We got another lesson in the power of images last week with the release of the elevator video of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then fiancée (and now wife) Janay Palmer with a vicious left hook.
This isn’t the first time the release of an image has elevated an incident from the seemingly obscure to the subject of constant media attention. Images have a way of making the abstract concrete. The young girl running from her burning village in Vietnam, her clothes burnt away in a napalm attack. John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket during the funeral procession of the assassinated president. Dorothea Lange’s dust bowl images from the 1930s.
They make us know something in a way we didn’t before.
It’s important that hunters and anglers keep this phenomenon in mind when the impulse strikes us to share photographs with the world. Whether we intend it or not, the photos we post on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram tell the non-hunting/angling public a story. And the public may not like the story they’re hearing.
The controversy that surrounded the Facebook images posted by Texas Tech cheerleader and big game hunter Kendall Jones didn’t have the kind of universal impact the Rice case has had. But within the hunting community, it has stirred a debate just as passionate. Is it OK to hunt animals you have no intention of eating? And what about photos? My Facebook profile is filled with photos of friends with fish. While a small handful question the virtue of catch-and-release fishing, this remains a relatively safe public photo zone. Most of my non-fishing friends find my catch-and-release ethic noble, albeit slightly odd. “You mean you don’t eat them?” they ask with quizzical expressions.
Slightly more dangerous, but still acceptable to most audiences other than the attendees of PETA activist-of-the-year awards banquet, are the photos of myself and my dog with game birds I’ve killed.
These photos remain safe for a couple of reasons. The first is that I eat those birds. The second is that humans have a bit of species bias toward mammals. Dead fish and birds seem acceptable to many folks who are otherwise queasy about the killing of furry critters.
I only have just one photo of myself posing with a dead mammal: a bull elk I killed in Arizona a decade ago. I scanned the fuzzy snapshot and the grainy image can be found on my Facebook if someone looks hard enough. It’s a bridge too far for some, but most are still OK with it since — antlers or not — elk means meat.
The Rubicon the general public mostly refuses to cross are photos or videos of hunters and what are usually described as trophy animals. The African “Big Five” — lion, elephant, cape buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros — qualify since the meat of these animals is rarely consumed by the hunter, though it’s often shared with locals in need of a protein supplement to an otherwise inadequate diet.
There are times when trophy hunting can play a role in conservation: rogue elephants, for instance, trampling the crops of locals and further depleting their meager food supply. The animals will be killed anyway, so why not let some Safari Club type jet in and pay big bucks for the “privilege?”
I get that. The outrageous fees some of these dudes pay so they can wrap up their personal Big Five will pay for a lot of rangers to protect the rest of the herd from poachers. But it’s naive to think that the non-hunting public is going to share that understanding.
Non-hunters can have a powerful response to a photo of some dude grinning over the carcass of a lion or elephant, and trust me, “conservationist” isn’t their response.
You have every right to pose for a DGDH photo (dead game, dumb hunter), but maybe the best wall to affix it to is the one in your den, rather than Facebook.