Doc Antle and Myrtle Beach Safari: a thread.

Doc Antle was cited in 1989 for abandoning deer and peacocks on the property of his zoo in Buckingham, Virginia and went on to wrack up 38 more violations between 1988 and 2014. Allegations included beating tigers to get them to comply, evidence of endangerment with sharp (cont)

... wires and nails littering certain habitats and providing insufficient enclosures and water. In 2010, a 3-year-old tiger escaped his enclosure and ran around the park freely, resulting in another USDA cite. Antle was cited twice more in the following months for (cont)

... continuing to keep the tiger in the same type of enclosure he’d escaped from. What happens to Antle’s cubs when he can no longer use them? No one really knows! The USDA only allows cubs between 8-12 weeks of age to be handled (photo ops, ect). Tiger cub and monkey (cont)

... photo ops are MBS’s main source of income. That being said, you’d think MBS would be overrun with cats... Antle has claimed to have trained over 400 cats in his career. As of 2014, there are only ~60 currently living at MBS. In 2009, Antle was cited again after (cont)

... releasing 2 of his cats into the custody of someone - who’d lost his USDA license due to abandoning 75 of his own tigers in Palm Bay, Florida - in order to transport them. They ended up at Zoological Imports 2000, an exotic dealership owned by a convicted drug kingpin (cont).

MBS’s second facility, “a free wildlife exhibit and living tiger museum”, at Barefoot Landing which offers photo ops. was shut down in the summer of 2019. Can’t confirm if this is true but apparently they were euthanizing cubs and there were complaints of unsanitary (cont)

... conditions. Here are some photos I took at the Barefoot Landing location in July 2018 (note the lack of water and enrichment):