US Giraffe Hunter Scorned For Smiling Photo On South African Hunt

Nobody is accusing Tess Thompson Talley of having committed a crime, at least not in the legal sense. She is being judged harshly, rather, on moral grounds, by people around the world for a photograph of her smiling like a happy bride as she posed with the dead body of a black giraffe she had just shot and killed.

The Kentucky woman’s “dream hunt” was last year, but the social media maelstrom started last month after the Africa Digest shared Talley’s photograph in a tweet it asked its followers to share — which they did, widely, along with strong ethical condemnation.

“White American savage who is partly a Neanderthal comes to Africa [to] shoot down a very rare black giraffe courtesy of South Africa stupidity,” the publication wrote, referencing policies in several African countries, including South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, that allow trophy game hunting as a conservation management practice.

“A very sad example of a person who lives for the thrill of the moment, and who has a a dreadful sense of entitlement to kill for her own pleasure,” one person wrote. “There are no words to describe how terrible is the deed you have committed.”

An Instagram user really let Talley have it, calling her a “disgusting, vile, amoral, heartless, selfish murderer” and saying she posed “with joy in her black heart and a beaming smile.”

“Giraffes are the epitome of gentle giants,” the post continued. “They glide across the plains, like liquid; awe inspiring creatures who spend their days eating leaves and caring for their young. How DARE she. A rare animal that will be extinct by the time her grandchildren can go and gutlessly sit in the brush with a scope and pull a trigger.

“It does not take skill to have a ranger track a giraffe for you, and with the aid of night vision glasses and a scope, pull a trigger like some Carnival game. If you need to eat a giraffe? Get a bow and arrow and make it at least a fair fight. I am disgusted by people like you Tess. You reek of privilege and ignorance. Shame on you. …”

Not all responses were negative, though.

“What rubbish. She is a hunter,” one person wrote on the Africa Digest thread. “We allow and indeed encourage hunting as an important tourist activity. And on top of which you play the race card. This is virtue signalling, not social commentary.”

Though she described the bull giraffe as “rare” in her tweet, Talley told Fox News in an email that what made the giraffe she shot was its age. Male giraffes become more illustrious with age, and their once tawny blotches turn black, according to LiveScience.com, which said the transformation usually is complete by the time a giraffe is 10.

To Fox, Talley said the giraffe was a subspecies whose numbers are increasing in South Africa “due, in part, to hunters and conservation efforts paid for in large part by big game hunting.”

As Talley explained the conservation management plan to Fox, the bull she shot was too old to breed, but had killed three breeding-age males, causing the size of the herd to decline. The older bull’s death opens the possibility for the population to rebound, Talley said.

The animal in the photo is of the South African species Giraffa giraffe, which is not rare, Giraffe Conservation Foundation co-founder Julian Fennessy told Yahoo Lifestyle. Populations of the subspecies is increasing in the wild, Fennessey said.

“Legal hunting of giraffe is not a reason for their decline,” he told Yahoo, “despite the moral and ethical side of it, which is a different story.”

Talley had described the hunt the previous year on social media, writing: “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite a while. I knew it was the one. He was over 18 years old, 4000 lbs. and was blessed to be able to get 2000 lbs. of meat from him.”

Patch reached out to Talley for comment via Facebook Messenger. We’ll update this post if we hear back. In a public post on her Facebook page that featured her sitting before another big game kill, Talley referenced her critics and received some support from other big game hunting advocates.

In March, the Trump administration quietly opened a path for big-game hunters to import trophies, including elephant tusks and lion hides, from some African nations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service overturned an Obama-era ban on some trophies in an unpublicized memo that seemed to contradict President Trump's earlier public statements opposing trophy hunting.

It's unclear what, if any, role Trump played in the decision. Though both of his adult sons are trophy hunters, the president has publicly recoiled from the sport, calling it a "horror show." The Fish and Wildlife Service's reversal "is a response to a court decision impacting how trophy import applications are reviewed," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the time.

Photo: Jurgen Christine Sohns/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock (File)