© istock Is it just because he's beautiful?

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It's a familiar tale. Triumphant American hunter poses for photo, clutching the mighty horns of the limp beast they just shot for fun. Cue national outcry.



In the most recent case it was 33-year-old TV host Larysa Switlyk, an avid huntress who tweeted a series of gloating images depicting the spoils of her recent shooting holiday in the Scottish Hebrides: namely a wild goat, a ram, and a stag on the island of Islay.

It triggered fury among animal-lovers and anti-hunting campaigners, and prompted one SNP minister to call for an immediate end to the shooting of feral animals in Scotland.



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Switlyk remains defiant. Having had her social media channels bombarded with damning comments in recent days, she took to Instagram yesterday to inform her 71,000 followers that she was off on her next hunt.

© instagram "You're a jerk" - one person commented on this photo shared by Larysa Switlyk Switlyk, who hosts her own hunting show, Larysa Unleashed, and describes herself as "a mixture of a tomboy and model", wrote: "I’m headed out on a bush plane for my next hunting adventure and will be out of service for two weeks.

"Nothing better than disconnecting from this social media driven world and connecting back with nature. Hopefully that will give enough time for all the ignorant people out there sending me death threats to get educated on hunting and conservation."

Video: Host of 'Larysa Unleashed' gets slammed for posing with a dead goat (Fox News)

Scroll down her feed and you'll find Switlyk posing with the corpses of reindeer, alligators, moose and a peacock, among other creatures. She's particularly fond of wearing their bodies as backpacks.

Like it or (probably) not, hunting in Scotland is legal and even the RSPCA has been known to cull these animals, so why the sudden furore?

Let's assess the facts.

Did she break the law?

No. A spokesman for the Scottish Government has clarified: “Responsible and appropriate culling of animals is a necessary part of sustainable land management and the culling of some wild animals, including deer and goats, is not illegal."

© Provided by Telegraph Media Group Limited Another hunting victim, this time a wild goat - Credit: instagram The shooting of deer, feral goats, and a range of game birds, is legal in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, although sheep are very rarely shot as trophies.

Deer are said to be culled to maintain the health of the herd and the natural environment, with more than 61,000 of the red variety killed in Scotland between 2016 and 2017 alone. Typically the older males are the ones taken from the population.

How does a hunt unfold?

We talked to a keen British hunter, who wishes to remain anonymous, about the process of the sport. He too has shared the image of a stag he shot in the past and he too was the subject of "trolling" for doing so.

"We're incredibly specific about which animal is shot," he says. "You don’t just run up mountain and shoot the first deer you see. When I was there the other day we stalked for 10 hours and probably saw 200 deer but none of them were right to shoot so we didn’t fire a single bullet. They were either females or stags that were too young."

It's "ironic", he adds, that people are quite content to roam the aisles of a supermarket and peruse the shrink-wrapped meat of farmed animals, but can't abide the sight of a dead wild animal before it's been butchered.

Are Switlyk's photos in poor taste?

Arguably. What with her camouflage jumpsuit, rifle-toting stance, and enthusiastic captions - "beautiful wild goat - such a fun hunt!!" - at best, it's just not very British, and at worst, taunting and inflammatory.

Donald Cameron, Tory MSP for the Highlands and Islands, said the photographs “left a bad taste”, adding that the island, best known for its whisky, was a tourist attraction in its own right “without being associated with the obscure hunting of goats and rams, especially given the ‘trophy’ element of these pictures”.

Another spokesman for the Scottish Government said it understood why so many people "find these images of hunted animals being held up as trophies so upsetting".

Celebrities who entered the fray include vegetarian comedian Ricky Gervais, whose 'c-word' laced Twitter rant is unprintable, as well as Andy Murray's mother Judy, who tweeted: “Disgraceful. It’s a goat. And it’s in Scotland. On a beautiful island. Stop this pls @scotgov.”

What do pro-hunters say?

We spoke to Jamie Stewart, Director of the Scottish Countryside Alliance, who said: "I can’t see why the fuss over this. Shooting in Scotland is a highly regulated activity, the animals are often culled under guidance from Scottish Natural Heritage which in return reports directly to the Scottish Government.

"The hunting of wild goats and sheep is practised on every continent of the world and has done so for centuries.

© Provided by Telegraph Media Group Limited The Scottish isle of Islay - Credit: istock "In many countries, including our own, feral goats and sheep can pose a threat to the natural environment through uncontrolled grazing, and indeed to road users, and are often managed - and I mean culled - by the local authority."

As to the cruelty aspect, he argued: "Whether or not you approve of hunting activities, it is surely the manner in which the animal dies that comes into question. Those posted on social media by the American hunters are verified as having been shot with an appropriate calibre rifle, death would have been near instantaneous."

Furthermore, Stewart argues, the value of country sports tourism to Scotland is estimated to be in the region of a sorely-needed £155 million per year.

"With few other tourists about in the winter months, the rural economy of Scotland’s highlands and islands such as Islay depend on hunting activities and the added value from those visiting participants in the autumn and winter season," he said.

And what do anti-hunters have to say?

Elisa Allen, director of PETA UK (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) told Telegraph Travel: “This was killing for fun - simple bloodlust engaged in by a grinning ninny who dressed it up by calling it ‘culling’. Culling - a euphemism for killing - is a barbaric, cruel, and ineffective way to resolve conflicts with animals. You can't achieve ecological balance by blasting away at this animal and that - this has nothing to do with wildlife management.”

© Provided by Telegraph Media Group Limited Admire, don't shoot - Credit: istock Robbie Marsland, director of the League Against Cruel Sports Scotland, weighed in too, telling us: "Islay is such a beautiful part of Scotland and the wildlife are a huge part of this beauty, so for visitors to come to Scotland and glorify the hunting and killing of wild goats is abhorrent.

"We are deeply shocked by the pictures which have been splashed across social media and frustrated that there is no legislation to prevent this from happening and therefore no repercussions for the so called 'hardcore huntress'.

"It is sad that tourism companies are encouraging visitors to Scotland to stalk and hunt wildlife when we should instead be encouraging people to enjoy our wildlife without the need to kill it for sport."

Surely anyone who eats meat but opposes deer stalking is a hypocrite

You can't really argue with this. To eat meat is to pay someone else to do your killing for you, and those who don't like that don't eat it.

Key, too, is the fact that farmed animals lead lives of confinement, in often crowded conditions, on a massive scale. The wild deer, sheep and goat that roam the Scottish Highlands - most would argue - lead better lives, and die in their natural environment, not packed onto trucks and killed in a slaughterhouse. It's hard to justify the former but not the latter.

Indeed, while PETA doesn’t support the killing of deer either, it states: “Contemplate that in the UK alone, some 900 million animals a year are transported to the abattoir and killed for the passing entertainment of the palate. It's a different kind of slaughter, but it should also stop.”

These photos look familiar

Indeed. They hark back to earlier this year, when images of a female American hunter posing jubilantly with the body of a black giraffe she’d killed in South Africa went viral.

© Provided by Telegraph Media Group Limited Tess Thompson Talley with the giraffe she shot in South Africa - Credit: twitter Tess Thompson Talley infuriated the masses in July after posting the photo on Facebook with the caption: "Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite awhile."

As with the case of Switlyk, Talley wasn't breaking the law, and pointed out that "game management" of this nature was actually a method of conservation. The giraffe was beyond breeding age and had been killing younger males, leading to the further decline of an already endangered species, she maintained. Taking it out gave the next generation a better chance of survival.

Delve even further down the rabbit hole of this contentious debate and you'll enter lion territory, with some arguing that far from being a travesty, trophy hunting in Africa may be the only way to save the big cats from extinction.

Gallery: Species that have gone extinct in our lifetime (Photos)