WARNING: Graphic content.

IT WAS supposed to be a simple Facebook post by a proud father revealing how his young daughter had just killed her first stag.

But it’s what she did after that which created a storm of criticism and led to a Facebook page being shut down.

The NZ Woman Hunters page, which had 33,000 followers, attracted a storm of criticism after the “proud” father, known as Johnny, posted pictures of his daughter Chloe with her kill.

“Check out my little pink ninja princess Chloe (8) with her first deer a young stag. Shot in a bush block on a friends [sic] farm last weekend,” he wrote.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. He then reveals “she took a bit(e) from its warm quivering heart, Go Chloe!!”

The post soon attracted thousands of shares with many expressing outrage at the behaviour of father and daughter, leading to the page being shut down just hours later.

Asharani Kat posted saying the whole thing was unbelievable.

“Well done for getting this psychopathic mad page removed,” she wrote. “So disturbing to see how these new generations of children are (being) groomed to grow into cruel and disassociated adults.”

Another posted how the act of eating a deer heart in this way was not only cruel but also a form of child abuse.

Facebook user Patricia Marshall said while she wasn’t against hunting as such, this took things to the extreme.

“Not only is this disturbing but what parent in their mind let’s their 8 year old bite into a deer heart like that? Come on. That’s nasty. May not be the nastiest thing in the world, but regardless it’s pretty gross.”

However some criticised the decision to take the page down, saying we eat other animals’ hearts and this should not be any different.

Blair Kapa said people who didn’t like what they saw should not be on social media.

“NZ Woman Hunters page was removed off Facebook because people were too scared to see a little girl eating a raw deer heart,” he posted.

“If you were involved in this please wrap yourself in cotton wool and get off the internet.”

Animals Australia spokeswoman Lisa Chalk agreed the post was confronting, especially when small children are involved.

“Whatever your view on hunting animals is, we know that children have a natural affinity and love for animals, it’s their instinct to nurture and protect, not harm them,” she said.

“So these pictures seem at odds with what we know to be true about the natural relationship between children and animals.”

Ms Chalk also said it was easy to judge when confronted with images such as these but the reality was “eating animals isn’t a confronting exercise” for most people.

“It’s highly sterilised,” she said.

“Meat comes neatly pre-packaged from the supermarket. There’s little if any connection with the living, breathing animal it came from. A story like this reminds us on some level that ‘venison’ comes from deer, that ‘chicken’ comes from chickens and ‘lamb chops’ come from lambs.

“It sounds absurd but the industrialisation of our food system has created a tremendous disconnect between what we eat and who it used to be. People reading this story are in a very direct and confronting way being reminded of that.”

Despite the outrage on social media, the defiant hunter father couldn’t see what all the fuss was about and said he has taken his daughter hunting since she was a small baby.

He also defended her biting into the heart, saying it was a form of tradition.

“She wanted to do it when she saw a picture of her uncle biting the heart of his first deer,” he told Buzzfeed News.

“We’re not too serious about it; it’s something some hunters do with the first kill. I wouldn’t say [it is] ritualistic, but she is a hunter now.”