Animals: Lions in Missouri

Southeast Missouri has many wild acres, but no one therein has ever encountered a lion. To Denver M. Wright, big game hunter, member of the St. Louis school board and onetime police commissioner of the suburb of Brentwood, this suggested something. Last week from a stranded circus he bought two lionesses. One night this week he intended to release them on a 26,000-acre forest near the Tennessee border. Next morning with two airedales and six hounds he expected to hunt the lionesses to their death. Said he: ”You can’t hunt big game in Missouri, so I decided to supply my own quarry. Just sort of bringing Africa to the United States.”

To keep Africa out of the U. S. was the intention of Sheriff Jesse Jackson of Mississippi County, site of Hunter Weight’s proposed lion hunt. Three families living in the 26,000-acre forest were indifferent.

Newshawks asked Hunter Wright if his lionesses were real. “Well,” said he, “they look like lions, and they roar like lions, and they eat like lions. I guess they’re just lions.”