The Tajik population of Bukharan markhor has more than quadrupled since the early 90s; the latest surveys estimate that some 1,900 markhor graze these steep slopes. And finding one has become a bit easier—at least if you know where to look. In a world suffering what many conservation biologists call a sixth extinction, such conservation success stories are rare. So too are folks like Campbell, who had shelled out some $120,000 for the chance to shoot a markhor dead.

“It’s probably the most expensive hunt in the world,” Campbell says. “This is basically where my income goes.”

Trophy hunting is often portrayed as the worst sort of human entitlement, a way for extremely privileged white men—and, indeed, they typically are all three—to assert their dominance. Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, has called the practice “cruel, self-aggrandizing, larcenous, and shameful.” Jimmy Kimmel called it “vomitous” in a televised monologue in 2015.

But as I traveled along the same roads several months after Campbell’s journey, I learned that wealthy hunters like him are the main reason that Bukharan markhor still exist at all—despite how uncomfortable that truth may be. In specific cases—as even some conservation groups attest—trophy hunting can be an invaluable tool for protecting species.

Some hunters, of course, are almost certainly engaged in a vainglorious pursuit of power—and lack the self-awareness to realize it. But after spending time with dozens of Tajik hunting guides and wildlife biologists (some of whom were both) on two markhor hunting concessions in southern Tajikistan, I discovered that painting the entire hunting community with such a broad brush ignores a reality: the trophy hunters who attempt to engage honestly with the thorny ethical quandaries underlying their pastime, who go out of their way to have their fun in an ecologically and socially responsible manner.

Still, these folks breathe rarefied air. “It’s an elite experience. It’s for wealthy people like me,” says Campbell, who has white hair, doesn’t shy away from foul language, and sometimes goes by the nickname “Wild Bill.” At home in Anchorage, Campbell has a private psychiatry practice. “I earned my money the old fashioned way,” he says, “seeing patients one by one for many years.” He began hunting as a young man, shooting deer near his family’s home in Vermont. Later, as a medical student in Southern California, deer hunting allowed him to afford eating meat. “That was an alternative to eating peanut butter,” he says.

As his fortune grew, Campbell turned his attention toward more exotic, expensive, difficult hunts in far-flung locales like Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Tajikistan.

In the contracts he signs with hunting preserves, he usually insists that he be the only hunter present. Sometimes the law already ensures this: Tajikistan’s 74-square-kilometer (29-square-mile) Saidi Tagnob concession (the name means “downhill hunt”), Campbell’s destination last December, was granted only one markhor hunting license for all of 2016.