Santa Targets Hunters in Festive PETA Appeal to Downtown Shoppers

For Immediate Release:
December 8, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Santa has a message for holiday shoppers: You can avoid the “naughty” list if you put down that hunting rifle. His Yuletide greeting, courtesy of PETA, can be found on artwork plastered on local buses running downtown—home to Scheels, Adler’s Sporting Goods, and other stores that sell hunting supplies—through the end of December. The message comes after a national hunting group ranked Minnesota a top state for killing big deer.

“When it comes to feeling pain and fear, loving their families, and valuing their own lives, deer are just like you and me,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s cheeky cartoon encourages holiday shoppers to give wild animals some peace on Earth by saying no to hunting.”

Hunters kill millions of animals every year and injure many others, allowing them to escape only to die slowly and painfully from blood loss or starvation. Orphans of parents killed by hunters are left vulnerable, too. Hunters have contributed to the extinction of species all over the world, including the Tasmanian tiger and the great auk.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.