Trophy hunter says she's 'proud to hunt' in wake of controversy over viral giraffe photo

The American hunter who drew lots of criticism for a photo of her posing with the body of a giraffe that she killed is speaking out for the first time about how she is “proud to hunt.”

Tess Talley is the trophy hunter who was at the center of controversy in June 2018 when the photo of her alongside her kill surfaced on a Twitter account called AfricaDigest. In the tweet, Talley was called a “white American savage” for shooting a rare black giraffe during a hunting trip in South Africa. Now, after facing widespread condemnation, the hunter told CBS This Morning that she’s still hunting.

“It’s a hobby, it’s something that I love to do,” Talley said in the interview on Friday. “I am proud to hunt and I am proud of that giraffe.”

Although she enjoys hunting and even looks gleeful in the picture alongside her kill, Talley went on to say that the particular hunt was a “conservation hunt.”

“We are preserving the wildlife,” Talley said. “We are managing herds, we’re managing numbers of wildlife.”

Still, many people don’t believe that to be true, especially after Talley shared with CBS that she now has a gun case and multiple pillows decorated with the hide of the giraffe, whose meat she said was “delicious.”

When asked to further explain her conservation argument, Talley ultimately said, “It's tough. It's a science. It's really hard. I'm not a conservationist, I'm a hunter.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Video of father and son killing mama bear, cubs sparks outrage: 'Just disgusting and abhorrent'

• Hunter's photo with bloody hands and 'trophy kill' mountain lion under attack: 'Pure psychopathic evil'

• Woman alleges Tinder banned her hunting photos: 'If I were a man, this wouldn't be an issue'

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