Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s former homeland security secretary, has killed a large elk with a bow and arrow.
Posing with the dead animal in photographs on Instagram, Ms Noem wrote that she “finally had a little time” to share the pictures from her trip, calling the experience “super fun.”
She has previously shared photos of hunting trips, describing her son-in-law Kyle as her “number one hunting guide”.
In 2024, when governor of South Dakota, Ms Noem was tipped as a strong contender to be vice-president, but then faced criticism for killing her hunting dog.
Ms Noem had a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer called Cricket. After the animal ruined a hunting trip, killed some of a neighbour’s chickens and tried to bite her, she shot it in a gravel pit.
In her autobiography, Ms Noem said she “hated that dog” but added that “it was not a pleasant job”. She used the incident to demonstrate that she was willing to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as she was in life.
Mr Trump ultimately picked JD Vance as his running mate.
Mr Trump fired Ms Noem as head of the department of homeland security in March following border agents’ controversial crackdown on anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis.
Agents shot and killed protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 and US citizens, in separate incidents in January.
Shortly after Mr Pretti’s shooting, Ms Noem described the ICU nurse as a “domestic terrorist”, saying that he wished to “inflict harm” and was armed with “dozens of rounds of ammunition”.
But video footage contradicted her account. It showed Mr Pretti approaching the officers while appearing to record them with his phone, before they wrestled him to the ground and shot him.
After widespread condemnation, Mr Trump decided in February to scale back his immigration operation in Minneapolis.
The deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti caused widespread protests earlier this year – Getty Images/Octavio Jones
Ms Noem also featured prominently in a $220m (£165m) DHS advertising campaign, which reportedly further angered the US president.
In March, after she was grilled by a Senate committee about the Minneapolis operation and the adverts, Mr Trump reassigned her to a new role of special envoy to a coalition of his southern and central American allies called the Shield of the Americas.