We have previously discussed trophy hunters who kill and pose with dead animals. We recently followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by an American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota. There were other trophy hunting stories that enraged people around the world. (here and here and here) Then there was Josh Bowman who has been denounced around the world for his video from Alberta, Canada as he celebrated the slow killing of a bear with a spear. Now a 12-year-old named Aryanna Gourdin from Utah has posted a series of highly controversial pictures with dead animals and expressed her love for killing animals. One picture shows her holding a giraffe’s heart.
Once again, I have never understood why it is such an accomplishment to kill such a harmless animal like a giraffe or zebra or to revel in the death of a beautiful animal like those displayed in these photos.
Notably, Mark Martineau and Jason Hansen, who run hunting expeditions and organized Aryanna and her father’s trip to Africa, love the pictures of the carnage and the desire to kill as many animals as possible. They have Josh and Sarah Bowmar to join in killing lions despite the international outcry over the hunts.
I have many friends who are hunters and they would be equally appalled by these displays. Indeed, some of the loudest critics of the Bowmars came from hunters. These twisted images have particularly shocked the world due to the involvement of a young girl who relishes killed animals like giraffes and then posing with their dead bodies and organs.
In my years of backpacking and hiking, I have never had a desire to kill the magnificent animals that I have seen in the wild to some how possess them. I certainly could not imagine rejoicing like Bowmar in slicing open a bear and allowing it to die a painful death (possibly over the course of hours). I also do not consider hunting with a spear to be particularly brave when your hunting party is behind you with high powered rifles. Shooting a zebra like the one in some of these pictures is like sneaking up on a horse and blowing it away. I fail to see the sport in that. While Gourdin professes a “love” for the animals, she rejoices in their dead bodies.
@InalienableWrights: Sometimes it does….I saw an episode on t.v. about a young teen in Idaho who killed both her parents with a family hunting rifle because they objected to her adult illegal alien boyfriend. It didn’t take the cops long to figure it out, and the illegal promptly testified against her to save his own neck. She soon realized that her “happily ever after” fantasies were all in her little teeny bopper head. The BF was using her and the only people who cared about her were dead. She got life w/o parole….
@Brig Guy: Some of us have higher moral standards than mere legality. A lot of things are legal, but they are nonetheless immoral and/or a shock to basic standards of decency. And when someone posts pictures of him/herself engaged in such conduct, he/she necessarily invites comments from others.
What would be amazing if harm to humans caused as much of an uproar.
Way to demonize a young girl doing something perfectly legal. Let’s post her pictures all over your blog and say how much we hate her. Stay classy JT.
@Scott: Yum, yum, possum potpies! I remember Ma on the Beverly Hillbillies baking some…..
Daily Mail
21 January 2012
But do go on with your ritual 2 Minutes of Hate.
” a harmless and majestic animal as a giraffe”
Hardly. Giraffes are heartless creatures.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/files/2012/01/giraffes-are-heartless-creatures-Jan-2012-tiny.jpg
” It is a desperate search for aliveness by the already dead…”
What a drama queen.
Yes, it is clear you hate hunting and you don’t understand it.
Otherwise, your overblown rhetoric is risible.
‘She’s easily 50 Hitlers!!!!!‘
I don’t hate hunting. It’s reasonable and even helpful In cases where it is used for needed food or for pest or population control. Often, however, those are simply excuses.
People who kill for the pleasure and thrill of it are another matter, but I don’t hate them either. Sympathy would be closer, sometimes pity. In rare cases, anger as well due to the wanton destruction of life they are powerless to reverse or heal.
Issac, I agree but take it further regarding culling theory in biological science. We seem to cull ourselves very well. Let other animals do the same.
Killing is done by people who perceive of themselves as extremely weak. It is a subconscious effort to show that they are more powerful than another living being, which of course they are not. Killing is easily achieved by anyone who sneaks up on anyone else with a deadly weapon. A two year old can do it and several have. An insect can do it. We need some bill boards showing insects attacking other insects juxtaposed with hunters killing animals with a comment that says something like “your brain is similar to that of an insect”.
I’ve heard killer parents say something like, “my son got his elk”, as if he won some kind of a small lottery. So he killed something. Photos and bragging about such things demonstrate the extreme levels of depravity of some kids and their parents.
300 people have been killed in Chicago already this year. And now people are complaining about this little girl. I say good on her and bad on the people of Chicago who are killing people.
The Chicago situation is not comparable. It’s generally gang-bangers and drug dealers killing each other, so people aren’t particularly surprised or upset by it. Now and then, an innocent gets caught in the cross-fire and killed, and it DOES draw outrage and condemnation. But killing a beautiful animal just to kill it? That’s like the ISIS savages destroying ancient artifacts just to be destructive.
Tin – so you contention is that the 300 killed in Chicago deserved to die?
I didn’t say they “deserve” to die; but if someone chooses a life of violent activity, I’m not going to have the same concern that I would if an innocent person is killed. If a Crip shoots a Blood over drug territory, or a Hell’s Angel stabs some other biker to death in a brawl, no I’m not as upset about it as the two elderly Nuns who were murdered in their home in Mississippi last week by a guy who broke in and robbed and killed them.”Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
Tin – from what I can gather, they are not having dueling shoot-outs in Chicago. Just a very high murder rate. Of course, it is a Democratic city.
Paul S, well said! Your perspective is spot on.
But still, we can’t always be on subject, especially one so serious. After all, we are frequently more Homo Ludens than Homo Sapiens.
All the “best people” like to display their virtue by professing their love for nature and the environment by pecking on their keyboards in climate controlled buildings constructed to protect them from nature and the environment. A few might even go for a hike in the woods occasionally. They bundle up in jackets, gloves, boots, etc. to protect their fragile body from nature. Don’t forget the sunscreen! And the mosquito repellent! Scary zika might get you! Wouldn’t want you to break a toenail or get bitten by a tiny insect while you’re out there “roughing it” in the wild and loving nature so much. You’ll be gone for an hour or two before you retreat to your climate controlled building whose purpose is to protect you from nature and the environment so you can peck on your keyboard some more.
I no longer hunt but I grew up hunting. It was a rite of passage. I’ve never hunted out of season or without buying a hunting license. We ate everything we killed except for raccoons. They were hunted and trapped for their pelts. But we had a deal with a man who would skin them out for us. He’d give us back the skins and he’d keep the raccoon carcasses for a stew.
In addition to forcing hunters to buy a hunting license, the state often demands a second tribute be paid to hunt certain species – for example, a deer tag to hunt deer and a duck stamp to hunt ducks. The money the state confiscates from hunters by selling hunting licenses, deer tags, duck stamps and the like is earmarked to pay the salaries of bureaucrats in the Fish and Wildlife Department. They monitor the various wild animal populations and decide how many licenses to issue, how much money to confiscate from hunters, and how long the season should be. After the bureaucrats have skimmed their take off the top, the rest of the money confiscated from hunters goes to help maintain wildlife reserves on public lands. Hunters don’t mind paying most of the freight. They are conservations. Many duck hunters I know are also members of Ducks Unlimited. The money DU raises from duck hunters goes to build and preserve waterfowl habitat all over the world.
I suspect the girl you’ve decided to stigmatize, and her family, have done a helluva lot more to conserve wildlife than many of the virtue signaling keyboard peckers commenting from their comfortable climate controlled building designed to protect them from nature and the environment.
Thank you Scott
That kid is demented. I wouldn’t go to sleep under the same roof as her. If I told her she couldn’t go to the Mall, her next Facebook post would be a pic of my heart in her hands. Chilling!
Holding the cut out heart of a giraffe and ‘mugging’ for a photo of her holding, almost embracing a harmless and majestic animal as a giraffe is, is repulsive.
I certainly hope that this becomes a life lesson for her. The lesson that at 12 y.o. has her ability to process the difference between right and wrong, moral or immoral, has yet to develop to a mature level. She could easily pass for being one of the kids in the novel Lord Of The Flies.
JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD. Perhaps the meaning of these words should be taken to heart. Oops, please don’t out out mine.
Bob – anyone who has taught 12 year olds knows they all belong in Lord of the Flies. They are feral.
There are several pictures of the Trump sons posing with African animals. One I remember is an elephant. I went into the home of a man in NC who had all kinds of stuffed animals that he had killed on various hunts. One of the displays was of small birds killed by one or more of his very young children. Death ruled the house.
Davidm2575 and all like him
You can rationalize until the cows come home and either dispatch them for meat or make a ritual out of it, to replace your self esteem perhaps. Those that make a ritual out of killing, unnecessary killing, killing for the sake of killing, are sick to some degree. There is a connection between psychopathy and this sort of behavior.
The twelve year old girl that kills a giraffe and gets that obvious rush out of it is not a hunter. There was no hunt. The giraffe posed no threat. That the meat was consumed by the needy or the herd needed to be culled is one issue. The issue at question here, the issue that reflects mankind’s flaws, is the total disconnect between the essence of the act as perceived by the girl and the actual act. Killing in defense, killing for food, killing to control a population to provide a healthier environment for animals is one thing. This girl, like the others, is just sick.
issacbasonkavich and all like you:
You can demonize this girl and others like her until the cows come home, but unless her hunting—and of course that’s what it is—poses a threat to the population (e.g., endangered species), then why do you get upset? All animals die, so would you rather this particular animal die quickly and humanely from a hunter’s kill or by being bitten and clawed to death by a pack of lions? Except in zoos and for domesticated animals, death by old age almost never happens, not in the wild. If she enjoys killing, and if her victims are not endangered and the killing is sustainable, then why demonize her as “sick”? Hunting is a legitimate activity, although killing for the sake of killing (and allowing the meat to rot) would be distasteful to me too. I doubt she allows the meat to rot.
I cannot help but wonder at the hypocrisy of those who oppose hunting as being barbaric, inhumane, etc., and yet heartily approve the immense slaughter of our helpless human unborn.
If you read your response carefully, you make my point. It’s not the act itself but the perversity of it, the meaning to that particular participant. The lion doesn’t mug with the heart. It simply eats it. Zoos are perverse so I put most zoo experiences in with this lovely little debutant.
Issac, you are basically saying that all trophy hunters are psychotic.
That conclusion seems to me to be based in your lack of understanding a culture different from your own.
I must ask, though. Are you a vegetarian? It would be a little easier to understand your comments if you were.
David
I did not ‘basically’ say that all trophy hunters are psychotic. I said that there is a connection. You disappoint me with your knee jerk responses, responding without reading and thinking about what was written. Read carefully, then respond.
The connection between psychotic behavior and this sort of self gratification through killing should not be hard to see. That is not to say that all trophy hunters are psychotic but some are. Add the giraffe, with the obvious exaltation, factor in the age, and it is not an impossibility that someone that digs the heart out of a giraffe and poses with it, at age 12, may be just a little off the beam. It’s kind of like the difference between the soldier that kills because it’s war but takes no satisfaction in killing another human and the soldier that lives to kill. So, there is no ‘basically’ and there is no ‘all’.
You are starting to sound like another basic contrarian on this blog.
issac wrote: “I did not ‘basically’ say that all trophy hunters are psychotic. I said that there is a connection. You disappoint me with your knee jerk responses, responding without reading and thinking about what was written. Read carefully, then respond.”
I did read carefully. Logically, if you have two points A and B that are connected, you must have both points for there to be a connection. You wrote, “There is a connection between psychopathy and this sort of behavior.” The implication is that trophy hunters are psychotic. Thank you for clarifying that what you really meant was that SOMETIMES there is a connection between psychopathy and this sort of behavior. I can agree with that, especially when we think of hunters like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. I do not agree that this girl hunter has a connection with psychopathy just because she went on an African Safari and killed a giraffe. Now if she was swinging cats by the tail and setting them on fire, then you might have a valid point. As it is, I think you demonize this girl without good cause.
I might also ask: what do you think of other sports where the only goal is the thrill of victory?
I am talking about football, basketball, cricket, rugby, etc. As long as the sport does not involve killing, then it is okay? Or is the goal of finding the thrill of victory what makes them psychotic in your viewpoint?
david – sometimes it is not just the thrill of victory. Some professional players have clauses in their contracts for bonuses for wins, as do coaches. And even college coaches have clauses for winning their conference, etc.
Do we live in a kill or be killed world? Killing for defense is wrong? For whom? The defender or the perp? Fortunately, killing to control a population is something the U.N. has failed unmercifully at stopping this in ‘uncivilized’ countries. All them liberal do gooders, BLAH.
@Paul
I saw that McCain won in AZ. And DWS won in FL. The establishment is prevailing.
Autumn – it isn’t my fault. I didn’t vote for him.
Leave wild animals alone. It’s the least you can do.
I sympathize with Professor Turley’s dismay over the hunting culture, but Professor Turley should know better than to believe whatever is published on the internet. Usually there are at least two sides to every story. Because Josh and Sarah Bowmar were mischaracterized as “slicing open a bear and allowing it to die an excrutiating [sic] death over hours,” I think it prudent to give Josh Bowmar’s side of the story of his legal bear hunt.
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“What is going through my mind right now is just utter disbelief,” he said. “Anyone that knows animals, they run. When you hit an animal like that, it’s going to run a lot further than 60 yards to evade danger. Which means the bear ran until it died. A bear runs roughly 30 mph. That means it runs about 15 yards a second. So with the bear in the fight or flight mode, running at full speed and only going 60 yards he would have made it there within four seconds.
“That bear was dead within four seconds at most, 10 seconds if he wasn’t running full speed. But let’s go further as to say it was a bear that was capable of running slow and live with it’s vitals cut the way they were, there’s no way it didn’t die within 30 seconds. The animal didn’t suffer any more from my spear than it would with a broadhead from an arrow. The author made me out to be unethical and Under Armour is making me out to be unethical as well. This animal ran on adrenaline and died very quickly and humanely,” said Josh.
http://www.wideopenspaces.com/exclusive-josh-bowmar-speaks-out-on-the-bear-hunting-incident/
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Thank you davidm
It explains why many Americans could care less about torture, gulags or locking people up without charge for over a decade – we have become a cruel, sadistic and ungodly people. Since 9/11 the rest of the world recognizes our sadism and cruelty.
Young people like this will be in huge demand with our emerging American Stasi (America’s version of the communist secret police).
You are so right !! Our Government and Military leaders want to turn everyone into the degenerate psychopaths, sociopaths and santanists that they have become so they can become more prostitutable for their needs.
The irony is lost on those that are desperate for life’s mercy while offering none.