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Outrage Over Lion's Death Not Going To Deter Suburban Hunter

(CBS) -- A Will County man who's been to Africa nine times to hunt game talked to WBBM's Steve Miller about why he hunts.

Sixty-year-old Guy Gorney of Manhattan says he has 70 big game animals under his belt.

"I like pitting myself against these animals. And what greater trophy than an elephant?" he says.

"I really like hunting elephants. They're difficult to track down. They're incredibly dangerous," he says. "The first elephant I got, I walked over 120 miles tracking elephants before I actually caught up to him and found him."

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Gorney has done what he calls the "Big Five": elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo.

"When I killed that buffalo that had hurt somebody, the people that had benefited from the death of that animal cheered. Clapped," he recalls. "The 'why' is just the - I call it the adventure of it. Same reason Teddy Roosevelt did it."

Gorney says for him, one aspect of hunting is conservation.

"You can say, why'd you shoot a lion? I love zebra, so shooting a lion probably saves 70 zebra a year, give or take. There's all these kinds of balances in nature," he says.

Gorney's Facebook page shows him straddling one of the two lions he killed in Zimbabwe.

"I'd thought about taking it down and using [it]. You know, nobody's going to care about me with a deer, for example. But I really have a problem changing my behavior over people that are just over the top," he says

And he has been targeted most recently by someone who posted his address and phone number online.

"I have a hard time understanding, if you have a picture of somebody with a deer, nobody seems to care. But if it's an elephant, it's a big problem. If it's a lion - especially now - it's a huge problem," he says. "But to me, either way, I've stopped a beating heart."

Gorney says he abides by the law when he hunts and can't abide poachers or people who threaten other people.

"I don't see the logic of making a physical threat against somebody who's proficient with firearms and wouldn't hesitate to defend himself or his family," he says. "It's like, are you insane?"

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