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This Morning viewers furious over trophy hunter being given ‘air time’

It was a controversial debate

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This Morning viewers became furious over a debate that was held about trophy hunting, especially as a trophy hunter gave his view as to why hunting should continue.

Diggory Hadoke and Will Travers were invited on the show to discuss the controversial topic. Diggory is a game hunter, and Will Travers is president of the Born Free Foundation which is an international wildlife charity.

Two years ago in Zimbabwe Cecil the lion was killed by a trophy hunter, and within the last few days news broke that the lion’s son had been killed by a trophy hunter as well. So Diggory and Will were brought onto This Morning to discuss whether trophy hunting should be banned.

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Diggory started his argument by telling stand-in This Morning presenters Rylan Clark-Neal and Sarah Greene: “Hunting properly managed in areas where local people are empowered to protect wildlife but to sell the right to hunt some of them, a sustainable number, makes the wildlife have a value to those local people in a way that it otherwise doesn’t have.

“And that means the locals are protecting the wildlife instead of killing it and they’re getting money from the hunter to hunt a small number of those animals.”

He continued to explain his side of the debate: “The kill at the end of the hunt is part of a wider thing, it’s complete misrepresentation of what hunters are about to say that they simply pay money and go and murder an animal.”

He went on to give a statement that would prove to be quite graphic and controversial: “If you wanted to do that you could go to your pet shop and buy kittens and strangle them, it’s not what we’re about,” presenter Rylan Clark-Neal quickly cut in to say: “Which we obviously don’t advise you do at home.”

Diggory’s argument for hunting caused an outcry on social media with many calling it ‘babaric’. One viewer tweeted: “#ThisMorning let me hunt this fool of man.. Drop him in field and give a gun no better still a knife and let me hunt him see how he likes it.”

Many more were in shock that the trophy hunter was allowed to give his opinion. Another person tweeted: “This hunter is a complete [expletive] standing up for trophy hunters!! Get him off the sofa, don’t give him air time.”

A third disgusted viewer didn’t hide how they felt, as they took to social media to say: “Watching #ThisMorning and seeing anyone try to justify murdering an innocent animal makes me sick to my stomach.”

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Further comments from Diggory sparked anger amongst the viewers as he said: “I have eaten buffalo before. I have shot it, eaten it and then taken the skull and horns back to my home to hang them on my wall as an homage to the animal.

“It’s an homage because I have taken weeks out of my life in difficult situations to hunt this animal,” Diggory protested.

But Will Travers wanted to make one thing clear in his counter argument against what Diggory had already claimed. He said: “Trophy hunting is not an animal control method at all.”


Nancy Brown
Associate Editor