Aryanna Gourdin is 12 years old.
But she isn’t into Frozen or softball or Pretty Little Liars or anything like that.
Well, she may be into those things, we don’t want to presume.
But Aryanna Gourdin has become a source of heated debate online because she’s most definitely into hunting.
Gourdin and her father, Eli, recently took a trip from Utah to South Africa, with Aryanna excitedly sharing a photo on her Facebook page of her sitting on top of a dead zebra.
She’s holding a bow and arrow and she has written the following as a caption:
“One of my dream hunts for sure.”
Should a 12-year old really be out hunting for big game?
Gourdin sees nothing wrong with it.
“It’s something I cherish and enjoy and I want other people to see what I experienced,” she said in an interview with Good Morning America.
This father-daughter trip was one of several the pair have taken over the past five years, but her Facebook postings have turned Gourdin into a topic of heated discussion.
One recent photo received over 73,000 comments, with some users are calling Aryanna “sick” and an “animal hater.”
In a post on Tuesday, Gourdin did acknowledge the uproar.
“My last profile picture was very offensive to others and I have learned my lesson with that pose, [sic] I apologize.”
But Gourdin’s father doesn’t want his daughter saying she’s sorry for having a hobby.
Or, on a grander scale, he doesn’t want her saying she’s sorry for who she is.
“We’re proud to be hunters and we’ll never apologize for being a hunter,” Eli told GMA.
Eli also wants to clear up misunderstandings about hunting: the giraffe he and his daughter killed? The one she’s posing with above?
It was offered to them for a kill by the farm they were visiting.
“They actually had an older giraffe that was eating up valuable resources other giraffes need to survive,” he said.
He also said that the meat from the animals they’ve killed was donated to a local village and will feed 800 orphans over the next month.
Despite the controversy, Aryanna said she doesn’t plan to give up one of her favorite activities.
“I would never back down from hunting,” she says. “I am a hunter and no matter what people say to me, I’m never going to stop.”
This is merely the latest in a long line of viral hunting controversies.
Remember Walter Palmer? The dentist who reached a level of Internet infamy when he killed a lion named Cecil?
Or Kendall Jones, the college student who also liked to post photos of her kills online?
Facebook actually deleted a number of these images, stirring a major controversy in July of 2014.
What do you think of a 12-year old hunting?
Is it totally fine, but maybe she shouldn’t pose with her prey like this?
Are people overreacting to the whole situation?
Or is it sickening that a father and a daughter would base vacations around taking the lives of other creatures?
Weigh in via the Comments section below!