Is it wrong to judge trophy-hunters more harshly if they’re women?

Despite myself, I keep being drawn back to that photograph of US TV presenter and self-styled “professional huntress” Larysa Switlyk, posing with the body of a wild goat she shot on the Scottish island of Islay.

She looks quietly triumphant. The horned animal is grotesquely posed in death, head thrust back, all the better to display his former magnificence.

“Nothing better than disconnecting from this social media-driven world and connecting back with nature,” she told social media.

Back in September, a woman identified only as Britany L featured on the Facebook page of Safari Club International with her kill; a heartbreakingly beautiful leopard.

And in July, American big game hunter Tess Thompson Talley was subject to a huge social media backlash after posting pictures of the giraffe she shot after a “lifetime dream hunt” in South Africa.

Like these women, Switlyk, who travels the globe filming Larysa Unleashed for the Destination America & World Fishing Network, wasn’t breaking any laws. Her hunt took place on private property and her other trophies included four red stags.

With the best will in the world, her killing spree wasn’t on a par with Cecil the lion, killed in 2015 by Minnesotan dentist Walter Palmer just outside the national park in Zimbabwe.

In Africa, conservationists are deeply divided over the big-buck benefits of licensed hunting, which targets ageing animals and those destined to be culled in order to finance the protection of endangered species.

I am perplexed by my own response to Switlyk’s pictures. Do people like me, who happily eat farmed meat – venison, lamb – have any moral right to be upset at Switlyk briskly dispatching a wild animal after it has led an inarguably better life? I don’t think we do.

And yet it feels wrong. It looks wrong. Is my revulsion sexist because she is a woman, not a middle-aged man?

Possibly. I don’t believe hunting is only for men, but there’s something repellent about her exulting; rightly or wrongly, I expect better from my own gender.

‘Huntress’: Larysa Switlyk boasted of shooting a goat with a ‘200-yard shot’