Hunter in Dead Giraffe Photo: It Was 'Delicious'

A hunter whose photo of her and a dead giraffe sparked global outrage has a message for the world: She's "absolutely" still hunting, MSN reports. "It's a hobby, it's something that I love to do," Tess Talley said Friday on CBS This Morning. "I am proud to hunt. And I am proud of that giraffe." Talley recalled how she put the giraffe to use after killing it in South Africa in 2017, making a gun case and throw pillows, and described the animal as "delicious." She also claimed the killing occurred during conservation hunt aimed at containing wildlife populations. "You say it's about conservation, but the smile [...] it seems like there's a lot of pleasure in it, too, a lot of joy," said one of the co-hosts. Talley's response: "You do what you love to do. It's joy."

"Everybody thinks that the easiest part is pulling the trigger. And it's not," she went on. "That's the hardest part. But you gain so much respect, and so much appreciation for that animal because you know what that animal is going through. They are put here for us. We harvest them, we eat them." Asked why she didn't just give her money to non-lethal conservation, the hunter said she "would rather do what I love to do" instead of throwing money at someone "and not know particularly where it is going." But Kitty Block, head of The Humane Society, says Africa's giraffe population has plummeted 40% over the past 30 years. "They're not driven by this to be conservationists," says Block, per CBS News. "If they wanted to be a good conservationist they don't have to kill the animal to do it." (More hunting stories.)