A hunter who shares photos of her kills on social media has defended her hobby, saying it is a ‘beautiful’ way to connect with nature.
Sammi Lee, from outside Christchurch, New Zealand, hunts everything from big game to geese and ducks with her fiancé James and delights in sharing the snaps on Instagram. The 22-year-old, who works as a contractor and calf rearer, revealed she has received death threats over her Instagram posts.
However she hit back at critics, saying hunting is ‘amazing’ and insisting it is not ‘all about the killing’.
Sammi Lee, from outside Christchurch, New Zealand, hunts everything from big game to geese and ducks with her fiancé James. They both like shooting. Pictured, Sammi with a wallaby shot in January 2017
The 22-year-old, who works as a contractor and calf rearer, revealed she has received death threats over her Instagram posts. Pictured, Sammi with a deer she killed on a recent hunt
Sammi hit back at critics, saying hunting is ‘amazing’ and insisting it is not ‘all about the killing’. Pictured, Sammi with ducks killed on a recent hunt
Sammi and James’ house, pictured, is a shrine to hunting and is decorated with trophies of their previous kills. The couple defend their hobby by saying they make use of all of the animal
‘Hunting isn’t always about killing animals, hunting is about getting out and filling our freezer to save money on groceries,’ she said.
‘Hunting is about either spending time with your mates or taking a walk through the bush by yourself to get away from the world a little. Everyone sees it as “disgusting” or “horrible” but it’s not.
‘We can sit on a ridge for hours and hours watching animals taking photos before we take a shot, it’s not all about the killing but when we do finally get to put an animal on the ground we appreciate what we’ve got.’
Self-confessed tomboy Sammi grew up in an outdoorsy family and first tried hunting at 16. She immediately fell in love with the sport and now heads out with James and their dogs Rhea and Tikka.
Sammi and James with taxidermy he is working on. The couple enjoy hunting together
Sammi smiles as she poses with a kill on a recent hunting trip with her fiance James, who is also an enthusiast. Sammi said she ‘loves everything about hunting’
Sammi, pictured left and right, said she has always been a tomboy and likes being outdoors
Sammi said she enjoys ‘disappearing’ with her fiance and going hunting. Pictured, Sammi smiles as she poses next to a stag shot dead on a recent hunting trip in New Zealand
The couple defend their actions by saying they use as much of the animal as possible: eating the meat and making the skins into rugs.
Heads are stuffed or turned into trophies while the dogs get to feast on the rest of the carcass.
She continued: ‘I love everything anything about hunting. The main thing I love is that my grocery bill is never as big as anyone else’s. I can also disappear into the hills with no reception nothing and get away from anything that has been going on,’ she said.
‘I also love that my fiancé is my best mate and we can just disappear the two of us and have the best time of our lives. We are actually going on a week-long hunting trip for a honeymoon and if that doesn’t say how much we love hunting then I don’t know what does.
Sammi, pictured left, grew up fishing and still enjoys spending days on the water
Sammi and James are joined on their hunting trips by their dog Tikka, left. Right, Sammi
Sammi, pictured in the wilderness, said there is nothing ‘hard’ about hunting
‘I also love the views and seeing the animals do natural things, not just the animal you’re about to go shoot but the ones around him like my fallow buck and his three girls hanging around him watching the way they all interact is just so cool to see.
‘I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy but this is the way I was born and raised so I’ll always be like this and my kids will be the exact same and learn to live off the land because there’s nothing wrong with wild game.
‘In our eyes, nothing tastes better than wild game but a lot of people don’t like the taste of wild game, it’s a lot stronger than supermarket meat and people don’t realise it until they have a try.
‘After shooting big game, the first couple of days we let the animal hang in a chiller, what this does is it helps tenderise the meat and makes it taste better. We then skin the animal completely off, exposing all the meat and its muscles groups. Once exposing all this we start cutting everything up and getting it labelled and bagged. We don’t use a butcher or anyone for this process as my fiancé is a taxidermist and one of our best friends is an ex-butcher.
Sammi and James pictured with geese they hunted. Sammi said she and James make fresh ‘geese nuggets’ and then bag the rest to store in the freezer
Sammi with James and their dog Tikka, left. Pictured right, Sammi at home with Tikka
‘Everything on an animal can be used for something. The skin can be tanned up and turned into a flat skin rug or if a trophy, the skin and head can be used to create a shoulder mount. Our dogs always end up with the carcass.
‘With our waterfowl we mostly breast all of our ducks and geese. We normal make fresh duck or goose nuggets and then the rest is bagged and stored in the freezer. The body of the animal has no use anymore and gets binned.
‘Our dogs are not allowed to eat the frames of these birds due to our one-year-old black lab been a waterfowl dog and we don’t want her having a bad habit of retrieving a duck and then eating it.
‘Most of the people I hang around with hunt and they know it’s my life especially if you walk into our house. We have animals mounted everywhere and if they aren’t mounted we have their whole skulls and we also have flat skins.
Sammi’s fiance James is a taxidermist. Pictured, Sammi helps work on one of their kills
Sammi on lookout from the top of her truck during a hunting trip in New Zealand
A collection of waterfowl killed by Sammi on a recent shoot. The couple eat the birds they kill
‘My family loves seeing my hunting photos however there are still people around me that try to ignore that side of me as that’s not what they like doing and I’m fine with that. On Instagram I get a lot of love and support I get the odd person here and there that is completely against what I do but they never seem to ask why I do it.
‘I’ve had people tell me to go kill myself, I’ve had people try to find any photo they can of a dead animal and try getting it removed from my Instagram. I’ve had people comment in languages I don’t understand with angry faces and everything, but you just ignore them because they have nothing better to do than be a keyboard warrior.’
Sammi dreams of being able to go to America to hunt a mountain lion or black bear one day and says she hasn’t run into too many problems whilst hunting but improving her fitness has been a learning curve for her.
‘There isn’t anything ‘hard’ about hunting but if there was one thing I’d tell my 16-year-old self it would definitely be about fitness, there is hill fit and just fit. There is a massive difference between the two as when you’re climbing hills and mountains you’re using different muscle groups,’ she said.
‘Head down and push yourself to the top and never give up, stop as much as you like but your main goal is to get onto those tops and hope for an animal. Shooting an animal is the reward for the hard work that goes in, from the prepping of the hunt to carrying an animal back to the truck.
‘Hunting is a sport and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but each hunt will have a memory you’ll never forget even if it is only the view.’