Trigger Finger: A Narrative Exploration of Women and Trophy Hunting in David Chancellor's Safari Club

Abstract

In photographer David Chancellor’s Safari Club (2012), hunters are captured with their kills in overstuffed trophy rooms of the hunters’ designed spaces. One photograph from the series is of a woman hunter and her trophies (see Figure 1). This photograph sparked my investigation of women hunters and, in this article, I compare Chancellor’s image of a woman hunter to other depictions of women hunters in popular culture. I specifically question my own positionality as a woman who has never hunted through self-reflexive narrative, ecofeminism and pro-hunting feminist theories. This article raises questions around women, trophy hunting, and how these are understood in different contexts: in my current home in Texas, by a world-wide network of readers to the New York Times, and by me.