Undeniably, hunting has always been a part of humans lives. Our ancestors hunted wild animals for their food and to this day a large amount of the population rely on animals as a food source – even if they don’t chase them down with a spear themselves. It could be argued that this is just a part of nature, we are using the earth’s natural resources to survive, but in an age where you can walk into a Waitrose and have a ready meal from the shelf to your plate in a ridiculously short time, and even live without consuming meat at all is it really necessary to kill animals for sport?
With the massive influx of internet users over the past decade, trophy hunting has come under the scrutiny of internet social justice warriors – You may remember when Walter Palmer killed Cecil the lion, and the internet had a lot to say about it. Who are these sick people and why do they enjoy killing animals? And why on earth are they plastering images of their kills all over the internet?
Kendall Jones – if you don’t recognise the name, is a self-proclaimed ‘huntress’ who found internet fame posting images of her kills online. The 19 year old Texan claims to be a conservationist – she says she is controlling animal population for the good, and this may be true, but the questionable photographs of her smiling next to dead lions, elephants and leopards among others do give cause for concern. She is using the internet as a platform to promote what she is doing, and through the power of the internet this can reach a huge audience, with this influence even reaching children. You can see below Jones congratulating a young hunter on her kill – should this behavior be encouraged?
The internet can make this debate even more troublesome considering children are involved. Trophy hunters seem to start young, being taught by their parents how to shoot to kill. Aryanna Gourdin, another American hunter came under fire from people on the internet in 2016, for exactly the same reason as Jones, receiving death threats from many.
The internet though, although making trophy hunting a topic of public discussion, also contributes to the problem. All it takes is a quick google search to find yourself an animal to kill, you can bag yourselves a smaller plains animal like a zebra or a warthog, and if you want to spend some big bucks you can take home one of the big five, a male lion coming in at around $25,000. Got a spare $40,000? Maybe an elephant takes your fancy. Putting a price on life seems as unsavory as actually enjoying killing an animal, and the large variety of websites offering animals to kill all over the world makes it so easy to do so. These animals are bred like battery chickens, and if you swap the animals out for humans it seems absolutely absurd, so how can this be okay?
Trophy hunting is simply considered archaic by the majority of people. Sure, hundreds of years ago the head of a stag might make you look the bees knees hung above your fireplace, but today, for most people is simply unnecessary.
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