TV Personality Ripped After Video Taunting Dead Deer While Hunting Resurfaces

Phil Spencer, a British television host of property series, has come under fire again after a years-old video of him taunting a dead deer resurfaced on Twitter. Spencer is often criticized on social media for a 2011 photo that shows him holding a deer carcass. Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp have hosted Channel 4's Location, Location, Location series since May 2000. The two also hosted the spin-off Relocation, Relocation from 2004 to 2011.

The clip in question shows Spencer, 51, wearing a full camouflage outfit and crouching over the dead deer. The one-minute clip surfaced on Twitter in June 2020, and was retweeted again last week, sparking a fresh conversation about it. The 2020 tweet did not mention where this video was from, but it appears to be part of a longer video he filmed for the online station Fieldsports Channel in 2011. The full, 26-minute show is no longer available on the Fieldsports website "as Phil Spencer has asked us to remove it," reads a statement on the episode's page.

This appears to be Phil Spencer of Channel 4s “Location” programme revelling in his shooting of a deer. Pretty sickening stuff. https://t.co/SBE37y9zem

— Steve Horscroft FRSA (@shorscroft68) June 25, 2021

Back in 2011, Spencer published a photo of himself posing with the dead deer on his Facebook page, the Evening Standard reported at the time. In the episode, Spencer gushed about how excited he was to hunt deer. "It's my first deer. It came out beside us, walked almost under us and I managed to get a cheeky shot on a slightly difficult angle," he said. "It didn't sound like I'd hit it - but I had. I am absolutely chuffed to bits. It has been my ambition to shoot a deer for a very, very long time."

Louise Robertson, then-spokeswoman for the League Against Cruel Sports, told the Evening Standard in 2011 she was "shocked" to see Spencer pose with a dead animal. "I am shocked to see Phil Spencer in this role of bloodthirsty killer," she said. "To allow a celebrity shooter to kill a deer purely for the entertainment of others is appalling."

That video of Phil Spencer with the deer is horrendous. When my poor dog died I could barely bring myself to touch him, and here’s big Phil gloating over shooting an animal and thrashing its head about like it wasn’t just alive a few minutes ago. It’s so callous and disturbing.

— Rach (@rachael_lg) June 27, 2021

"Anyone who can describe a blood sport as a 'passion' and boast of a long-held ambition to stalk and kill defenseless animals should undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if his or her mirror neuron, the one that allows a person to experience empathy, is underdeveloped," a PETA spokesperson told the Daily Mail in 2011. "It takes a small person to enjoy traumatizing, hurting, and killing animals who are minding their own business, and perhaps Spencer does it in order to feel important or because of some other inadequacy."

At the time, Spencer defended his actions, noting he has been "involved in different types of field sports since practically I could walk it's always been around me." He later added, "It's something I'm very comfortable about. It's part of me - it's my complete passion." Spencer has not commented on the new response to the fresh outrage over his hunting.