An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.

Originally from Lodi, California, Dosio had built an extensive collection of hunting trophies over the years, including animals such as elephants and lions. He was reportedly a familiar name within the Sacramento Safari Club.

According to the Daily Mail, safari operator Collect Africa confirmed the death of its client. The company also reported that the professional hunter guiding Dosio sustained serious injuries during the encounter.

Reflecting on Dosio’s life, a retired hunter who knew him shared with the UK outlet: “Ernie has been hunting since he could hold a rifle and has many trophies from Africa and the US. Although many disagree with big-game hunting, all Ernie’s hunts were strictly licensed and above board and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.”

The same source, based in Cape Town, described the incident as the elephants being “surprised” by Dosio and his guide’s presence.

Dosio was the owner of Pacific AgriLands Inc, a company managing 12,000 acres of vineyard land in Modesto, as well as offering services and equipment financing to wine producers. Officials from the US embassy in Gabon are now coordinating the return of his remains to California, the Mail reported.

Gabon’s forests are known to shelter approximately 95,000 forest elephants, most of the species’ global population, which are considered highly endangered.

Every year, clients of the trophy-hunting industry claim the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals across the world. Legal hunting tours in Africa are popular with some wealthy Americans, including Donald Trump Jr, who was pictured holding a severed elephant’s tail more than a decade ago.

International trophy hunting is a multimillion-dollar industry. In South Africa, estimates for the industry’s worth range from $100m in 2005, to $68m in 2012, and $120m in 2015, according to the EMS Foundation.

During his first presidential term, Donald Trump created a controversial wildlife advisory board to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinoceroses. The board was disbanded in 2020 after lawsuits alleging it was an illegal, biased panel stacked with trophy hunters rather than conservationists, who worked to promote the economic benefits of big game hunting.

Last year, another American game hunter was killed by a buffalo he was stalking during a hunting expedition in South Africa.