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Sabrina-Corgatelli_3395602b

“I AM HUNTER! For that I make no excuses, no apologies, I back down to no one, and I hide from it not! I’m armed at all times, and I’m ready – either step up or shut up!! My money, my time and my efforts go to Lion hunting/conservation, for that I am proud!” – Sabrina Corgatelli in American huntress sparks fury by posting selfie with dead giraffe in South Africa [at telegraph.co.uk]

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97 COMMENTS

  1. She’s not even hot, and you see those manicured nails? I doubt she did any real work besides the guide holding the rifle and saying here you go, take a shot.

    I have no problem with people actually hunting Animals. I do find it annoying when people basically spend money on these vacations and basically have the animals lined up for them to shoot. It’s not like in the old days when actual hunters had to rough it and there was danger at stake.

  2. I dont understand what “Trophy Hunters” think is so impressive about killing a large animal like that. Kill a Jihadist a mile away with a head shot and I’ll be impressed. Kill an otherwise innocent defenseless living being for the sake of hanging on you wall and I’ll think your a coward. Hunting is for eating in my very humble opinion.

    • If you run your mouth about an entire group of people, while having zero idea about the positive impact they have on species and their habitats, I’ll think you’re (note proper grammar) a moron.

      Hunting has many legitimate and beneficial uses, in my humble opinion.

    • Wonder how much she paid the contractor to raise the ceiling in her trophy room for the giraffe mount…

      (Sarcasm)

    • So what is the difference between engaging our enemies up close or from a far. Even out most beloved snipers wanted some up close and personal time. So choose another argument.

    • Bottom line:

      If you oppose trophy hunting in Africa, you’re against conservation and your efforts, if they succeed, will make for a smaller wildlife population. It’s that simple.

      That goes for the US too, where a rancher can charge more for a trophy buck hunt than a meat/cull hunt, and use that money to keep her property as unfragmented wildlife habitat.

    • Knowledge of “trophy hunters” fail…again.

      Meat gets eaten.

      But, I don’t suspect the drive-by trolls that show up here for these stories, post once and never again, will EVER get this basic, simple fact.

  3. Why don’t you mighty trophy hunters go fight ISIS. Let’s see how tough you are when the prey shoots back.

    I have no problem with hunting for meat, but hunting just to kill something exotic is pathological.

    Sorry, Tom.

    • You should do a little self-educating on just how big of a positive impact hunters (yes, trophy hunters included) have on conservation efforts both within the United States and abroad in places like Africa.

      Then come back and tell me how anything here is “pathological.”

      • I took his comment as focusing soley on the motivation of trophy hunters, as distinct from any good that might come of it.

        Just to play Devil’s Advocate here, couldn’t the same be said of pedophile sex tourists, an international hunter of a different sort? After all, I suppose the money they pay does help the families of their victims, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make those predators any less pathological in their own right.

        • Nice false equivalence there. One activity is legal and actually provides a benefit to people without actively harming anyone, while the other is a gross violation of one’s person and dignity.

        • without actively harming anyone

          Except for, you know, the animal being shot. But of course it doesn’t matter. Top of the food chain FTW!

      • Jonathan’s right.

        I’m not talking about any money that may go in to conservation. That’s a weak justification for blood lust.

        • That’s a weak argument against trophy hunting, namely because it has absolutely no support whatsoever and cannot be given any because none exists for it.

        • You are ok with killing for meat, but if you ever worked in a commercial slaughterhouse you would probably be sickened by the mechanized death. We all got to eat, but we are insulated from that process by the Styrofoam and cellophane. I don’t see how killing an animal in the wild for a trophy is morally inferior if it is done as managed conservation and the meat is not wasted.

        • Wiregrass… I worked at a meatpacking plant as well as at the attached slaughterhouse and I still love pork. I also worked on a farm when I was young that had “chicken week” once a year butchering a mind boggling number of chickens and I still love chicken.

          I agree that the vast majority of people are insulated from it but the only rational explanation for that insulation in an adult is willful ignorance.

        • ShaunL – Yes I completely understand that. When I had my work study job at the University of Florida “Meats Lab” aka campus slaughterhouse, we would have a big kill on Saturdays. It was hard work and we built up an appetite. We stopped around lunchtime and had a big pot of chili. You develop a tolerance. I love eating meat too. But prefer it wild when possible. My beef is with people who reject hunting because they see it as barbaric but think nothing of how that burger got on their plate. A hunter can respect and appreciate the animal that provided their meal. You could say a somewhat spiritual connection to your food. Something that is lost with our civilized mass produced agriculture.

        • Agreed. I also had what I consider the benefit of eating the sunday dinner chicken that great grandma butchered that morning. The taste and smell of FRESH farm raised chicken on the dinner table helps to put things into perspective when it comes to killing and eating.

          I also doubt most people even know what a real unprocessed chicken/cow/pig tastes like and how much flavor is lost because of sub-standard feed, processing and storage.

      • About $7 million per day in excise taxes on arms, ammo and equipment for wildlife and habitat conservation in the US alone. And yeah, recreational shooters are a huge part of that equation, whether they know it or not.

    • You sound like someone this is trying to impose their white racist 1st world bigoted mindset against the noble Zimbabwean culture that is asserting their own laws of animal management and economic growth.

      Once again…why are you so racist?

    • “I have no problem with hunting for meat, “

      Then you have no problem with “trophy hunting,” either. The meat gets eaten in these cases.

      I think you MIGHT be confusing ‘trophy hunting’ with POACHING…where poachers leave a carcass to rot save the one part of the animal they wanted to sell on the black market. A few years ago, that was black bear bladders in the Smokies, for example.

      Your outrage is misplaced and you have a VERY incorrect notion of who/what a “trophy hunter” is.

    • “…Why don’t you mighty trophy hunters go fight ISIS. Let’s see how tough you are when the prey shoots back…”

      Where were you in ’68? VC make ISIS look like the pussies they are.

    • Come on, she not only posted the selfie after the fact, but she posted a countdown to safari in advance, complete with taunts of her “haters.”

      She sought the Internet’s attention and invited its enmity. The Internet shouldn’t resist in granting her wish and no one should cry over her getting it.

  4. Since a lot of people will throw out the line “hunting is only for eating”, I don’t get trophy hunting, let me help shed some light on the matter. Conservation programs. As a reminder, even though Africa looks pretty wild, all the various prey and predator animals are constrained to geographical locations, when numbers get too high for either group, since the natural balance is out of whack because of us humans, population control needs to happen. Now, the various Park Rangers could certainly shoot them for free. Therein lies the problem, for free. Even though us Americans think that conservation programs need all the support in the world, they’re usually not funded well in the country where they exist. But, if some American chick wants to come over and pay a buttload of money to shoot a giraffe that was going to be shot anyway, then that money goes to fund the various aspects of the conservation program. Also, hunting makes the animals valuable, because in order to maintain the hunting program animals have to exist. Hunters are not poachers, they just don’t kill everything willy-nilly. If you take hunters out of the equation then all you will have left are the poachers who don’t give a crap about long-term population viability. And as far as eating, I’m sure that there were dozens of people who benefited from the meat harvested from that giraffe. Remember, hunting is for the children!

    • For the anti hunting types their arguments are just another foray into a utopian fantasy world. To them the world should be all puppies and unicorns, no one should be violent or even rude, and no one and nothing should die of anything but natural causes, especially not with a gun. Their mind is like a Playskool set, everyone is always happy and smiling and people play with lions and penguins as if they were puppies. I’m sure they would threaten park rangers too if they knew what happened, just like they threaten the farmers that make the food they eat, but some rich American coming over for the express purpose of killing something is too much for them to handle, even when it benefits the community and habitat.

    • Why not just spay and neuter some, paid for by tourists?

      Better yet, why not cease infringing on the people’s right to keep and bear arms? Allow sales of firearms and ammunition and divert some of the excise tax revenue to conservation programs? It works in the U.S., without sponsoring bald eagle hunts.

      Aside from that, wasn’t Cecil a research animal illegally lured from a protected portion of the land? Sounds criminal in itself to me, completely separate from the matters of big game hunting and wildlife conservation.

      • Who would assume the after care for a neutered wild moose or bear? Keep them in captivity until the incision heals? Well since the are wild animals you’re likely to cause enough stress for them to die, so that probably won’t work very well.

      • Spaying and neutering is a bad suggestion for a LOT of reasons; for example, the goal in many conservation efforts is to INCREASE populations….healthy populations, anyway.

        Take the black rhino kerfluffle from a year or so ago (similar to Cecil, though I don’t recall the rhino having an actual name…way to step it up, fruitcakes). In that case, the old rhino that was harvested (and the resulting meat fed the community) was stopping the younger bulls from breeding, yet he was not doing so ‘imself. Net loss for the herd until he was taken out.

        But, hey…let’s BY ALL MEANS supplant logic and facts with emotion.

        The case of Cecil MIGHT be a one-off extra special bad case (since it looks in some ways more like a poaching deal than an actual “hunt”), but “trophy hunters” are getting painted with the same broad stroke brush as poachers and…

        THAT’S NOT RIGHT.

        Anyone jumping on the “Trophy Hunter” hate in these stories is letting themselves be duped and manipulated no differently than the Moms that claim to demand action about “gun violence.”

        The parallel is astounding…

      • “Why not just spay and neuter some, paid for by tourists?”

        Yeah, and abort others! Paid for by tax money directed to Planned Giraffe Parenthood…….

        To the extent “trophy” hunting is a problem, it is because it works a bit backwards evolutionarily; by seeking out the most impressive, hence generally healthiest, members of the species. Instead of the frailest, that most non trophy predators seek out. But with good management, this can be mitigated as well.

        If you spay and neuter animals, they still consume resources. And likely throw off whatever “social norms” may be at work in animal land. Reproduction is a very central and important part of animals lives. Not something to just experiment with. Just see how well progressive socio-sexual experimentation with reproductive systems, turned out for humans….

        • But that’s not actually the case for two reasons:

          1. For these massive trophy animals to get that big, they had to have gone through many years of growing and breeding already. Their genes have already been spread in the pool multiple times.

          2. “Fittest” doesn’t mean “biggest and strongest”, in an evolutionary sense, it just means “able to have the most sex before it dies”. If the predators are targeting the prey for the size of their antlers, then selecting for small antlers is exactly what they should be doing.

          tldr: “Adverse Selection” is incorrect.

  5. Fixed it for you 😉
    “I AM HUNTER! For that I make no excuses, no apologies. I back down to no one, and I hide from it not! I’m armed at all times, and I’m ready. Either step up or shut up! My money, my time and my efforts go to lion hunting/conservation, and for that I am proud!”

  6. Africa’s economy is going to tank even further in 3….2… then the liberals can move in and make them all democrats..

  7. I don’t see much sport in hunting a giraffe but I suppose if she wants to spend a lot of money to kill one that is up to her. Especially if the money went for a good cause, the meat provided food for someone that needed it and the hunting programs help the conservation efforts there. I could not kill a giraffe as I would feel like I would be slaughtering a defenseless animal. But I eat beef, chicken and pork so I probably somewhat hypocritical on my part. I just did not have to kill those myself so I can avoid the guilty feelings if I don’t think about it too much. And the meat that I eat comes from animals that are raised for that purpose. A game preserve is not really that much different from a farm environment when I think about it.

    • I wouldn’t consider a giraffe defenseless against a human. Ever see a video of two male giraffes fighting? Slamming their heads into each other… That force would likely be devastating to a human.

      Sure, we don’t normally think of giraffes as being anything more than large, silent, wandering herbivores, but they can certainly still kill the crap out of you.

      • Pretty much everything in Africa can kill the crap out of you, from the elephants to the bacteria. I don’t know about ISIS, but the VC were DEFINITELY not pussies. Respectful salute to the diminutive Mr. Charles.
        I’d hunted all my life until a few years ago when a brick must’ve fallen on my head or something, and just decided I wasn’t going to do any more killing, ever**, unless it was self defense. I don’t criticize anybody else for hunting, trophy hunting, spotlighting, poaching, etc. etc. because, hell, keeping my own train on the rails is a full-time job. Not even gonna voice my private opinion except to say that if you nail a blind, old circus lion roped to a tree (incident of several years ago), you’re not going to be dating my granddaughter. During my hunting years, I never bagged a trophy and I wasn’t really in it for the meat but always ate what I killed. I hunted because it got me out in the boonies with my friends, reaffirming essentials and putting my sedentary, desk-riding job in perspective. Hunting always reminded me that I was a male carnivore apex predator, self-sufficient enough to survive and thrive without sufferance of any other person or institution. There are as many motivations for hunting as there are hunters, and yes, some hunters get a rush from the act of killing, but so what? Could be that’s a harmless outlet for some drives I’d rather not have percolating on the bus seat next to my grandkids.
        At lease the hubbub over Cecil (with a name like that he probably wanted to die) gets the FUDDS off their asses for a weather check; they might notice a storm of liberalism brewing to sweep them away with the rest of we who refuse to crawl before their arrogance. The hoplophobic puke supply is vast, but limited. The ivory tower pinheads driving the media have finite air time, and the good Doctor makes a fine target. On that other hill. Over there.

        **Limited to mammals below homo sapiens. Does not include fish.

    • I had a work study job in college with the Animal Science Dept. My job was at the Meats Lab. Nice name for an abattoir. We sometimes killed as much as 70 cattle a day. And this was a research lab. The hogs were the worst. I got no pleasure from it, but developed an acceptance of it as necessary if we want to continue eating meat. But it is in no way morally superior to hunting.

  8. It sounds harsh, but the fact is that they could kill every living creature on the continent and it wouldn’t have anything to do with the price of eggs in China. Trophy hunting does not have to be understood or liked: there is a purpose and benefit behind it, even if I find it distasteful. If someone enjoys it, that’s their business. We don’t need social justice crusaders rounding up a digital posse for these people any more than we need it for anything else that isn’t any of our business.

    • My wife makes posts from my phone on FB frequently and doesn’t always switch accounts. It’s perfectly feasible that she actually made the post. Also, my wife makes tons of photo posts from my phone, where the picture is stored, which defaults to my account for quick uploads.

  9. I think she has class and character.
    I’m happy to see she has the opportunity to do something she enjoys that much.

    I see we have lots of PETA trolls here now. they are not worth the time .

  10. Regardless of what you might think about trophy hunting by tourists, to incite the braying mob like that is simply insane. She must have a few screws loose if she thinks there will be no consequences for her personal and professional life.

    • She’s a woman. She wants attention. And is about to age out of the bracket where she can get it my less abrasive, more traditional, means.

      • Or, maybe she wants to make a point by using her free speech rights. But anti-hunter logic says since she’s a woman she just wants attention, she’s a whore and should be raped. I know you didn’t say that last part, but that’s been a very common response by anti-hunters to women who hunt.

  11. I’m sick of the ignorant argument “I don’t mind hunting for food, but trophy hunting is blah blah blah”. Pretty much every hunter is a trophy hunter of some sorts. Whether you harvest the meat or not is secondary.

    • What a pile of crap.
      Millions of Americans fill their freezers every year by hunting, without ever displaying it, bragging about it or posting pictures on facebook. Taxidermy costs money.

      • And how many of those that DO pay for the taxidermy NOT fill their freezer with the meat?

        The line between “trophy hunter” and “meat hunter” is mostly non-existent…it’s a meme created to VILLIFY ALL HUNTING.

        It’s similar to “gun violence” and is used by the proggies in exactly the same way.

        Scary to see it working so well here of all places…

        • A large component of it, is definitely simple, old school “class warfare.” Especially when entering the realm of expensive hunts for exotic animals in faraway places.

          But aside from the most died-in-the-wool traditionalists living in isolation, by far most “meat hunters” I know, tend to compare the size of the bucks they just shot. Or fish they caught. And are not above adding an inch or two to their measurements….

  12. As a libertarian I have to say “who gives a f*ck?” As long as trophy hunters are obeying the local game management laws it’s nobody else’s business. I’m not into it, but it’s NONE OF MY BUSINESS. Bunch of whining busy bodies looking for an excuse to be outraged.

    • And you’re whining that they’re whining, right, Mike? I’ve never understood, in any context on any internet forum, a post about a topic or discussion being stupid. If you’re right, and they’re wrong, DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME reading and posting! It’s the equivalent of seeing a group of women in a corner at a party, walking over and saying, “Just so ya’ll know, you’re stupid for talking about that.”

    • then i hope punk ass bitch tastes like chicken.
      seriously, that longneck is just cuddling her because… boobies!

    • Your father probably wouldn’t like me. I’ve shot rats, goundhogs, racoons, possums and rabbits, and they all went to the landfill.

      I’m guessing your father didn’t live on a farm or have a vegetable garden, either.

  13. First, why are all aggressive 2A proponents somehow obligated to aggressively approve of all manner of trophy hunting? Many of us believe it should be legal, and understand the economics of the situation regarding conservation of habitat, but why are we obligated to sing the praises of unsporting hunting from the highest hilltops, or else lose the “man card” so many of the trophy hunters seem to be handing out? Some of you are like the liberal entitlement class who believe it’s not enough for the rest of us to support the legality of your activity, we have to cheer you on as you do it.

    Second, why have we allowed the left to take something on which most of us agree, that ILLEGALLY luring an animal out of a preserve to kill it is wrong (although we disagree with one another as to the severity of the moral crime), and gone on to let them engage us in a debate on whether hunting is wrong. That shouldn’t be the question here, but in engaging the left on it, we’ve allowed them to control the political dialogue, and further set us to squabbling amongst ourselves.

    Third, a man is not necessarily a pig if he comments on a woman’s physical appearance in this context. Assuming without arguing that our protagonist, pictured above, is indeed “hot”, a comment upon it is not necessarily the equivalent of a fratboy’s randy drooling, but may be a commentary upon the tendency to sell anything with sex appeal, including ideas or political stances. I noticed her physical appearance, but my first thought in that regard was: “marketing”.

    • I don’t see how wearing a polo shirt, cargo pants and heavy boots is marketing with sex appeal.

      I have pictures of myself holding fish I’ve caught. I was wearing a fishing shirt and hiking pants and Tevas. I would really hate it if someone told me I was whoring it up for attention just for wearing hunting or fishing gear and posing for a pic with a fish.

    • I’m with you william b.-do this and you’re on your own. Meh…at least she didn’t shoot the giraffe with a bow…

  14. You know whats sad…60% of all the lions that have died in about a 10 year span have been from Africans putting a orderless tasteless pesticide on meat and throwing it so lions eat it. They consider them vermin who kill there live stock.

    That pesticide is called Furadan. There have been numerous programs about it. Yet no collective outrage. At the rate there going nearly all the lions will be killed in our lifetimes.

    You want to do some good go sob about that.

    • An excellent point.

      The outrage in this story (and others like it) is TOTALLY manufactured and completely manipulated.

      It’s sad to see the technique working so well on POTG – a group so feverishly dedicated to “truth, facts and logic.” I guess that dedication applies only to one’s pet issue?

      Sad.

    • Furadan is hell on wildlife. I came face to face with it when I was a farmer. We had an infestation of grasshoppers in a pivot of alfalfa (that’s a 125 acre circle for those who don’t know anything about modern farming). The local ag supply dealer wanted to sell me some Furadan to chemigate onto the field. Furadan is a carbamate which becomes systemic when applied to growing plants – ie, an insect need not be showered or come into contact with the poison, all it needs to do is eat the plant and the insect is now poisoned. The plants retain the carbamate in the pant tissued for a couple of weeks.

      After about an hour’s research, I wanted nothing to do with Furadan. It would have had a secondary kill rate where I would have been picking up buckets and buckets of dead crows, songbirds, etc clear up to raptors – and perhaps even the mule deer who fed in that field. Carbamates are hell on wildlife. Furadan is one of the most lethal insecticides for secondary kills out there.

      I used a light chemigation application of malathion instead, which has little systemic residual when used at the rate I applied it, and it is broken down by sunlight in about three days. When I saw how many birds perched on the pivot, filling their bellies with dead hoppers, I was very glad I did my homework.

      Most people today don’t know jack about farming. They get their panties in a wad about crap like “Cecil” and ignore much, much larger wildlife losses.

      • “Carbamates are hell on wildlife.”

        As a chemist that once worked for a company developing experimental pesticides…you ain’t just a-whistling Dixie.

        I’ll point out, too, that the .gov oversight with OSHA and all their MSDS’s are pretty funny to behold when what you are working with has an MSDS that says “No Known Data.”

        That may well have been my first (as a young man) exposure to “Security Theater.” Well, in this case I guess it was “Safety Theater” but the concept holds. MSDS’s do NOTHING to stop stuff like Aldicarb and other fun things from getting into your bloodstream and FU-ing you BAR.

        Cool too that Chem programs nationwide are getting away from teaching the young lads how to actually safely handle stuff like that. I think that’s no accident, myself.

    • They’re still there. Just called guides these days. Now, the hunter is freed to only take the easy shots.

      And, for completeness, some of them are not guides. Those guys, are now re branded as poachers.

  15. Congrats on feeding her quest for attention. TTAG bites the bait every time.

    Also, WTF is wrong with your commenting system? How is posting a comment 3 minutes after the last “posting too quickly”?

  16. Hunting animals so you can eat them… unless you’re a vegetarian it’s hard to make any consistently principled objection.

    Hunting animals so you can simply kill them and display their body parts in your house?

    Unless you’re a future serial killer with a background slaughtering neighborhood house cats… this is a little easier to dislike.

    • “Hunting animals so you can simply kill them and display their body parts in your house?”

      You must actually BE blind to think this is what hunting IS…

  17. Notice she doesn’t look dirty or sweaty. I suspect another rich sucker chauffeured by a guide to a baited animal so they can get a glamour shot. A common wild turkey someone hunts for real is more impressive.

  18. What I find funny is people are just fine with someone else killing an animal and then putting the meat into a nice plastic tray for them to buy at Wal Mart. Then they lose their shit over someone who kills an animal, and then the meat is given to other people to eat. Same actions, same result. The difference is the money spent on the hunt goes to conservation. The money spent at Wal Mart, goes to Wal Mart.

  19. There is a difference between:

    1. killing an animal that can easily produce offspring and is treatening to unbalance nature

    and

    2. killing an animal on the brink of extinction with a low birth rate in the name of conservation.

    Surely more needs to be done to protect one over the other.

    The other arguments don’t matter right now. We need to get our priorities straight and not hunt animals that are being wiped out. The lion for example is already extinct in 7 african countries. Rhinos don’t exactly have a a high rate of offspring… It can’t get any more obvious. There’s other way to conserve… trophy hunting is not the only means to survival.

    Education and supporting local african governments is how other countries can help out.

    let’s hope it’s not too late. Based on the comments in this thread, it may be…

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