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The Miseducation of the Kendall Jones Story

By Mike WillandJuly 10, 201457 Comments

LAST UPDATED: May 1st, 2015

Kendall Jones is a nineteen year old Texas Tech cheerleader who loves to hunt big game on the Dark Continent of Africa. She’s been doing so with her father since she was thirteen years of age. She has gotten a lot of publicity lately after a small group of animal loving fanatics reacted poorly to posted photographs on her Facebook page, as she stood over some endangered animals with a gleam in her eyes and a smile she wore from ear to ear. This group started a campaign to delete her photos on the social media giant’s website through the power of petition, and earlier this week there motion was carried. Facebook, arguably one of the last bastions of up-yours to the world’s super powers of government and corporation left on earth, turned its back on the young lady and her respective right to do nothing wrong. They have officially removed the photos of her and the many trophies of Africa she was posed with.

kendall jones lion

College Cheerleader and avid outdoorsgirl Kendall Jones has received hundreds of threats on her life for legally taking several African animals including the lion shown above.  

The company issued a statement that they will take down any content “that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse.”

Ms. Jones is clearly innocent of all these charges. Ms. Jones took every one of her animals legally; none of them were used in a fight and none of her content shows or even remotely gives the impression of abuse. She didn’t beat the animals with a club; she took them with a weapon. In fact, a closer examination into the story of her and the rare rhino reveals that she took the animal by way of a tranquilizer dart after it had been recently attacked by a lion and injured. A veterinarian was able to take a closer examination and give some care to the animal while it was under. If anything, the only abuse one can draw conclusion to is the lack of factual information being shared by many major media outlets that seem to be deliberately promoting the story with unscientific views and opinions. Either that or they simply aren’t doing their jobs, mainly the actual research portion.

kendall jones with rhino

Kendall Jones shown here with a Rhino after she darted it. A local veterinarian closely examined the animal after a recent lion attack. No harm was done to the animal. Except by the lion of course.

Many seem to be withholding the truth in this story – including Ms. Jones.

Let me preface that I am a whitetail deer hunter and only a whitetail deer hunter. My reasons are simple. I only kill what I eat, just as my dad taught me from when I was a young boy. I know I am supposed to be sticking up for all hunters but cannot always do so as I simply do not agree with all hunters. I imagine the same rings true in all walks of life.

Ms. Jones has replied and stated on more than one occasion that she hunts these Dr. Seuss like creatures to help feed the local community and that hunting these animals is just “good conservation”.

I am a hunter and I find that hard to believe. I find it hard to believe that anyone would travel halfway around the world, pay well into the five figures, and then say they did it all for anything less than the future taxidermy bill, the trophy, and the bragging rights. I am smart enough to recognize that you did not spend the thousands more it would have cost to get that zebra meat home – all of it. And if you’re not consuming the table fare the animal you took blessed you with, then why kill it in the first place?

Justifying a kill by spouting words of goodwill doesn’t mean you’re doing goodwill. No, your intentions when spending that kind of money are to kill a trophy (and rare) dodo.

This is a fine line. This is where the character that is Ms. Jones and I take different paths. This is where our two fathers, if they ever were to meet, would not have seen eye to eye. And that is what the soul of hunting is, it’s the passion and tradition handed down by our parents and their parents before them. That is something the anti-hunting community will never understand and consequently never break. No one polices their own like we do. We know all too well the truth that is out there in the field, on the water and in the woods. While some may question and even bash me because of my stance against such hunting, I believe this is the kind of rhetoric that only makes our little community stronger.

I don’t condemn Ms. Jones and her ways of hunting. I just don’t support them either. I know the facts, and I don’t deviate from the truth. Ms. Jones did nothing wrong when she visited Africa to hunt alongside her father. Each and every animal was taken with legal means and within her own right. I respect that.

In fact, I hope to bring my daughters into the sport one day. I hope to teach them just as my dad did with me. If this young Texan helps me get them interested through her on-field leadership of woman in hunting, then by all means Ms. Jones keep doing what you’re doing. The parenting will be my responsibility and not yours. It will be my responsibility to show them the difference between our two respective ideas of hunting. The difference between me and the anti-hunting community is that I get that. They can never understand hunting because they have never tried it. Never seen their dog’s true love of life as it waits beside you as a flock of geese bust in. Never heard the bugle of an elk so close it shatters your every nerve. Never seen the sun rise while sitting twenty feet closer to God. 

The antis think we’re all crazy, blood thirsty savages, and that they have all the answers for how we all should act and live. I think of that seldom as I enjoy what Mother Earth blesses me with each summer night alongside my grill.

Kendall Jones may not be hunting’s greatest posterchild, but she is certainly not the blood thirsty savage that many have made her out to be. She’s just a daughter, hunting with her dad.

 

 



Mike Willand
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