I mean, she's a hunter; this is what hunters do.  She's flaunting the female-with-a-bow-and-rifle but that's what she's had to do to get up in the game.Interesting that the public hate has followed her to even get her kicked off a Nat Geo contest.  Aren't hunters... "trophy hunters" by default?  It's for sport/craft/skill, and in this day, is mostly directed at culling animals, no? If it wasn't her, it would be a group of vets with poison in a syringe, no?

You are correct, but she still sensationalized the killing, which is what outraged some people.

Killing for culling (bear, alligator) or food (elk) makes sense; why does the lion need to die? 

The lion doesn't NEED to die. She kills it for sport.

In Boy Scouts we learned never to shoot anything that you weren't going to eat.  That lesson was driven home by cooked lizards on the shooting range.   Bear, alligator, and elk are all legal foods in the US.  Lion meat has become a fad in the US in recent years, but some states are outlawing it.  It's funny, horsemeat consumption, however, is technically legal in most states, but slaughtering horses for meat is banned in the US. 

In searching for the laws, I did find this interesting list of banned US foods that I thought I'd share.

http://www.delish.com/food-fun/banned-food