Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 12

= January 12 =

Is "professional hunter" an umbrella term for those, whose occupation is hunting, e.g. "gamekeepers"?
Yes, I'd say, but as a non-native English speaker I've trouble answering it with certainty. Does the word "professional" imply "occupation" in this context? Or is it rather "skill"? Would a wiki-arcticle under the title "Professional hunter" mentioning scottish gamekeepers, commercial kangaroo shooters in Australia and german "Berufsjäger" (literally: "occupation-hunter" meaning occupational hunter) add up? It's a niche topic. Technically the "professional hunters" in southern Africa do mostly the same things as "gamekeepers" or "Berufsjäger": working for large landowners, guiding their hunting guests/clients, looking after the game, keeping a wary eye on poachers, etc. - they just have less lousy weather and work with rhinos and leopards, instead of stags and pheasents. --Tilon3 (talk) 19:32, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Please don't invent topics that no one actually talks about in the real world, just because you can think of a name for them. A Wikipedia article should generally be about some particular thing, and some particular thing that is actually talked about by that fixed name (rather than natural-language description) in the real world.
 * In this case, if there are any professional hunters, then I think they must be people who get paid for hunting, not for watching after game. I don't think there's any reason to have a single article on both professional hunters, if there is any such thing, and gamekeepers, who perform quite a different function. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, "professional hunters" are a topic, or did you miss the global media outrage regarding "Cecil the Lion" by an American dentist and a Zimbabwean professional hunter? There's even an article named "White hunter", which specifically adresses this literary term largely applied to historical professional hunters with European or North American backgrounds. In other words: That an article on the "professional hunters"/"professional hunting" in Southern Africa would pass the notability requirements set by WP:NOTE is imho all but certain, when you take into account the 250 search hits from bbc.co.uk and nytimes.com alone. I'm just not quite sure, if "professional hunter" refers to "people who get paid for hunting" (your definition sounds a lot less clumsy than mine) in general. And yes, they do in fact hunt respectively track down the animals, but since their clients pay thousands of USD to shoot a trophy, it would be quite damaging for the business if they themselves made the decisive shot, wouldn't it? Mayby take a look at this National Geographic piece. Greetings --Tilon3 (talk) 22:00, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's hard for me to think of a "professional hunter" as being anyone except someone who gets paid to kill wild animals and recover their bodies to be used for some purpose (food, pelt, trophy, etc). Someone who takes the actual hunters along and helps them find game, I would call a "guide" rather than a hunter.  --Trovatore (talk) 22:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Gamekeepers and guides would not fall under my understanding of "professional hunter", either. Trovatore's explanation exactly fits my conception. --Khajidha (talk) 16:47, 13 January 2019 (UTC)