Let's start from the beginning.
It all began last year with Melissa Bachman.
Melissa Bachman is a TV host who mostly hosts hunting television programs. In November, she posted a picture with a dead male lion on her Facebook page with the caption:
“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60 yards on this beautiful male lion…what a hunt!”
The internet reacted accordingly by losing its mind. And then this past week it happened again.
This is Kendall Jones.
Kendall Jones is a 19-year-old girl from Cleburne, Texas. And recently she's become a fairly well-known figure on Facebook for her controversial page.
She's been hunting big game in Africa since she was 13 years old. When she's not hunting, Jones is a cheerleader for Texas Tech University.
So, yeah, she posts these pictures to her Facebook page...
...which, yeah, yikes.
Not cool. For anyone who has been on safari in Africa, you know just how fucked up it is to kill a lion. Here's why.
I spent a few days in Botswana last month with lion experts and filmmakers, Beverly and Dereck Joubert.
One thing that the Jouberts said to me that really stuck was, "Hunting a lion is the most cowardly thing you can do."
So when Melissa Bachman or Kendall Jones or anyone who safari hunts posts pictures of their kills, I'm not impressed.
First off, "stalking" lions means you have a guide. That guide takes you out in a big van.
You find buffalo.
And BOOM. There's a lion sitting in the shade. Relaxing.
Now for the lions themselves.
Here were three things I learned:
1. Lions are big cats (duh). They act like them too.
2. They just sleep and sit around all day, like cats.
3. Lions do not give a shit about you. They see you as that big van. They don't mess with you.
There was one instance when we were out with the lions and they sat next to our truck and used it as shade. They were literally three feet away from us.
Here a male lion is walking right next to the car I'm in.
Like, I am straight up chilling next to a pride of lions.
Still just sitting there. They aren't moving.
Just to show you how incredibly difficult it is to hunt a lion...here's a selfie I took next to one.
As you can see, the lion tried to run away from us.
JK, he fell asleep...
...and tried to block the light from his eyes.
To sum things up:
Hunting a lion isn't very hard. To kill a lion you have to be a coward.