League Against Cruel Sports Blog reply to triophy killing

Posted 25th October, 2018
Author: Nick Weston - Head of Campaigns

It’s the old adage isn’t it? Ask a convict what he did wrong, he won’t say he broke the law, he’ll say he got caught.

Well, that seems to be the British Association for Shooting and Conservation’s (BASC) approach to dealing with the recent outrage following professional “huntress” (is that a thing?) Larysa Switlyk’s killing of a goat in Scotland.

When I heard that BASC had condemned this incident, for a brief moment I naively believed that maybe even the shooting industry has a line you shouldn’t cross. Which it turns out is true, after a fashion, just not in the way I briefly hoped.

It is as follows:

“By choosing to use social media to tell the word about her exploits hunting goats and other animals on the small Scottish island of Islay, [Switlyk] has found herself thrust onto the news pages of ... a host of other papers and websites. And it doesn’t make pleasant reading.

“All our hard work and good intentions can be undone in an instant on social media.”

“It has the power to educate and inform. It also has the power to alienate vast swathes of the population, the very people we need to get onside - and keep onside - if shooting is to survive the challenges ahead.”

So just to be clear, the only thing she did wrong is post the picture on social media? Not the unnecessary slaughter of a sentient being? Not revelling in the death of another animal? No, just that she got herself caught.

It tells you everything that you need to know doesn’t it? They haven’t even attempted to defend the killing of animals. Haven’t even bothered to pretend that it has anything to do with wildlife management (it doesn’t). Haven’t attempted to understand why the world is out raged. She did something far worse than kill an animal: she got caught doing it.

And by doing so she exposed the shooting community for what they really are. SHAMELESS KILLERS.