on an elephant hunt in 2007.

"It was a three-week camp, and my role was shooting antelope to provide the camp with meat.

"Because if you don't shoot something, by the third week you will be hungry.

"The camp I was with was shooting an old bull elephant.

"I went along there to write an extended article for Double Gun, a magazine in America, which ended up at 7,000 words."

Mr Hadoke, who is 48, says those who take part in hunting activities are merely following man's ancient instincts, which have been around for millennia.

"You either get hunting or you don't," he says.

"You explain to me how how dressing up in Lycra and riding a bike around the potholes in the roads of Shropshire is something enjoyable as a sport, and in the same way it is very difficult explaining hunting to somebody who doesn't get it.

"You are out of your comfortable conditions, it's hot, it's dangerous and it's not in the pretty areas of Africa where the tourists go to take pictures of the giraffes fluttering their eyelashes.

"The place is full of black mambas and puff adders. You are getting bitten by flies all the time.

"This is something people have done for millennia. Hunting runs through every culture since human beings existed, it's in our DNA.

"You can come to harm, it's testing yourself."

He says people also underestimate the importance of hunting to the local economy, saying that the Duke of Cambridge made a brave and valid point when he said that controlled, ethical trophy hunting provided valuable funds for essential nature conservation work.

Mr Hadoke clashed with former tabloid editor Morgan defending the actions of Dr Walter Palmer, the American dentist who became a hate figure around the world after killing Cecil the lion while on safari in Zimbabwe.

"Just because someone has given a lion a name doesn't make it any more special," he says.

"The furore that followed has scared off a lot of American hunters. They don't want to run the risk of being portrayed like Dr Palmer was.

"Because of that, that part of Zimbabwe had a surplus of lions of 200, and the government had to go round and shoot them all.

"Dr Palmer paid 50,000 US dollars to kill that lion, so if you multiply that by the 200 lions that have been shot by the government that's 10 million dollars they would have had for nature conservation.

"A lion doesn't care whether it has been shot by the bullet of an American dentist who has paid 50,000 dollars or that of a government sniper."

He points out that if people were not willing to pay serious money to take part in big game shoots, many impoverished countries would suffer financially.

"In areas of Botswana where lion hunting used to take place, there was money.

"A small village on the edge of the Okavango Delta would get 600,000 US dollars for the taking of 120 animals, not all lions, various animals, in one year.

"That paid for 20 standpipes, toilets for people who don't have toilets.

"That money comes directly from hunting revenue and in those areas, lion numbers are stable."

He says the alternative would be to attract more nature photographers to visit Africa but this would do far more damage to the environment.

"Firstly, you would need to have a lot of photography tourists to bring in anything like the money that hunting will bring in," he says.

"But also, photography tourists can be far more demanding on the environment.

"They expect a lot more in terms of creature comforts and want plush hotels and restaurants.

"That means they have to have more staff, which also has an effect."

Mr Hadoke says people in Africa struggle to understand Europe's attitude to animal rights, pointing out that if the animals were not killed by game hunters they would have to be killed by farmers or government officials.

"Africans don't like wild animals roaming around," he says.

"If all you have got is a little bit of land where you are trying to farm some maize, you don't want an elephant to come along and demolish it. You don't want a pride of lions around when your kids are walking for the school bus.

"At the time of the story with Cecil the lion, a Zimbabwean minister commented 'you seem to care more about an African lion than you care about Africans'."

MP says there is a reason for trophy hunting

During his time as environment secretary, North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson led an international campaign against the illegal poaching of endangered animals such as elephants and rhinos.

But he says while some species need protecting, there are others which have to be controlled, and where that is the case there is no reason to ban trophy hunting.

"I think some products such as ivory and rhino horn, there has to be a complete ban, as there will never be enough there to fulfil demand," he says.

"In certain parts of Africa we have to control wildlife, and you have to manage their numbers. It might be appropriate in certain parts of the world to have managed hunting, it really depends on the nature of the area."

Mr Paterson, who in 2013 headed an international forum on the illegal trade of wildlife, says some progress has been made over the past three years, but the illegal trade has still not gone away.

"To be fair, the Chinese have tightened up their act with regard to things like shark's-fin soup, but there is still work to be done when it comes to rhino horn and ivory.

"We lose a rhino every 11 hours, and an elephant every 16 minutes, and if we carry on at that rate there will soon be none left," he says.

Last year, following a visit to South Africa, Mr Paterson called for British aid to be withdrawn from countries which did not co-operate in stamping out the ivory trade.

During the visit, Mr Paterson was shown the full horror of the trade, with the carcases of illegally hunted rhinos left lying around with their horns cut off.

Powdered rhino horn continues to be in big demand in the Far East for its purported "medicinal qualities", where people believe it can cure a fever or hangover.

"Rhino horn has the same medicinal value as my big toenail," says Mr Paterson.

"Despite this, the seemingly insatiable appetite for rhino horn means that it is now fetching as much as £40,000 per kg.

"It is shocking that we are losing a rhino to poachers every 11 hours. This is reversing all of the good conservation work that saw white rhino numbers increase by around 9.5 per cent a year and black rhinos by six per cent between the early 1990s and the end of 2007.

"We need to work on reducing demand for ivory and rhino horn, making it socially unacceptable for anybody to deal in these commodities," he says.

"Future generations will never forgive us if we allow these remarkable animals who have been on the planet for 30 million years to be driven to extinction within one generation."