An American millionaire big-game hunter, Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner from Lodi, California, has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon, a central African country. The incident occurred last Friday while Dosio was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the Lope-Okanda rainforest. He and his guide unexpectedly encountered five female elephants accompanied by a calf, leading to the fatal event.

Safari operator Collect Africa confirmed the death of its client, Ernie Dosio, and reported that the professional hunter guiding Dosio sustained serious injuries during the encounter. Officials from the US embassy in Gabon are now coordinating the return of Dosio's remains to California. Dosio was also the owner of Pacific AgriLands Inc, a company that manages 12,000 acres of vineyard land in Modesto and provides services and equipment financing to wine producers.

Dosio had built an extensive collection of hunting trophies over the years, including animals such as elephants and lions, and was reportedly a familiar name within the Sacramento Safari Club. A retired hunter who knew Dosio shared that he had been hunting since he could hold a rifle and possessed many trophies from Africa and the US. This source, based in Cape Town, described the incident as the elephants being 'surprised' by Dosio and his guide's presence. Despite the controversy surrounding big-game hunting, it was noted that all of Ernie's hunts were strictly licensed, above board, and registered as conservation efforts aimed at culling animal numbers.

Gabon's forests are home to approximately 95,000 forest elephants, representing most of the species' global population, which are considered highly endangered. The international trophy hunting industry is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, with clients claiming the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals annually across the world. Legal hunting tours in Africa are particularly popular among some wealthy Americans, including figures like Donald Trump Jr., who was previously pictured with a severed elephant's tail.

The financial scale of the trophy hunting industry is significant, with estimates for South Africa alone ranging from $100 million in 2005 to $68 million in 2012 and $120 million in 2015, according to the EMS Foundation. The practice has faced considerable scrutiny; for instance, during his first presidential term, Donald Trump created a controversial wildlife advisory board. This board, intended to help rewrite federal rules for importing African elephant, lion, and rhinoceros trophies, was disbanded in 2020 following lawsuits alleging it was an illegal, biased panel stacked with trophy hunters rather than conservationists, primarily working to promote the economic benefits of big game hunting. The incident in Gabon follows another recent case last year, where an American game hunter was killed by a buffalo he was stalking during an expedition in South Africa.