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A SCOTS farmer has sparked outrage with pictures of him killing an elephant and other animals on a bloody African safari.

Ian Evans was pictured smiling with a rifle over the body of the elephant in South Africa.

But last night he insisted that he wept when he gunned down the beast – a species classed as “vulnerable”.

And he claimed his killing spree was better for wildlife.

Other pictures show him standing over the bodies of other animals including zebra and buffalo.

Evans’s exploits were exposed by his furious former daughter-in-law Helen Winters – who also accused the farmer of killing the family’s pet geese this year.

She also accused Evans of storing tusks and elephant skin products at his farmhouse near Newton Stewart in Wigtowshire .

Yesterday, the 62-year-old farmer refused to answer questions about the tusks and elephant products.

When asked if he felt guilty about the killing of elephants, he said: “If I told you the truth, I would get so much crap back about it.

“But I cried when I shot the elephant because it was the first time I’d ever done it.

“The whole thing got to me. It was a unique moment that will never happen again.”

The photographs of Evans’s holiday kills were shared on social media by Helen, 36, the estranged wife of his son Ross.

Helen left the family’s dairy farm in February this year after her daughter Faye, 20, suffered severe brain injuries in a horse riding accident in Cambridge. She stayed in England for four months as Faye recovered.

But she said when she returned, she discovered Evans had got rid of her five pet geese, which she’d kept for 10 years.

“When I returned home for the geese, a worker told me that Ian had shot them,” Helen - originally from Durham - said.

“At first, Ian said he hadn’t killed the geese. But when I told him I was going to put these pictures on Facebook, he asked me if he could replace them or give me the money they were worth.

“His reasoning was that I’d abandoned them. But he could have easily texted me to say they need moving or got in touch with the animal welfare people.

“You don’t shoot somebody’s pet. If I shot your dog, there would have been something said about it.”

Helen added: “I knew that Ian would travel to Africa but little bits and pieces slowly came out the longer I was there.

“He was proud of killing animals. The last set of tusks that came over are taller than me.

“Unless you’re going to eat it, I don’t believe in killing. And I don’t believe in shooting elephants.

“He has mountains of these pictures – elephants, giraffes, zebras, antelope, gazelles.

“I think his behaviour is disgusting. He turned up with a guncase and a handbag made from elephant skin.

“There is an elephant ear in the farmhouse, and an elephant foot covered by zebra skin.”

Yesterday, Ian accepted that he’d “disposed of” the geese but said an attempt to rehome them had failed.

He continued: “I didn’t shoot them but I did dispose of them. I did away with them.

“She abandoned those animals. There was no one to look after them. They had the run of the place and the mess they made was incredible.”

Ian, who also runs outdoor adventure company Galloway Tanks and Activity Centre, said in a statement on his business website that he killed the elephant during a cull seven years ago.

He wrote: “There are around 900 elephants in this reserve (expanding at seven per cent per year, which is unsustainable).

“All the meat from the cull is sold to fund community projects such as infrastructure, education of local children, community halls and other community buildings.The licence fees go to help the running and maintenance of the reserve. The cull is part of the management of the reserve.”

When asked why he took part, he explained: “I just love Africa. I am in love with the enormous ecosystem that you can study.

“Yes, I was part of a cull. That’s explained in my statement. It was seven years ago.

“I went (to Africa) in 2014, but the pictures she is using are from 2009, 2007 and earlier. There was five years between the last one and the one before that.”

Evans also confirmed he spoke in defence of big game hunting on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show last July.

He said: “The whole sustainable hunting thing gets such a bad press. That is why I called.

“Africa depends on people like me going out and spending money. That’s what keeps reserves going..”

Evans also alleged that before their bust-up, Helen would proudly hang buffalo heads in the farmhouse.

He added: “These pictures she has shared have been on my Facebook for six years. I find it so galling that she is now trying to turn everything against me.”

There was a furious reaction to the photographs on social media and calls for a boycott of Evans’s businesses.

Harry Huyton, director of animal welfare group OneKind, said: “It beggars belief that anyone can derive any sort of pleasure from killing beautiful creatures and posing with their bodies.

“Trophy hunting is absolutely abhorrent and this individual should be ashamed of himself not only for killing these animals but then boasting about it afterwards.”