Hunting PHOTOS That Triggered Off Media Outrage
The World Cup fan who won a modeling contract only to lose it after posting a hunting picture
In 2014, following the World Cup, the modeling industry had a brand new “it” girl in soccer fan Axelle Despiegelaere. (I’m sure almost all of you will remember Larissa Riquelme, the Paraguayan fan from the previous World Cup.) The teen from Belgium was about to achieve stardom by becoming one of the faces of the World Cup and got herself a modeling contract after being spotted in the crowd in Brazil.
After she had come back home, she launched a Facebook page that quickly garnered thousands of likes. A couple of days later, the 17-year-old announced she had signed with L’Oréal.
But her happiness did not last for long. L’Oréal announced it was no longer working with the teenager, after she uploaded a image of herself hunting, with the following caption: “Hunting is not a matter of life or death. It’s much more important than that..this was about 1 year ago…ready to hunt Americans today haha.”
The TV presenter who hunted a lion and posted the photo on her Twitter feed
In 2013, Melissa Bachman, a Minnesota-based TV presenter and an avid life-long hunter, posted a hunting picture on her Twitter feed. She wrote, “An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60-yards on this beautiful male lion. What a hunt!”
After posting this, animal rights activists and the public went bananas. They right away began harassing her. The harassment became so insane that she shut down her Twitter profile. A petition even appeared on Change.org asking the government of South Africa to ban her from the country.
This is not the first time a petition has been held against the ill-famed “huntress.” National Geographic removed her as a contestant from their “Ultimate Survival Alaska” series in 2012.
Bachman’s social media pages and website show scores of huge beasts that have perished after coming into contact with her. The “Trophy Room” section of her website features a grinning Bachman with dead deer, antelope, alligators, turkeys, and hogs.
The 19-year-old cheerleader who sparked online fury by posing with dead animals
In 2014, a young cheerleader triggered off an outrage by posting images of wild creatures she has hunted and killed in Africa while posing cheerfully next to them. Hundreds and thousands of people have signed a petition demanding that Facebook delete the pictures taken by U.S. hunter Kendall Jones.
In one image, the Texas Tech University student poses beside the body of an antelope while sporting a beaming smile on her face. She uploaded the image on her page, which has over 250,000 “likes,” along with the caption: “Another harvest for today. White Springbok, it’s one of the four-color (sic) shades of this animal! And let me tell you it’s one of my favorite (sic) kinds of meat so far!” Other pictures show her looking cheerful alongside lions, leopards and elephants she killed in the wild.
The photos have triggered off outrage among animal rights activists with two separate petitions calling for removal of the images. Just under 175,000 people signed a petition on AVAAZ.org while another on Change.org had over 9,000 signatures.
The American dentist who butchered Africa’s most famous lion, Cecil
This year in July 2015, Cecil the lion was slaughtered by a dentist named Walter Palmer, who has boasted online about his twisted hunting exploits. The man from Minnesota also posed for a series of “trophy” images with the bodies of the magnificent beasts he has killed.
Palmer shot the lion with a bow and arrow while hunting in Zimbabwe, fatally wounding him. Authorities think that trackers who organized the American’s hunt later discovered severely wounded Cecil and shot him dead with a rifle, before beheading and skinning him. Furthermore, they tried to destroy his GPS tracking tag. The world-famous lion’s corpse was after that dumped in a deserted spot in a senselessly barbaric act which has shocked animal lovers across the planet.
In a statement, Palmer — who is now wanted by Zimbabwean police — maintained he believed the hunt he was on was legal. He said, “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.”
Cecil was adored by scores of tourists who travel to the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe every year, because of his rare black mane.
The hunters who caused outrage after posing with family of foxes they killed
This photograph of hunters posing beside a dead fox and her seven cubs triggered off outrage after it was posted online in November 2014. In the photo, three men who were hunting close to the village of Lysovice in the Czech Republic are seen smiling for the camera. The bodies of the mother fox and her seven cubs lie arranged in a line at their feet. The hunters uploaded the image to a blog named Hunters Must Be Crazy.
The photograph went viral after it was shared by the British-based charity One World Wildlife, with viewers branding the men as “evil” and “cruel.” A spokesperson for the Czech Hunting Association said, “The red fox isn’t a protected species, but I agree it isn’t very humane to put pictures of hunted animals on social networks.”
The New Zealand rugby players who were questioned for publishing hunting pictures
In 2014, a bunch of rugby players from New Zealand were under fire for uploading photos of themselves with dead animals after a hunting trip in South Africa. Crusaders Tom Taylor, George Whitelock, Sam Whitelock, Ben Funnell, and Tyler Bleyendaal are pictured with an array of dead animals. Once the photos began to spread online, they were met with severe criticism.
The photos were at first posted on the Facebook page for the Landmark Foundation, an environmental organization that, as Director Dr. Bool Smuts notes, is “against the whole concept of trophy hunting.
The hunters who apologized after killing a rare albino bull revered by a Native American tribe
In 2013, a hunters trio were bidding to make amends after they killed a rare albino moose regarded sacred by the indigenous Mi’kmaq people. The unidentified hunters, shot the animal in the Cape Breton Highlands of Nova Scotia, Canada while on a trip to the area. They assert they did not realize that their trophy would trigger off outrage among the Mi’kmaq, who believe albino creatures to be “spirit” animals.
Their fatal error was noticed by Jim Hnatiuks when the trio brought the carcass of the dead animal into his hunting and taxidermy store in Lantz for it to be mounted. Hnatiuks contends the hunters were not aware of the implications of killing the rare Spirit Moose. They afterwards returned the hide so the Mi’kmaq could perform a sacred ceremony.
The “hunting queen” who received death threats after posing next to a dying giraffe and posting the picture online
A hunting obsessed woman who posts pictures of herself next to animals she’s killed has received death threats after posing for a photo while lying beside a dying giraffe.
Rebecca Francis owns a website and a few blogs in which she details her love for hunting across Africa and America. But animal rights campaigners lambasted the act after the image above was shared on Twitter by comedian Ricky Gervais. The Office star wrote, “What must’ve happened to you in your life to make you want to kill a beautiful animal & then lie next to it smiling?”
Supporters endorsed the rage with a series of brutal tweets aimed at the mother of eight. Francis, from Utah, also has a television series, Eye of the Hunter, and says, “We hunt elk and deer every year without fail, even through pregnancy, and nursing babies.”
The Rosie O’Donnell shark hunt photos that caused a Facebook backlash
Sharks are in trouble. Around 73 million are killed in a full year, and as a top predator of the sea they’re critical to the ocean ecosystem. Though, a handful of celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio and January Jones, have joined conservationists in the fight for their survival, Rosie O’Donnell doesn’t seem too concerned.
In 2012, photos of O’Donnell posing with dead and bloody sharks surfaced on the web and triggered off outrage. According to The Sun Sentinel, Rosie and family went on several fishing expeditions with Mark “The Shark” Quartiano over the past few years off the coast of southern Florida. Quartiano a short time ago uploaded an image of O’Donnell and her kids with a dead hammerhead shark hanging on his boat. The response was swift and furious, with comments posted to O’Donnell’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Conservation organizations have hit back as well, like Australian Anti-Shark Finning Alliance, Planet Ocean Alliance, and Shark Savers. Though they state that O’Donnell’s fishing trips were legal, she is sending the wrong message. “Right now sharks are the most endangered animals around. This is basically an endorsement. It sends the message that it’s an OK activity. And this is not an activity that we want celebrities endorsing,” said marine conservationist Erik Brush.
The satirical Facebook post that sparked real outrage at Stephen Spielberg for hunting a Triceratops
Although safeguarding animals is a noble cause, some Facebook haters will complain about nearly anything and sometimes make you lose all hope in humankind. Though we’re the most intelligent of all creatures, but just because our brains are the most developed of all mammals doesn’t mean we all use them. Case in point is the hilarity surrounding the image above.
If you’re a movie nerd, you perhaps already know that the above photo is a BTS photo of noted director Steven Spielberg on the set of Jurassic Park with a Triceratops prop. Nothing out of the ordinary for a director to pose with, right?
Normally, no, but with the help of a satirical post from Internet humorist Jay Branscomb and the knee-jerk reactive nature of the Internet, it was a tragedy.
Branscomb posted the above image on his Facebook page with the jokey caption, “Disgraceful photo of recreational hunter happily posing next to a Triceratops he just slaughtered. Please share so the world can name and shame this despicable man.”
Probably intending just to get a few laughs out of people, Branscomb got much more than he bargained for. Instead of laughing and picking up on the sarcasm in the post, some individuals began ripping into this nameless man who was ruthless enough to hunt down such a beautiful creature.
We wish we were kidding, but we’re not. A handful of people did actually seem to think this was a real triceratops. Here’s just one comment:
I think zoos are the best way to keep these innocent animals safe… a**holes like this piece of s*** are going into these beautiful animals HOME [sic] and killing them… it’s no different than someone coming into your home and murdering you… that’s what’s so selfish about ppl that hunt they’re uneducated and their way of thinking is wellll these animals are overpopulating and are going to die anyway… WELL HUMAN BEINGS are overpopulating and GUESS WHAT if we were to kill an innocent human being and used that as an excuse we’d be in prison… I think it’s time to say the same about animal rights.
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