According to her Instagram, Jones is an “outdoor enthusiast” and hunter, with a large enough following to put her in the micro-influencer category, generally accepted to be accounts with between 10,000 and 100,00 followers (Jones’ followers have dropped slightly since the incident).
A photo from Sam Jones’ Instagram highlight reel of her Australian travels.Credit: Instagram
An Instagram highlight reel posted last year of Jones’ Australian travels shows her interacting with native animals in different ways. She chronicles working with horses, posts videos of kangaroos, cockatoos and dolphins, as well as more direct interventions.
One video shows her fishing on a beach, with the caption “HOOKED INTO A MASSIVEEE [sic] SHARK TONIGHT. RAN 200+ YARDS AND EVENTUALLY MANAGED TO GET OFF AFTER A LONG FIGHT. CRAP!” , while another appears to show Jones pulling a small shark by the tail from a rock pool, with the caption “LITTLE SHARK WAS READY TO FIGHT”.
A video posted on February 4 this year shows Jones holding an echidna which appears to have been found in the wild, stroking it and feeling one of its paws before releasing it, after which it burrows into the ground.
Another depicts her posing alongside a dead deer. “Got my first chital (Axis deer) [sic],” the caption reads. “Australia is full of epic, wild deer and harvesting this beautiful stag marks my third deer species.” Many users have taken to the comments to disparage the behaviour.
An image posted by Sam Jones to her Instagram account @samstrays_somewhere of an Australian Chital she hunted. Credit: Instagram
In a June 2023 interview with Wyoming publication Cowboy State Daily, Jones, named as Samantha Strable, explains her nomadic, hunting lifestyle.
“I can’t stand the six-month winters, so I head to the southern hemisphere in November or December,” she says, explaining she supports herself while travelling by doing farm and ranch work.
In the article, in which she describes her ambitions to hunt a Wyoming bear, Jones claims she has bow-hunted stags in Chile, and slain a wild pig with a knife in New Zealand. “I ended up getting a young sow (female pig). That was a bit intense for me, because I’m used to hunting animals from a little bit of a distance,” she said.
“Honestly, I cried,” she added. “I don’t like killing. I like the hunting, I like the chase. It’s not fun to see anything die. The best you can hope for is that it dies quickly and painlessly.”
A short-term homestay website CouchSurfing.com profile describes Jones as a 24-year-old Wyoming native who has lived in Australia, Chile, New Zealand and the US. “I can teach you to fish, bird, or native plant ID for foraging,” it reads.
Sam Jones, or Samantha Strable, poses alongside a wild pig, a pest species in New Zealand, and with a chamois goat she also hunted in the country.Credit: Samantha Strable
Jones, who also claims on her Instagram to be a “Wildlife Biologist & Environmental Scientist”, is described as a Database Administrator on a former list of staff members at the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency.
As Samantha Strable, she also contributed several articles to Montana publication Great Falls Tribune, some as a member of the daily newspaper’s “Teen Panel”. In one article, titled “Don’t have parents who hunt? Program can get you started” she describes her participation in a youth hunting mentoring program, as “not only a good learning experience but also a fun adventure”.
What happened with the wombat, and what do experts say?
In the recent incident, Jones is alleged to have briefly separated a common, bare-nosed wombat joey from its mother. In the 34-second video, captioned “My dream of holding a wombat has been realised!” a man films as Jones picks up the baby wombat from the side of the road.
“Just caught a baby wombat,” says the unidentified man, before he bursts into laughter. “Look at the mother, chasing after her. Momma’s right there and she is pissed,” he adds, filming Jones returning with the terrified joey, the mother seen following behind her.
“I caught a baby wombat!” she said as the wombat is heard hissing for its mother. “OK, mamma’s right there, and she is pissed. Let’s let them go,” says Jones before putting the joey back on the ground.
Dr Tania Bishop, a wildlife veterinarian at WIRES, told this masthead the way the wombat is being carried in the video is concerning, and likely illegal.
“Most of their weight is in the back end of the body, so picking up even any young animal, even a toddler, they can experience growth plate damage, greenstick fractures, damage to ligaments and muscles, damage to the nerve plexus,” she said.
Hunting influencer and biologist Sam Jones allegedly removed a wombat joey from its mother.Credit: instagram.com/samstrays_somewhere
“To both the joey and the mother, it’s been taken by a predator, which is why you see the mother showing such distress that you actually see the female coming right up to the car door.”
In the caption, Jones claims the “baby and mom slowly waddled back off together into the bush”. But Jess Abrahams, a national nature campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, said interfering with the joey could have a long-term impact, with human scent even causing the mother to abandon her baby.
“This is not the way to treat wildlife anywhere in the world – especially not in Australia.”
What will happen next?
According to the department’s statement, it is now working through the conditions on her visa and determining whether immigration law has been breached.
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Burke said “either way, given the level of scrutiny that will happen if she ever applies for a visa again, I’ll be surprised if she even bothers.”
The growing calls from the public for Jones to be deported, including on one posting of the video on popular sub-Reddit r/Australia, also saw Foreign Minister Penny Wong weigh in on whether any current visa should be cancelled.
Wong deferred to Burke but said she thought the footage was “pretty dreadful”.
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“I think everyone who would have seen that would have thought, ‘Leave the baby wombat alone. Leave it with its mum’, she told Seven’s Sunrise.
RSPCA Australia has also commented on the video, saying it shows “a blatant disregard for our native wildlife”, but did not want to make further comment to ensure there is no interference with any inquiries.
Bishop said that in Australia, all wildlife is protected under biosecurity and prevention of cruelty to animal laws, which vary from state to state. According to the RSPCA, state penalties for infringing animal cruelty laws include fines ranging from $22,000 to $236,500 for individuals, and jail terms, with a maximum sentence of 5 years in NSW.
Asked whether Jones’ handling of the echidna was also illegal, Bishop said it was difficult to judge without knowing how and where Jones had found the animal. She said it was illegal to pick up or interfere with native wildlife without a reasonable suspicion it has been injured.
It is still unclear where the incident happened, but common, bare-nosed wombats are native to Tasmania, NSW and Victoria, with scattered populations in South Australia. This masthead has approached environmental authorities in all four states for comment.
Samantha Jones has been contacted for comment.
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