The Daily BuzzTV hunter Eva Shockey responds to threats after posting photos of dead bear
Eva Shockey, 26, has a pretty good shot.
On Friday, the avid hunter and co-host of the Outdoor Channel’s “Jim Shockey’s Hunting Adventures” shot and killed a 510-pound black bear in Hyde County, North Carolina.
She posted a photo of “the biggest bear of my life” on Facebook, where it quickly went viral.
Almost immediately, negative comments flooded her page, berating Shockey and the sport. One person told her to “kill that worthless dog you have instead.”
“Apparently hunting a bear, eating/donating all of the meat and putting money towards conservation is a bad thing, but killing my puppy is ok. If this logic isn’t totally insane, I don’t know what is,” Shockey responded on Facebook.
Other commenters wished Shockey dead. Among the vilest comments was one that said that Shockey’s mother “should have died instead of giving birth” to Shockey. Another comment suggested that her father should have shot her instead of shooting the bear.
Shockey blocked and deleted the hateful comments — mostly so that others don’t have to read them.
“Some days I’ll wake up and I’ll literally have — I’ve had 5,000-plus death threats in one day,” she told The Blaze.
"I knew it was going to be this way going into it," she told Field and Stream. “My dad warned me before I even got involved with the show that I was going to have to deal with anti-hunters. I’m a huge target for them because I’m a smiley young woman, and I’m different than who they’re used to dealing with.”
She responded to the backlash on Fox and Friends on Monday.
"Honestly, if anything, it makes me a little bit sad because the people that are saying these things, I think they’re showing hatred because they are fearful. They don’t understand why we hunt. They don’t understand hunting and conservation and all the good things that we’re doing," she said.
Shockey said she’s trying to use the attention — good and bad — to help educate people about hunting.
"I believe with every part of me that what I’m doing is right, so there’s nothing that I’m apologizing for," she said, adding that the bear population is rapidly rising in the area of North Carolina where she shot the bear.
“Bears in this county alone, are responsible for over $1,000,000 in damage per year to crops and farm equipment,” she posted on Facebook.
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Shockey told Field and Stream, "If I can affect a few people in a positive way and get more girls interested in hunting through Facebook or Twitter, then it’s worth it. I’ll take the bad with the good."
