A French Instagram model and hunting advocate has reportedly had to change her last name after receiving death threats for her work supporting outdoor and shooting sports.
Johanna Clermont is a 23-year-old hunter, college student, and Instagram influencer who garnered attention in Paris recently after becoming the face of an ad campaign by a French pro-hunting streaming service called Zone300. Dubbed the “hunting Netflix,” the service offers shows highlighting boar hunting, deer hunting, and fishing.
“I know. It may be surprising to see a young blonde like me. But I want to break the stereotypes,” she told The Telegraph.
She said the death threats she has received have come from anti-hunting militants at Perpignan University in southern France, where she studies. They targeted her after Paris’s metro system was plastered with billboards by Zone300 depicting her face beside the text “Sweep Away Your Prejudice!”
“P—ing people off is my second passion,” she said. “If there are no negative reactions, then the campaign won’t have worked.”
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France boasts about 1.2 million hunters among the country’s 67 million-person population, but not all of them are cheering Clermont’s newfound fame.
Martine Pion is the president of the National Association of Female Hunting and she accused the model and hunter of selling her soul to merchandising, according to The Telegraph.
“We don’t share the same way of seeing things. To be a spokesmodel and remain independent seem difficult to me,” she said. “So, the guys find her pretty, fine. I’m perhaps gullible but our cause is not about looks.”
The anti-hunting crowd has also criticized her for using her looks to misrepresent the hunting community.
“Johanna is the dream face for hunters,” said Pierre Rigaux, an anti-hunting wildlife activist. “Young and a woman very far from the reality of the hunter” in the male-dominated sport.
Clermont describes herself as a “French entrepreneur, proud huntress” on her 125,000-follower Instagram account. In one recent post highlighting her ad campaign with Zone300, she defended hunting as a normal human activity.
“Hunting is a normal activity which defines us as humans -participating to the normal life/death cycle,” she said. “While anti-speciesism is turning trendy, hunters image is deteriorating: we will not let them do. Common sense always ends up winning. Be proud to be who you are.”
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Clermont’s advocacy comes as France continues to grapple with its increasing wild boar population. Hunters and farmers have been at odds about how to deal with the problem, and some of the animals appear to be getting a little too comfortable around humans.
As an American I really do not have a right to put my nose in European disputes. As a human from planet Earth I have every right to express my opinion. Right or wrong it is mine and if anyone doesn’t like it, that is their problem, not anyone else’s. If anyone has a problem with me expressing my opinion then we all have a problem with that person thinking he can object to another opinion besides the one he chooses to support and attempt to prevent a person from expressing that different opinion. To make all that short and easier to understand let me say this,”I may not agree with what you say and I may support a different opinion with all my heart and soul but I will support and defend your right to express and support a different opinion from the one I believe to be correct.” As hard as it is to believe we have all been mistaken or just plain wrong about one thing or another that we believed with our whole heart to be true. It has happened to all of us and it can happen again, so it is best if we listen to other ideas and not just shut them down simply because we disagree with them. A wise elderly lady once told be a few things she thought might help me learn things while I was growing up. Some of what she told me is “It is very hard to fill a pan with water if you have filled it with mud and rocks.” She also said “You will learn more with your eyes and ears open and your mouth closed then the other way around.” The thing she told me that made the biggest impression on me is “If you go around acting like you know everything there is to know then nobody will ever try to teach you anything new!”
Now, I wonder about all of those people who complain about this young lady and her beliefs about hunting or trying to make a living doing what she likes to do. Do they already know everything about the subject or could the learn new things by closing their mouths and opening their eyes and ears? Unfortunately many people today do not want to learn and are content to repeat what they hear someone else say because they said it like they knew everything there is to know. If you find people who are repeating what they hear, try to speak softly and teach them something new. If they do not want to learn then they have a problem and it may take more then conversation to fix it. Good luck.
Death threats? Must be doing something right.
it’s fantastic that women are getting involved in hunting and fighting the anti-hunting right beside us. My wife has been a hunter for a long time and it has had a lot to do with us being married for 41 years. she hunts and fishes and I go to craft fairs with her. works for us.
Well, proof positive that even among hunter women, the cat fights will exist. So what if she markets her looks?
She’s hunting and promoting that, that’s all I care about.