Child, K. R.Darimont, C. T.2015-06-102017-07-0220152015Child, KR & CT Darimont. (2015) Hunting for trophies: Online hunting photographs reveal achievement satisfaction with large and dangerous prey. Human Dimensions of Wildlife. v 20, n. 6. (in press)www.tandfonline.com/loi/uhdw20http://hdl.handle.net/1828/6255Final accepted version of article.Despite its manifold implications, insight into what satisfactions hunters derive from trophy hunting has not been thoroughly investigated. We used a novel method to assess how common satisfaction might be from harvesting animals under different achievement contexts. We scored smile types – signals of emotion and satisfaction – in 2,791 online hunting photographs. We show that the odds of true ‘pleasure’ smiles are greater when hunters pose: (a) with vs. without prey, (b) with large vs. small prey and, (c) with carnivores vs. herbivores (among older men). We emerge with a generalizable achievement-oriented hypothesis to propose that the prospect of displaying large and/or dangerous prey at least in part underlies the behavior of many contemporary hunters. Given that achievement was also likely important among ancestral hunter-gatherers and remains so in contemporary cultural and commercial marketing contexts, management might benefit by increased attention to achievement satisfaction among hunters.enconservationhuman predatorsinternettrophy huntingsmile typeonline forumssize-selective predationPreprintDepartment of Geography