Nobody in Columbia is singing “I want a Hippopotumus for Christmas.” At least, no one in the government. They have a three-ton problem there, actually a bunch of them, and they want rid of them. And they’re finding some properly motivated folks to solve it for them with some applied ballistics.
For all of you really big game hunters: what caliber do you bring for the job of population control of a brace of ornery hippos? Obviously, you don’t show up with a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun or a pocket .25 auto. Your grand-dad’s handy-dandy M1 Carbine’s probably out as well. That’s how you turn a chill river hippo into a very motivated, very angry river hippo. Pissing off a hippo is like poking a grizzly with a pool noodle—you’ll get a reaction, just not the one you want.
In fact, your go-to home defense shotgun probably doesn’t have the horsepower to stop an angry three-ton river horse. Sure, a slug or two might kill a hippo, but you’ll be dead and bloated before Mr. Hippo dies in a week or two. Yeah, you want something that will result in a dead animal, not something to turn your hunting trip into a defensive gun use against an angry three-ton animal.
The hippos in question are descendants of Pablo Escobar’s herd from when he was alive and well. No doubt he had a flair for the exotic and the dramatic, but boring usually means you live longer. And that goes for hunting the progeny of the animals he brought in from Texas when they were small and “cute.”
Those cute animals grew up and locals nicknaked them “cocaine hippos” because, well, they were Escobar’s. The invasive animals loved the area: no predators, warm Colombian rivers, endless greenery, and zero rent. Today their descendants number nearly 200 and they’re breeding like (very large, very powerful) rabbits. Colombia just announced plans to euthanize at least 80 of them, because Escobar’s leftovers can’t keep eating the ecosystem forever.
The good news for those culling the critters? These aren’t your typically surly African cousins that flip boats for fun and rack up more human kills than lions. The Colombian variety grew up pretty pampered—plenty of food, no droughts, no big cats. Locals describe them as fairly tame by hippo standards. However, “tame” is relative when the animal can outrun you on land and squish you like a bug.
The Colombian government is using professionals. They’re paying $2 million, but they aren’t looking for amateurs with ARs. But if you’re daydreaming about the ultimate Escobar legacy safari, bring something that says “respect” in large-caliber Esperanto. A well-placed .375 cranial shot drops them clean. Anything lighter risks a provoking a charge that ends with you redecorating the riverbank in unfortunate ways.
“Bring enough gun,” as Springfield Armory says. Good advice, because you might need to use it in self-defense if things go south against some very large, very angry four-legged predators.
Hippos typically live exclusively in the wetlands, lakes, and rivers of sub-Saharan Africa… unless an infamous drug lord imported them to South America in the early 1980s, was fatally shot about a decade later, and the ones he kept as pets escaped, adapted to the region, and created their own colony.
You may or may not recall that at the time Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, he owned hundreds of exotic animals, including four hippopotamuses that he reportedly imported from a wildlife center in Texas, which were kept at his Hacienda Nápoles estate. After his death, the Colombian government deemed them impossible to seize, so they were just left there, while the other animals were relocated to zoos or died in the midst of all the drama.
The hippos were fine, however, and they made themselves right at home in Colombia’s Magdalena River basin. The climate, vegetation, and lack of natural predators worked out for them and they began to multiply. By 2007, there were at least 16 hippos roaming the country, and by 2014, there were at least 40. Today, it’s estimated that there are about 170, and that number could reach 500 by 2030 and 1,000 by 2035.