Trophy hunting is one of the least divisive issues of our time. It's only a small minority of people who would argue that it's acceptable behaviour. Sure, I can see the attraction. There's adrenaline, ego, ownership and even family traditions and cultural identity. However, for most people, none of these would outweigh the shame of knowing you have taken the life of an animal purely for the purpose of turning a creature into a carcass.
But television presenter
Steve Ecklund feels no such shame, new pictures suggest.
Ecklund, who hails from
Alberta, Canada, recently killed a mountain lion in his home province. He decided to mark the occasion with a couple of snaps - one in which he hugs his dead best friend and another with his morally questionable peers.
Ecklund is the co-host of Canadian hunting show The Edge. He is known for hunting rams, black bears and lions in Canada and the US. He routinely publicises images of he and his wife, Alison Ecklund, out hunting. However, this recent hunt has got campaigners' attention.
Some of the images have now been removed from Ecklund's Facebook page. However, in a further post, which Facebook deemed as depicting
"graphic violence or gore", an animal's heart is shown with a bleeding wound - leaving many to ponder the carcass' fate.
Lee Moon, a spokesperson from British-based campaign group Hunt Saboteurs, stated: "Whether legal or illegal, and whatever country it occurs in, hunting for sport is morally reprehensible and has no place in a so-called civilised society."
"Links between animal and human abuse are well documented and it's beyond our comprehension what makes people think this kind of barbaric act is deemed acceptable." Moon adds:
"When the authorities don't act it's no wonder that people take matters into their own hands and protect hunted animals themselves."
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) stated:
"Only someone dead in heart and head could fail to see that mountain lions, wild boars, deer, and other animals are thinking, feeling individuals - not 'things' to blow away for amusement."
"Those animals whose lives aren't taken outright by hunters often endure slow, agonising deaths, leaving their offspring to starve, as they're unable to fend for themselves after their mothers have been killed by some human trying to compensate for feelings of inadequacy."
PETA added: "All most of us see when we look at a photograph of a hunter who gunned down an animal for 'pleasure' is photographic evidence of a small person with deep-seated insecurities."
Interestingly, on the website for the programme which Ecklund is known for, he is described as a "fair chase hunter". This supposedly ethical form of hunting targets wild animals, as opposed to those in any form of enclosure.
However, it seems that the actions of
Ecklund are simply indefensible. Luckily, the issue of trophy hunting has gained a lot of exposure recently thanks to cases like that of Cecil the lion. Cecil was the victim of a legal trophy killing in Zimbabwe by American dentist Walter Palmer - who was subsequently the subject of a media storm.
That said,
has undone
's ban on bringing elephant and lion hunting
trophies
carcasses into the United States - so it's more important than ever that we have our voices heard. You can
to prevent Trump from letting this happen and make the practice illegal again.
