Hunting, fishing, and social media

For those of us who fish, hunt, and trap, sharing images and stories of our harvest is what we do. This desire to memorialize the hunt and the game is nothing new. It’s been happening since man figured out how to make ink stick to rock walls and caves. My guess is there have also always been people who didn’t approve of hunting or the sharing of hunting success in any form. However, the Internet — and specifically social media — have created an environment that can turn one hunting picture into an international incident in the blink of an eye. Social media sensitivity Sensitivity to hunting images is something with which I’m well acquainted. One of my very first brushes with it came about 30 years ago, several years before the Internet was integrated into our culture. I had just started writing for the local newspaper, and was given a lot of page space in the Saturday edition. My assignment was to write about a non-traditional winter pursuit, so I chose hunting for snowshoe hare. I wrote the feature and submitted several images, including one of yours truly holding a dead hare by its feet. I was also smiling widely. That Saturday, the hare image was printed in a nearly full-page layout. On Monday, the editor rang me up and asked me to come in to see him. “Some readers took issue with your picture,” he said, pushing the letters towards me. “There was nothing wrong with your piece,” he continued, “but the image of you holding that dead rabbit is all they saw. Just remember your audience includes a lot of non-hunters and people on the fence.” I did many more hunting pieces for that paper over the next two decades and some of articles included harvest pics, but I never forgot that editor’s advice. Controversies abound Today, things are very different. The Internet, especially social media, has changed the game. As I write this column, a controversy over an image of a Canadian hunter holding a dead cougar is just winding down. The cougar was taken legally and the meat was consumed; not normally news. However, the picture of the hunter holding the cat, coupled with a disparaging tweet about said hunter by a former prime minister’s wife, soon got the attention of mainstream media. The story caught fire on social media, and was widely shared, with