A US adventure website owner and a hunting promoter are finger-pointing after a Mindoro safari they advertised triggered an uproar among Filipinos, a US news website reported.

Adventures 411 owner Bill Walker said he never knew the New York-based outfitter Mindoro Safaris’ wildlife hunting offer is illegal in the Philippines, the Missoula Independent reported.

“I’ve really got nothing to do with it,” he said, “except that I put [the offers] up online.”

For a fee of $13,800, the Montana-based Adventures 411 had said a trophy hunter could shoot water buffaloes, forest buffaloes, bearded warty pigs and wild boars on Mindoro island.

“Small Jungle Cats are available as possibilities present themselves; including the Black Philippine Jungle Cat, Large Palm Civet Cat and Small Palm Civet Cat,” it said, adding, “Possibilities for Asian Sambar Deer, Mouse Deer and Saltwater Crocodile exist but collection permits will have to be researched for the time of the planned safari and provided to you before collection.”

The Montana educator said he added the trophy hunting promo to his website on behalf of Mindoro Safaris, an outfitter run by Jay T. Carlson, the report said.

Walker said he had online exchanges with Carlson last year, believing the safaris offered a unique alternative to the Montana and Idaho trips he usually booked for clients, the website added.

“I just took him at face value,” Walker said. “But once I got into the process, I had my doubts…I didn’t want to get wrapped up in it.”

Carlson, who spoke with the Independent by phone from New York, disputed Walker’s claim, saying he hasn’t offered the Mindoro hunting trips for about four years. The report quoted him as saying that Walker contacted him shortly before his company stopped offering the hunting trips.

“I never followed through to tell him we weren’t doing that anymore,” Carlson was quoted by the Independent as saying. “I never even thought about it anymore, and I didn’t realize until I started getting this round of hate e-mails.”

The Hunting Report, however, said that Carlson led at least two clients in Mindoro Safaris trips in 2009, the Independent reported. One of them reportedly shot a world record warty pig, it said.

“A copy of the Adventures 411 web page, cached by Google on February 24, states that Mindoro Safaris has two openings left for 2011 hunting trips and is taking deposits for 2012,” the news site wrote.

On February 26, a day after The Mindoro Post broke the story “US website offers rare Mindoro forest animals for trophy hunting”, the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau warned that wildlife hunting is illegal in the Philippines and violators could face arrest.

Walker  told the Independent that he did not actually run the safaris and never even booked a client for the Mindoro trophy hunting. And after 20 years in adventures booking business, he closed Adventures 411, citing economic reasons, the Independent said.

“Carlson now says he has no plans to guide a trip to the Philippines ‘anytime soon’,” the Independent report said.